The Fade Out #4

The cover of issue four pulls you in immediately: a tense, wide-eyed man in wire-rimmed glasses and a battered WWII-era soldier's helmet grips a submachine gun, his expression caught somewhere between fear and grim determination, all while a vivid drip of red bleeds down the white background behind him. It's a striking image from Sean Phillips that blends the noir atmosphere of golden-age Hollywood with the haunted weight of wartime memory. Ed Brubaker and Phillips, along with colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser, continue delivering one of 2015's most atmospheric crime series with this chapter, "The Word on the Street.