Royal City #4

Jeff Lemire's Royal City continues its intimate, small-town family drama with this quietly affecting fourth issue. The cover, rendered in Lemire's distinctive watercolor-influenced style, places a young blond man in red suspenders and a blond woman in a coral blazer — both wearing expressions of weary tension — in front of a small wooden church with a stained-glass window. There's a melancholy restraint to the image that perfectly captures the emotional weight this series carries, making it one of 2017's most compelling ongoing books from Image Comics.