Tom Strong #32

The concluding chapter of "The Black Blade of the Barbary Coast" arrives in this 2005 America's Best Comics issue, with Jerry Ordway's cover plunging readers straight into a swirling melee of snarling, savage apes. Tom Strong himself — dressed in period military coat — battles alongside a sword-wielding woman in a red headscarf, while a pistol blazes in the foreground as the chaos threatens to overwhelm them both. Michael Moorcock's involvement as writer promises the kind of swashbuckling adventure with real literary weight, and Ordway's dynamic linework makes this a cover that earns a second look.