Down #4

The fourth and final chapter of Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner's gritty crime series closes out with a cover that commands attention — a close-up of a shaven-headed figure wearing dark oval glasses, bathed in an intense red wash and splattered with blood, grinning with an unsettling menace. Tony Harris's pencils and Ray Snyder's inks give the face a visceral, almost sculptural weight that makes it impossible to look away. It's a fittingly hard-edged send-off for one of Image Comics' more uncompromising crime reads of 2006.