House of Secrets #23

A mass of writhing, intertwined figures — pale limbs and torsos rendered in urgent ochres, reds, and burnt oranges — surges upward against a fiery background on Teddy Kristiansen's haunting cover for this DC Vertigo title. Issue #23 brings Steven T. Seagle's "Basement" arc to its conclusion with this third and final chapter, and the image of so many bodies straining and colliding carries a palpable sense of desperate momentum. A compelling closer to what has clearly been an unsettling story cycle, this 1998 Vertigo entry lives up to the series' mature-readers promise.