Alabaster #2

Alabaster: Grimmer Tales #2 brings Caitlín R. Kiernan's haunting Southern Gothic world to vivid, unsettling life, with a cover by Greg Ruth that immediately signals something far stranger than folklore. Rendered in murky, waterlogged sepia tones, the image shows a young woman entwined underwater with a serpentine mermaid-like creature — their embrace ambiguous between struggle and tenderness, a dagger visible between them. Steve Lieber brings the same careful craft to the interior, where "Chapter One: The Mermaid of Black Hammock" promises exactly the kind of dark, myth-soaked storytelling that makes this series so compelling.