This is not a brief.

A brief tells you what to draw, and I am not going to tell you what to draw.

The cover is the one slot I cannot hand out with instructions, because the cover is the promise the rest of the issue has to keep. It is the first thing a stranger touches and the last thing they set down. Whoever paints it is, for that issue, the loudest voice in the room — louder than the writers, louder than me.

So I’m not looking for someone who can execute a concept. I’m looking for someone who reads the title, understands the state it lives in, and already knows — before I say another word — what belongs on the front of it. Someone who wants to set the bar for every name printed behind theirs.

If that made your palms itch, the slot is yours to claim. If it made you nervous, claim a different one — no shame in it, and the interior is where most of the real magic lives anyway.

If you think you’re the one: show me the thing I didn’t ask for.

— R.H.