Sleeper: Season Two #3

Sean Phillips's cover for Sleeper: Season Two #3 sets a quietly unsettling tone — a lone figure in black tactical gear clings to a sharply angled surface, lit cigarette in hand, rendered in a bold diagonal composition that splits the image between warm gold and deep crimson. It's a visually striking piece of work from the Brubaker–Phillips partnership, and paired with the story title "The Manipulations," the sense of a man navigating dangerous edges — literally and figuratively — feels entirely earned. Part of WildStorm's mature-readers line in 2004, this is spy-fiction comics doing what it does best.