The Walking Dead #140

Part of the long-running "Life and Death" arc, this 2015 installment from Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Stefano Gaudiano, and Cliff Rathburn puts two survivors front and center in a tense, split-composition cover. A young woman — battered, bandaged, and blood-stained — stands her ground in the background, while a second figure looms urgently in the foreground, wide-eyed and reaching toward a grasping zombie hand clawing up from below. That contrast between grim resolve and raw, immediate fear captures exactly the kind of emotional tightrope The Walking Dead walked so well at this stage of its run.