Gifts of the Night #2

Part two of this four-issue Vertigo series arrives with a cover that immediately commands attention: a pale, exultant figure seated cross-legged atop a cracked globe, arms raised triumphantly, surrounded by bookshelves lined not with ordinary volumes but with the sculpted, grimacing faces of souls. John Bolton's painterly cover art bathes the whole scene in deep amber and shadow, giving it the feel of a illuminated manuscript from somewhere unsettling. Paul Chadwick and Bolton make for a compelling creative pairing on this 1999 mature-readers title, and this image alone suggests a story steeped in ancient knowledge and something far stranger lurking just beneath it.