Suicide Squad #43

The final chapter of "The Phoenix Gambit" arrives with this 1990 closer to one of Suicide Squad's most gripping four-part arcs. Geof Isherwood's cover — rendered in stark black with bursts of magenta and gold — puts a fierce, snarling young woman in a purple combat suit squaring off against a silver-haired older man in a yellow coat who has his gnarled hands locked around her throat. The tension between the two figures is palpable, and with John Ostrander, Kim Yale, and Isherwood all on board, "Black Queen's Mate" promises a satisfying — and likely brutal — endgame.