Les Cités obscures #[3]

Part of the celebrated French-Belgian Les Cités obscures series, this 1987 Casterman volume presents "La Tour I," a story set against the haunting architecture of an imaginary world. François Schuiten's cover art draws the eye immediately: a weathered older man tenderly cradles a child, their figures rendered in delicate monochrome against the soaring, ancient stonework of an impossibly tall tower that recedes into a misty sky. The contrast between those two small, human figures and the colossal, textured masonry behind them sets a tone that is at once intimate and grandly atmospheric — exactly the kind of tension that makes Schuiten and Peeters' collaboration so compelling.