Tattered Banners #1

Vertigo's four-part miniseries kicks off with this sharp 1998 collaboration from Alan Grant, Keith Giffen, and Mick McMahon. The cover sets a wonderfully off-kilter urban tone: a tall, disheveled man in a rumpled suit and red tie — mohawk haircut, briefcase in hand — strides through a city street surrounded by an eccentric crowd of onlookers, from a purple-haired woman in a black top to a bald child and a figure in glasses, all rendered in McMahon's distinctively loose, expressive linework against a warm backdrop of city brownstones. If the title "Real Men Don't Klik" is any indication, this series has a sly, irreverent wit to match its equally quirky cast of characters.