Hellblazer #178

Hellblazer #178 opens the second chapter of Mike Carey and Marcelo Frusin's "Red Sepulchre" arc under the Vertigo banner, with a brooding Tim Bradstreet cover that sets an unmistakably foreboding tone. John Constantine sits hunched and weary at the bottom of the image, surrounded above him by scattered bones and a small animal skeleton suspended within a mystic circle — while to his right, the tarot card of The Magician looms as an ominous counterpoint. It's a quietly unsettling composition that captures everything compelling about Constantine's world: occult symbolism, fragile humanity, and the sense that the cards — literally and figuratively — are already in play.