Animal Man #66

Tom Taggart's cover for this December 1993 DC/Vertigo issue is genuinely arresting — a massive, deeply weathered face fills the entire frame, its pale, otherworldly eyes staring out from beneath a tangle of wild hair and beard that seems to grow like roots or bark. The title "Communion" hints at something primal and spiritual within, a fitting mood for a series that consistently pushed into strange, contemplative territory. Jamie Delano and Steve Pugh were steering Animal Man through bold, mature-readers storytelling by this point, and this unsettling close-up portrait makes a compelling case to pick it up.