Hellblazer #184

John Constantine holds a Joker playing card bearing his own devil-horned likeness — cigarette dangling from his lips, a shadowy figure lurking just behind him — while a massive skull with a butterfly pinned to its forehead looms in the foreground, framed by a split backdrop of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. Tim Bradstreet's cover for this July 2003 issue captures the series' signature mood perfectly: fate, danger, and dark wit compressed into a single unsettling image. Writer Mike Carey and artist Marcelo Frusin kick off "Third Worlds" with "The Wild Card," and the cover makes a compelling case that the deck is already stacked against Constantine.