Dark Sun #5

Set against Athas's scorching amber sky and the looming silhouette of a great ziggurat city, Michael Stribling's cover for this fifth issue plants two blue-skinned figures in tense proximity — a bare-chested warrior with a mohawk and scaled armor facing off with a hooded companion clutching a short weapon. Writer Alex Irvine and artist Peter Bergting's exploration of the Dungeons & Dragons Dark Sun campaign setting reaches its penultimate chapter here, and the cover's sun-baked tension promises the kind of desperate survival drama that makes Athas such a compelling wasteland.