Hard Looks #10

Andrew Vachss's Hard Looks reached its tenth issue at Dark Horse in 1993, and Tim Bradstreet's cover sets the tone with cool, gritty precision. The image is split down the middle by a telephone cord, placing a suited, bearded man on one end of a call and a woman in lingerie on the other — both on the phone, both framed against the seedy backdrop of what appears to be an escort service's scheduling board. It's the kind of noir composition that makes James Colbert and Vachss's street-level storytelling feel immediate before you've even cracked the spine.