Curse of the Spawn #6

Issue six of Image's dark spinoff series finds a desperate young man — guns raised and expression wild with panic — caught in a nightmarish tangle of monstrous clawed hands and dangling blades, all rendered in Dwayne Turner and Crime Lab Inkworks's richly textured monochromatic tones. The cover for "Blood and Rain" perfectly captures the series' brooding, horror-soaked atmosphere, with every inch of space crowded by lurching, grotesque figures closing in from all sides. It's a genuinely unsettling piece of 1997 Image Comics artistry that sets a tense, foreboding mood before you even crack the spine.