Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children #7

The seventh volume of DC's mature-readers anthology series brings another of Dave Louapre and Dan Sweetman's quietly unsettling tales, this one titled "Ricky the Doughnut Boy." Sweetman's cover art centers on a weathered, open-mouthed carousel horse head — rendered in delicate colored pencil against cracked stone textures — its red bridle a vivid contrast to pale, almost skeletal features, with prickly pear cactus pads drifting in the background. It's a haunting, dreamlike image that captures exactly the kind of faded, melancholy wonder this series does so well in 1990.