Stormwatch #49

Part two of Warren Ellis's "Change or Die" arc arrives in this June 1997 Image title, and the cover by Tom Raney and Randy Elliott wastes no time setting a tense, close-quarters mood. The image fills the frame with a masked figure in black, a gleaming disc-shaped weapon pressed directly against their face in an unsettling moment of extreme proximity and danger. It's a deliberately stark, intimate composition that signals Ellis's grittier, more mature direction for Stormwatch was well underway by this point in the run.