A gothic horror tableau rendered in cold, desaturated tones of grey, black and sickly green. A towering bat-winged creature - all ragged fur, jagged ears and a snarling, fanged muzzle - clutches a pale, limp woman against its chest, one clawed hand pressed possessively over her, her head lolling back with eyes closed and long tangled hair spilling downward. A crucifix pendant hangs at her throat, a small, pointed detail in an otherwise wordless scene of predator and victim, and the murky, cloud-streaked background gives the whole image the feel of a horror paperback cover rather than a superhero page. This is the register of Bisley's long-running collaboration with musician and publisher Glenn Danzig, whom he has worked with since the mid-1990s on Verotik's horror line - books like Verotika, Satanika, Jaguar God and The Infernals - a body of work that leaned hard into monstrous, adult-oriented horror imagery far removed from the mainstream superhero and 2000 AD strips he's better known for. The vampire-bat hybrid here, with its blend of animalistic menace and gothic romance-novel composition, sits comfortably in that tradition: sensuality and horror rendered in the same breath, the victim's stillness as unsettling as the creature's aggression. It's a mood piece built on contrast - soft pale skin against matted black fur, stillness against a barely-contained snarl - more interested in atmosphere than in narrative explanation.
Vampire bat
