Black Orchid #10

Dave McKean's cover for this June 1994 Vertigo entry is a quietly haunting composition — a dark, silhouetted feminine figure merges with the layered, spiraling petals of a massive orchid bloom, purple and green hues washing over both as tangled, scrawl-like lines thread through the image. The effect feels less like a superhero book and more like an illustrated dream, perfectly suited to the mature-readers sensibility DC's Vertigo label was cultivating at the time. Inside, writer Dick Foreman and artist Rebecca Guay continue "Florescence," making this a beautifully atmospheric chapter in one of the imprint's more meditative series.