Hellcop #3

The brooding cover by Brian Haberlin sets the tone perfectly — a determined, spiky-haired figure armed and wary stands framed by a hellish stone archway, its capstone crowned by a glowing-eyed demonic skull looming overhead. That tension between the gritty, gun-toting protagonist and the supernatural menace surrounding him captures exactly the kind of dark, hardboiled-meets-infernal atmosphere Avalon Studios was channeling in 1999. With Joe Casey writing and Gilbert Monsanto on interior art, Hellcop #3 — subtitled "...Into The Abyss of An Empty Heart" — promises a story as unsettling as its striking cover suggests.