Hard Looks: Adapted Stories #[nn]

Andrew Vachss and Joe Lansdale bring their gritty literary sensibilities to this Dark Horse collection of adapted stories, with art and inks by Gary Gianni and lettering by Clem Robins. The cover sets a mood as bleak and industrial as the stories within — a grey, overcast sky looms over a steel bridge and stacked lumber or pipe in a working-class waterfront yard, the kind of place where hard lives play out quietly. At $19.95, this 2002 trade is a satisfying gateway into crime fiction translated powerfully into comics form.