End of Life #4

Two men locked in a tense, nose-to-nose confrontation dominate Gerald Parel's cover for this fourth issue of DC Vertigo's End of Life — one with a flicker of flame at his temple, the other older and bespectacled, jaw set in open anger. Swirling between them in the charged space above are whimsical little creatures: a green imp, a blue ghost-like figure, and scattered playing cards that lend the image a surreal, almost dreamlike edge beneath the raw human tension. Kyle Starks, Steve Pugh, and Chris O'Halloran's Mature Readers series clearly isn't shy about mixing the strange with the viscerally human.