Hellblazer #11

This 1988 issue of Hellblazer carries one of the most unsettling covers of the year — Dave McKean's painted artwork conjures a ghostly, luminous face dissolving into shadow above a cracked, scrawl-covered surface, while a battered doll and a pale, reaching hand lie broken in the foreground. The word "Newcastle" drifts across the image like a half-remembered nightmare, setting a tone of dread and grief that feels deeply personal to John Constantine. Jamie Delano's script, brought to life by Richard Piers Rayner and inker Mark Buckingham, promises the kind of occult horror that made this series essential reading for mature-audience comics in its time.