Hunter: The Age of Magic #3

John Bolton's painted-style cover for this Vertigo series is a striking blend of the mundane and the monstrous — two young people, a woman in a white dress and a bespectacled young man in a dark t-shirt, stand on rocky ground confronting a massive, spiky-scaled dragon whose enormous head looms directly over them. The contrast between the ordinary-looking duo and the ferocious creature coiling above them captures exactly the kind of grounded-yet-fantastical tone Dylan Horrocks and Richard Case bring to this series. "The Lake of Fire Part Three: The White School" promises the kind of Vertigo magic-steeped storytelling that made 2001 a rich time for mature readers craving something genuinely strange.