Amala's Blade #3

The penultimate issue of Steve Horton and Michael Díalynas's four-part Dark Horse miniseries puts our hooded, blade-wielding heroine face-to-face with a truly massive mechanized serpent — its armored segments glowing with violet circuitry and its fanged maw dripping over a floor littered with skulls. Díalynas's cover (pencils, inks, and colors all his own) delivers a gorgeous sense of scale, with Amala's lone figure dwarfed by this colossal machine-beast in what looks like a grim, shadowed ruin. It's a striking image that captures the series' blend of steampunk menace and sharp-edged action perfectly.