Alpha #3

The stark, minimalist cover of Alpha #3 says plenty with very little — a weathered CIA seal looms front and center, its eagle and compass-star rendered in grainy monochrome, while the bold red Alpha logo bleeds across it with unmistakable urgency. Jigounov's cover design makes the series' espionage world immediately clear: this is cold, institutional power with something dangerous written across its face. "The List," brought to English readers by Cinebook in 2010, promises the kind of tightly wound intelligence thriller that earns its tension one careful page at a time.