Blood: A Tale #2

Volume two of J. M. DeMatteis and Kent Williams's haunting Epic Comics series arrives with a cover painting that stops you cold — two nude figures locked in an intense, almost desperate embrace against a smoldering dark background, their forms rendered in Williams's richly atmospheric painterly style. The chapter is titled "Communion," a word that deepens the charged, elemental tension visible between the two figures. With Williams handling every artistic role himself, this is as unified and personal a vision as comics gets.