Olympus #4

Christian Ward's painted cover for Olympus #4 sets a striking, unsettling tone — a battered, grey-haired figure in a tattered robe looms forward, blood streaking his face and chest, clutching a bone-like object in one hand while a heavy chain wraps around the other, with a red bird silhouette hovering between them against a vivid magenta background. The mythological resonance is immediate and visceral, the kind of image that makes you want to know exactly how things got this far. Nathan Edmondson and Ward's 2009 Image series clearly has no shortage of ambition, and "The End Has a Start" sounds like a chapter that earns that ominous cover.