The Walking Dead #106

Issue #106 of Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn's relentless survival saga finds a tense, chaotic struggle front and center — the cover depicts a tight cluster of survivors locked in close-quarters conflict, with a dreadlocked fighter raising a sword, a bearded man in the middle bracing against the press, and a battered blonde woman clutching a weapon at the right, while reaching undead hands close in from the background. Adlard's raw, kinetic linework captures the suffocating pressure of a world where threats come from every direction at once. If 2013 was a high-stakes year for this series, this cover makes a compelling case that issue #106 is right in the thick of it.