Black Orchid #9

Dave McKean's haunting cover for this May 1994 DC Vertigo issue presents a close, shadowed face gazing outward while an enormous, spiraling organic structure — somewhere between a nautilus shell and exposed bone — unfurls dramatically across the figure's crown. The muted pinks, tans, and lavenders of that otherworldly headdress against the dark background give the image a dreamlike, unsettling beauty perfectly suited to Black Orchid's mature-readers sensibility. With Dick Foreman writing, Rebecca Guay on interior art, and a story titled "The Murmuring of Mists, the Whisper of Flowers," this issue promises the lush, botanical strangeness that defines this Vertigo corner of the DC universe.