Books of Magick: Life During Wartime #7

Frank Quitely's cover for this March 2005 Vertigo entry pulls you in immediately — a blonde woman in a top hat and black ensemble faces a cigarette-smoking man in a long coat, knives held loosely at his side, their tension palpable against a blood-red circle dominated by a looming, unsettling crimson figure behind them. The title "Funeral for a Fiend" promises the kind of dark, morally complex storytelling that Books of Magick: Life During Wartime does so well, with Si Spencer writing and Dean Ormston contributing to the art. It's a compelling snapshot of a series that confidently occupies Vertigo's darker corner of the DC universe.