Hellblazer #99

Sean Phillips bathes this unsettling Vertigo cover in deep blues and firelit amber, depicting a wild-eyed woman lurching forward through a darkened, bare-branched woodland while a hunched figure crouches in the shadows behind her — the whole scene framed by a ghostly spider's web. Paul Jenkins's writing and Phillips's art made Hellblazer one of the most atmospheric series DC Vertigo had to offer in 1996, and issue #99 — one step from a milestone — looks every bit as haunting as the title's reputation promises. "Punkin' Up the Great Outdoors" already sounds like the kind of wry, dark misdirection that made John Constantine's world so compulsively readable.