Ares #4

The fourth chapter of Marvel's five-part 2006 limited series delivers one of its most quietly unsettling images: a pale, masked figure with a crimson bindi and eerie clown-like markings looms in the darkness behind a young red-haired boy, her wrapped arms hovering just at his shoulders in a way that feels more threat than embrace. The child stands still and wide-eyed, a jagged golden collar fanned around his neck, the contrast between his innocence and her otherworldly menace doing all the storytelling the cover needs. Travel Foreman and Derek Fridolfs craft a genuinely atmospheric piece that makes issue four feel like a sharp turn into something darker for Mike Avon Oeming's war-god saga.