Hellblazer #5

Early Hellblazer had a visual ambition all its own, and Dave McKean's cover for issue #5 makes that plain. A ghostly close-up of Constantine's face fills the left side, while an orange-smoke hellscape behind him reveals helmeted soldiers marching beneath military helicopters — and a massive shadowy hand reaching down from above as if claiming them all. With Jamie Delano writing and John Ridgway on interior art, this May 1988 issue — "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" — promises the kind of war-haunted, supernatural dread that made this series essential reading for mature audiences.