Crude #6

Garry Brown's cover for Crude #6 delivers one of the series' most striking images: a set of Russian nesting dolls — each painted with a different character's face, including a bleeding man, a heavyset figure in a suit, a tattooed bruiser, and others — surrounded by pools and drips of black crude oil, with a single bullet standing upright among them. The matryoshka motif is a quietly unsettling way to suggest layered identities and hidden dangers at the heart of Steve Orlando's Russia-set noir. Lee Loughridge's muted, earthy palette makes the dark oil feel all the more suffocating, rounding out a cover that's equal parts elegant and grim.