Hellblazer #183

Lee Bermejo's interior work on "Black Flowers Part Two" meets Tim Bradstreet's quietly unsettling cover art — a triptych composition that sets a distinctly European, gothic tone. Above, dark hooded figures rise against a blood-red sky hung with shepherd's crooks; in the middle panel, a brooding man's close-cropped face looms beside a somber manor house stripped bare by winter trees; below, a dark-haired woman grips a knife behind iron gates, her expression unreadable and charged with tension. Mike Carey's run on Hellblazer had a knack for grounding the supernatural in deeply human dread, and this 2003 Vertigo issue wears that quality right on its sleeve.