Urban #1

Roberto Ricci's cover for this 2013 Dutch-language album sets the tone beautifully — a dense, bustling futuristic cityscape stretches across the lower half, packed with a crowd of ordinary people beneath towering urban architecture and floating vehicles, while the upper portion layers in surveillance-style data overlays and a close-up face partially obscured by digital information. Luc Brunschwig and Roberto Ricci's Urban — "De regels van het spel" (The Rules of the Game) — arrives from Dark Dragon Books promising a grounded sci-fi thriller where the everyday and the techno-dystopian collide. If the cover is any indication, this is a series with real visual ambition and a lot on its mind.