The Walking Dead #45

Charlie Adlard fills the cover of The Walking Dead #45 with an uncomfortably close portrait of a decaying walker — mouth agape, flesh rotting, rendered in ghastly green tones that make every grim detail impossible to ignore. The composition is deliberately claustrophobic, the undead figure looming so large it nearly crowds the title off the page. Robert Kirkman's series was at the height of its uncompromising tension in 2007, and this cover captures exactly the quiet dread that made it essential reading.