Animal Man #70

From the DC Vertigo mature-readers line in April 1994, this issue of Jamie Delano and Steve Pugh's Animal Man run carries the evocative title "A Strange And Reckless Freedom." George Pratt's painted cover is genuinely arresting — a crouching, anguished human figure rendered in loose, ghostly brushwork recoils as a luminous, spectral animal form surges past in the darkness above, the warm amber ground beneath them adding an almost ritualistic weight to the scene. It's the kind of unsettling, painterly imagery that made Vertigo's early years feel like a distinct creative space all their own.