The Programme #11

Two figures face each other in tense, close confrontation on C.P. Smith's striking cover: a weathered, scarred figure in a Soviet military cap bearing the hammer-and-sickle star, and a younger man whose bruised face is set with quiet determination. Peter Milligan and C.P. Smith's Cold War superhero series reaches its penultimate issue with "Out of the Past," and this cover — rendered in a restrained palette of deep reds and stark whites — captures the weight of that title perfectly. It's a quietly gripping image that makes issue #11 hard to put back on the shelf.