Deadline USA #4

Dark Horse's Deadline USA #4 brings together an impressive anthology roster — Johnny Nemo, Phil Hester, Young Kafka, and Shaky Kane — under the "Prescription Strength" banner in this 1992 installment. Stan Shaw's cover art delivers a striking, unsettling composition: a massive, insectoid or armored figure looms from above, its cracked goggle-like eye dominating the image, while a smaller skeletal or masked figure below brandishes what appears to be a blade amid scattered surgical instruments. It's a wonderfully strange piece of cover design that captures the offbeat, boundary-pushing spirit that made Deadline USA such a distinctive corner of the early-'90s independent comics scene.