The New 52: Futures End #46

As DC's ambitious weekly series barrels toward its conclusion in 2015, issue #46 delivers a cover by Ryan Sook that stops you cold: a dark-costumed female figure collapses to her knees, mouth open in anguish, cradling a wounded arm against a backdrop of cascading crimson splatter. The stark red-on-black composition radiates a sense of desperate, hard-fought struggle that the four-writer team of Azzarello, Giffen, Jurgens, and Lemire has been building toward all series long. If this penultimate stretch of Futures End has felt relentless, this cover makes a compelling case that things are about to get even more intense.