Cellule Poison #4

The fourth chapter of Laurent Astier's Cellule Poison arrives with a cover that says everything through imagery alone: a young woman, her dark hair windswept and her wrists bound by a heavy chain, bears the perched weight of a large eagle — talons gripping her shoulders with quiet menace, its sharp gaze alert and unblinking. The subtitle Dans les Serres de l'Aigle ("In the Eagle's Talons") makes the threat explicit, and Astier's dusky pink-on-black palette gives the whole composition a tense, suffocating elegance. For fans of smart Franco-Belgian thriller comics, this 2010 Dargaud release looks like the series hitting its dramatic stride.