The Goddamned #1

Jason Aaron and R. M. Guéra launch The Goddamned with a suitably savage opening — the cover, colored by Giulia Brusco in scorched oranges and murky grays, shows a white-haired, fur-clad figure crouched over a cliff's edge beside a pile of skulls and a fresh, bleeding severed head, a blood-dripping axe planted in the blasted wasteland behind them. The subtitle "Before the Flood" and the story's nod to the Mark of Cain promise a brutal, biblically-rooted world where survival looks anything but civilized. If you're after a grim, unflinching take on humanity's earliest days from Image Comics, this 2015 first issue sets the tone with remarkable confidence.