Sleeper: Season Two #8

Sean Phillips's cover for this eighth chapter of Sleeper: Season Two is a study in noir elegance — a red-haired woman in a black coat lunges dynamically across a stark, high-contrast cityscape rendered almost entirely in black and white, her vivid hair and red lips the only splashes of color against the angular urban backdrop. Ed Brubaker and Phillips were crafting some of the sharpest espionage noir in comics in 2005, and this image carries all that tension and style in a single striking frame. With a story titled "Misery Loves…," the urgency in that figure's movement feels entirely earned.