Kid Eternity #16

Sean Phillips's cover for this 1994 DC/Vertigo entry sets an immediately unsettling tone: a young figure in a blue shirt and red-tinted glasses lies sprawled across a dark, mounded earth beneath a blazing crimson sky, surrounded by cemetery monuments — an angel statue, stone crosses, and a grave marker bearing the creators' names. The mood is atmospheric and deeply strange, the kind of image that makes you linger before turning the first page. Ann Nocenti and Phillips were crafting some genuinely bold work in this mature-readers series, and issue #16, "The Zone," looks to be no exception.