Swamp Thing #27

Charles Soule and Jesús Saiz's New 52 run reaches an arresting moment with this 2014 issue, whose cover shows a muscular, bare-chested human figure straining upward with one arm raised to the sky while grasping, clawed plant-creature hands surge around him from every direction. The tagline "Escape from the Green!" makes the desperation on the cover instantly legible — something or someone is fighting to break free from the living world of plant life itself. Saiz's linework gives the surrounding vegetation a genuinely threatening, almost predatory energy that makes this one hard to put back on the shelf.