The Walking Dead #40

Charlie Adlard's cover for this 2007 Eisner Award–nominated series fills the entire frame with a single battered, blood-spattered face staring out with wide, shell-shocked eyes — raw and unsettling in the best possible way. That extreme close-up, rendered in Adlard's stark linework with Cliff Rathburn's muted, tension-soaked tones, communicates pure trauma without a single word. Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead was already one of Image's most gripping ongoing titles, and issue #40 makes that case the moment you lay eyes on the cover.