The Unwritten #9

The Unwritten #9 brings Mike Carey and Peter Gross's Vertigo thriller to a fiery crescendo with a cover by Yuko Shimizu that demands attention. Two luminous, flame-wreathed faces billow upward in a torrent of fire above two small figures — a dark-haired young man and a blonde companion — who stand together against a burning, castle-like structure in the background. Publishers Weekly called the series "a taut thriller that slyly plays off the real-world mania for imaginary ones… brilliantly imagined," and this 2010 image of figures consumed and dwarfed by storytelling's inferno makes it easy to see why.