Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #9

David Lapham's Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses has always had a gift for finding dark comedy in desperate situations, and the cover of issue #9 captures that spirit perfectly. In place of a traditional illustrated scene, the entire lower half of the cover is occupied by a hand-drawn, coffee-stained diagram titled "The PLAN (rough draft)" — a wonderfully chaotic flowchart of stick figures, scrawled notes, and arrows mapping out a scheme involving smoke bombs, a stripper, a power saw, and a very specific 10:20 PM escape window. It's a brilliant single image that tells you everything and nothing at once, perfectly suited to a story called "Change of Plans.