Daomu #4

Based on Kennedy Xu's best-selling "Tomb Robber's Journal," this fourth issue from Image delivers a genuinely unsettling cover: a lone man clutching a flashlight — his jacket bloodied, his expression tense — stands unaware of the massive, skeletal creature looming in the darkness behind him, taloned hands outstretched. The atmospheric painting captures that particular dread of ancient underground places where something very old and very wrong has been disturbed. If you've been following this series through 2011, this cover alone makes a compelling case to keep going.