De la fenêtre, le trompe-l'œil #[nn]

From La Cinquième Couche, Benoît Guillaume's De la fenêtre, le trompe-l'œil announces itself with quiet, arresting confidence — a spare cover rendered in smudged graphite and sharp lime green, showing a figure's bare legs and feet standing on a hexagonal-tiled floor as small leaves drift away across the pale expanse below. The restrained palette and the deliberate cropping of the figure give the image a contemplative, almost poetic mood that feels very much at home in the more adventurous corner of French-language alternative comics in 2006. It's the kind of cover that earns a second look.