Hellblazer #87

John Constantine stands at the center of this unsettling March 1995 Vertigo cover — trenchcoat on, cigarette in hand, expression unreadable — while a massive coiling serpent wraps behind him and ghostly, distorted faces loom in the shadows around him. Sean Phillips's painted cover work gives the whole composition a dreamlike dread, layering Constantine's cool composure against a backdrop of genuinely creepy supernatural menace. Part three of "Warped Notions" promises the kind of occult unease that made Hellblazer essential reading, and this issue delivers that atmosphere before you've even cracked the spine.