Kill or Be Killed #3

The hooded figure staring up from Sean Phillips's cover — wide-eyed, teeth clenched, hands clasped in what could be prayer or desperation — immediately communicates the suffocating dread at the heart of Ed Brubaker and Phillips's dark crime series. Elizabeth Breitweiser's near-monochromatic palette, drained of almost all color, makes that figure feel trapped in shadow and barely holding it together. Three issues in, Kill or Be Killed is already delivering the kind of tightly wound, morally complicated noir that this creative team does better than almost anyone working in 2016.