The Fade Out #3

Sean Phillips's cover for The Fade Out #3 captures the noir mood of this Ed Brubaker series with disarming elegance — a glamorous blonde woman applies deep red lipstick from a compact mirror, her gloved hands lending an air of cool composure even as vivid crimson drips streak down the left side of the image like a silent accusation. The tension between beauty and menace is perfectly calibrated, setting up "The Replacement Blonde" with a sense that something beneath the polished surface is very wrong. Brubaker, Phillips, and colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser continue to make this 2014 Hollywood noir one of Image's most stylish ongoing series.