Animal Man #54

Brian Bolland's cover for this fourth chapter of "Flesh and Blood" sets an unmistakably gothic tone: a pale, unconscious woman lies draped across a bed while a black cat with glowing red eyes stands over her, and a horned, reptilian creature looms menacingly from the shadows above — with a screaming figure trapped within a framed portrait completing the scene's air of dread. The subtitle "Despair" leaves little ambiguity about where writer Jamie Delano and artist Steve Pugh are taking this arc in December 1992. If you've been following Animal Man through this unsettling "Flesh and Blood" storyline, this issue promises the tension is nowhere near its breaking point yet.