Aliens: Music of the Spears #4

The finale of Aliens: Music of the Spears arrives with a cover that leaves nothing to the imagination — a Xenomorph looms over a bloodied, screaming human pinned helplessly beneath it, its jaws parted and dripping as the creature's full skeletal form fills the frame. Tim Bradstreet's pencils and Guy Burwell's inks give the image a visceral, painterly weight that perfectly captures the dread this four-part Dark Horse series has been building toward. With Chet Williamson and Tim Hamilton bringing the story home, issue #4 is a fittingly harrowing close to one of 1994's darker corners of the Aliens universe.