The Hard Place #4

From Image Comics' gritty crime series The Hard Place, issue #4 pairs an unsettling image with quiet, almost devotional tension: a wide-eyed, drooling bulldog rendered in haunting shades of blue looms above a dark rosary beads with a gleaming gold crucifix resting in the foreground. Brian Stelfreeze's cover art plays the sacred against the feral in a way that feels both intimate and quietly threatening. It's a striking 2017 installment that shows this series isn't afraid to find its menace in unexpected places.