Blue Estate #9

Survival Instinct" is the title blazoned across this ninth chapter of Viktor Kalvachev's neo-noir series from Image, and the cover makes a strong case for why. A red-haired woman in scanty attire sits atop a stormtrooper helmet, pistol in hand and chains at her wrists, while behind her looms a pale, bespectacled figure encased in what appears to be carbonite — a darkly comic pop-culture tableau that perfectly captures Blue Estate's gleeful collision of Hollywood sleaze and genre-savvy humor. Kalvachev's painted cover work is confident and visceral, pulling readers straight into the series' sun-drenched, danger-laced world for this 2012 installment.