2020 Visions #8

Issue #8 of DC Vertigo's 2020 Visions brings us the second chapter of "Renegade," and Stephen John Phillips's photorealistic painted cover immediately draws you in — a tattooed, dreadlocked figure crouches in a forest setting, flanked by two wolves whose pale, unsettling eyes stare directly outward. The rich autumnal palette and the swirling spiral tattoo on the figure's chest give the image a primal, otherworldly atmosphere that feels perfectly at home in Jamie Delano and James Romberger's near-future anthology series. If you've been following this twelve-issue Vertigo run since 1997, this penultimate chapter of the "Renegade" arc is exactly the brooding, unconventional storytelling you've come to expect.