The Crow #2

Kent Williams delivers a haunting painted cover for this 1999 Image series, centering on the Crow's pale, fractured face gazing upward — streaks of dark paint cutting across his features like cracks in a broken mirror, with stark black feather-like brushstrokes radiating behind him. Layered over the amber-toned background are ghostly handwritten words and the evocative line, "If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows." It's a moody, painterly composition that sets a deeply atmospheric tone for Jon J. Muth and Jamie Tolagson's "Shadows.