Kill or Be Killed #4

The cover of Kill or Be Killed #4 says everything without saying a word — a red-haired woman holds a badly wounded young man against the darkness, her expression grief-stricken while blood marks his battered face. Sean Phillips's moody painted-style artwork, colored with Elizabeth Breitweiser's characteristic deep, bruised palette, captures the emotional weight that makes this Ed Brubaker crime series so compelling. A quiet, aching image that makes issue four feel genuinely hard to put down before you've even opened it.