I Think It’s Fair to Say He’s Cheated on Her for the Very Last Time.

If you ask me, it takes a lot to make a woman wanna put a tightly packed grouping like that through a man. So, when it happens, you better believe he did something to ground her last nerve beneath his scuffed Johnston & Murphys. Like Max growled in the Hart to Hart intro, when these two met, it was murder.

Not to condone homicide, of course. Merely to praise Tim Lane’s gritty cover art for Fantagraphics Books’ Hotwire Comics Vol. 2, which continues the title’s standard for packing as many harshly drawn tales of scuminess, dread, and revenge into one volume as possible. Pieces by Danny Hellman, Ivan Brunetti, Chadwick Whitehead, Johnny Ryan, and a masterwork by Glenn Head make the pages pulse. I’m pretty crazy about the stuff this publisher does…and hiding my gun from Zakiya.