The Boys #43

Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's long-running Dynamite series reaches the conclusion of "The Innocents" arc with this quietly unsettling issue 43. Robertson's cover — rendered as a tilted photograph — puts the viewer uncomfortably close to a pair of bare feet and legs suspended high in the sky, while a burning, smoke-trailing aircraft tumbles through the clouds in the middle distance. That stark juxtaposition of human vulnerability and aerial catastrophe captures exactly the kind of gut-punch storytelling that made The Boys one of 2010's most talked-about mature-readers titles.