Velvet #3

The third chapter of "Before the Living End" arrives with a cover by Steve Epting that immediately signals Velvet is not a woman to underestimate — her face looms inverted at the top, cool and calculating beneath night-vision goggles, while below her a shadowy action scene unfolds: a figure in black dispatching an opponent with a fierce kick as another body lies prone on the ground, all framed against an atmospheric backdrop of dark architecture and a rearing horse statue. Brubaker and Epting's spy thriller is firing on all cylinders by issue three, and this 2014 Image series has the moody, cinematic tension to match its ambitions.