Fall of Cthulhu Vol. 3: The Gray Man
For the third, single-arc collection of the best-ever Lovecraftian comic, Nelson taps yet another artist, who adopts the embossed-looking figuration Jean Dzialowski employed in volume 1, The Fugue (2008), and carries it over into the garishly surreal Dreamlands, to which Arkham, Massachusetts, sheriff Raymond Dirk must repair en route to stopping a wave of spectacular murders. Killing the perp, a mysterious gray man, isn’t an option because he’s not really corporeal. Though Dirk looks slightly like a wander-in from King of the Hill, this gruesome tale otherwise suggests a very good episode of X-Files creator Chris Carter’s other great TV series, Millennium, though Dirk lacks Frank Black’s gift. --Ray Olson