Thief of Thieves #24

Part five of six in "The Hit List" arc arrives with a cover that says everything about the stakes without giving a single secret away. A suited figure stands silhouetted in the foreground, cigar in hand, surveying a wall of trophy mounts — only instead of animal heads, the plaques bear the faces of four human targets alongside a skull and a boar's head, all rendered in a smoldering palette of red and shadow by Shawn Martinbrough and colorist Adriano Lucas. With writer Andy Diggle steering the story toward its penultimate chapter, this is exactly the kind of composed, tension-loaded image that makes Thief of Thieves one of Image's most stylish crime books of 2014.