Penguin: Pain & Prejudice #2

Szymon Kudranski's cover for this second chapter of the five-issue Pain and Prejudice miniseries says everything with chilling economy: a massive, shadowed Penguin looms over the frame, top hat and monocle in place, gripping a snow globe that imprisons a tiny, struggling Batman within its glass sphere. The tagline "Grasp on Gotham!" feels entirely earned when Oswald Cobblepot literally holds the Dark Knight in the palm of his hand. Gregg Hurwitz and Kudranski's 2012 portrait of Gotham's most underestimated villain has rarely felt this unsettling.