Mandalay #3

The third chapter of Philippe Thirault and Butch Guice's wartime saga lands with real tension: the cover, inked by Mike Perkins, frames a bare-chested man standing defiantly arms-wide between a rifle-toting soldier and a crouching woman, all set against walls of flame and a newspaper headline screaming "Fire Over Burma!" The burning backdrop and that Dutch-language title — "Invasie" — leave no doubt that the conflict engulfing Burma has arrived at someone's doorstep. It's a vivid, carefully composed image that makes this 2009 Daedalus release easy to pick up and hard to put down.