Hard Looks #9

Andrew Vachss's gritty crime anthology reaches its ninth installment with a cover by Bob Fingerman that stops you cold: a massively built man leaning on a walker stands beside a young boy in a backwards cap and an Ice Cube t-shirt, both set against a graffiti-tagged wall that feels unmistakably urban and lived-in. The contrast between the man's raw physical power and his apparent vulnerability — those crutches, that guarded expression — gives the image a quiet, unsettling tension that's pure Vachss territory. Writers Jerry Prosser and Andrew Vachss, with interior art by John Watkiss, deliver another hard-edged story in "Cain" that this Dark Horse series consistently does so well.