Noirhomme #2

From Maurel & Hamo comes this atmospheric French-language thriller, as a towering skeletal figure in a top hat and black cape looms over a gaslit city, manipulating tiny human puppets on strings above the rooftops and cobblestone bridge below. One panicked figure flees across the bridge carrying a lantern while smaller marionette-like silhouettes dangle helplessly in the dark figure's grip — a genuinely unsettling image of control and dread. Sacrifices promises a gothic tale steeped in shadow, and this 2008 Casterman release delivers one of the more visually striking covers in European comics that year.