Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird #3

Two figures face each other in an eerily intimate close-up on Greg Ruth's haunting cover — a young woman and a spectral, luminous presence whose flowing hair seems to merge with the shadows around them, rendered in an unsettling wash of yellowed greens. It's a beautifully disquieting image that captures the Southern Gothic atmosphere Caitlín R. Kiernan, Daniel Warren Johnson, and Carlos Badilla bring to this penultimate-to-last chapter of the five-part series. If you've been following Alabaster's dark journey, issue #3 of The Good, the Bad, and the Bird makes a compelling case for why Dark Horse's 2016 lineup deserved close attention.