The Walking Dead #81

Part Two of "No Way Out" arrives with a cover that says everything about the desperate stakes: two survivors — one bandaged and wide-eyed with weapon raised, the other fighting with equal ferocity — are nearly swallowed by a massive, churning horde of walkers pressing in from every direction. Charlie Adlard's linework captures that suffocating sense of being completely overwhelmed, with decaying hands and hollow faces filling every inch of the background. Robert Kirkman and Adlard, with Cliff Rathburn's coloring, were delivering some of their most harrowing work in 2011, and this issue looks like no exception.