RIP #2

The second volume of Gaet's and Monier's RIP series carries a subtitle that says it all — Les mouches suivent toujours les charognes ("Flies always follow the carrion") — and the cover delivers on that grim promise with quiet, unsettling power. A weathered older man, white-bearded and hollow-eyed, stands alone in a decaying locker room, his white clothes heavily spattered with blood, while flies drift through the murky air around him and a bloody handprint marks the lockers at his back. It's a masterfully atmospheric image from Éditions Petit à Petit that frames Maurice as a deeply troubled figure at the center of something very dark indeed.