Blood and Shadows #2

Mark A. Nelson's cover for this 1996 DC/Vertigo prestige-format issue sets the tone brilliantly — a soldier on horseback races across a sunlit desert landscape with a blonde woman clutching him from behind, while the surrounding imagery bleeds into something far darker: a massive, red-tinged demonic face looms in the background, shadowy silhouetted figures mass at the bottom, and severed, jewelry-adorned limbs drift through hellish crimson chaos. The contrast between that bright, grounded Western scene and the supernatural horror pressing in from every edge makes for a genuinely unsettling composition. With Joe R. Lansdale's name on the cover, fans of his distinctly Southern Gothic sensibility know this second installment of Blood and Shadows is blending frontier grit with something deeply, deliciously wrong.