Hellblazer #185

Marcelo Frusin handles interior art while Tim Bradstreet's cover for issue #185 lays out a quietly unsettling collage of faces and fragments — a young woman with piercing blue eyes at the top, a grotesquely bloodshot eye dominating the center, a hooded robed figure clutching what appears to be a wooden cross or stake, a small bird skull, and John Constantine himself off to the side, cigarette in hand and looking characteristically unimpressed. Part two of "Third Worlds: Ordeal," written by Mike Carey, this 2003 Vertigo entry maintains the series' mature, atmospheric tension in every carefully composed panel of that cover. If you're following this arc, the imagery alone promises the kind of dread-soaked storytelling Hellblazer does so well.