Blue Estate #7

The seventh chapter of Viktor Kalvachev's stylish crime series announces itself with a knockout visual: a bloodstained playing card — the seven — rendered as a king, bearing the grim, heavy-lidded face of a dangerous man clutching both a pistol and a syringe. The card itself is torn along a dashed cut-line, splattered with crimson, and framed by the "Blue Estate Playing Cards" box art with its sardonic tagline "Never a Gamble — Deal With It." With the episode title "Tonight's the Night" printed boldly across the card's face, Kalvachev's cover art promises that this 2011 Image series is playing a very high-stakes hand indeed.