Hellblazer #118

Sean Phillips's painted cover for this October 1997 DC/Vertigo issue sets an unsettling, intimate tone — a figure lies in a hospital bed, draped in green, with a deeply unsettling smile on their face, while two anxious onlookers hover close and an eerie face stares out from a monitor screen above. The title "Life and Death and Taxis" promises exactly the kind of mundane-meets-macabre tension that Paul Jenkins brought to John Constantine's world throughout his run. It's a quietly gripping composition that earns its "Suggested for Mature Readers" label without resorting to spectacle.