Midnight, Mass. #8

Vertigo's supernatural series closes out with this unsettling January 2003 entry, written by John Rozum with interior art by Jesús Saiz and inks by Jimmy Palmiotti. Tomer Hanuka's cover — rendered in murky greens and flesh tones — pulls you right into a tense confrontation: a woman is grabbed and overwhelmed by gaunt, pallid figures with monstrous expressions, feathers scattering through the air, while a snarling creature in the foreground unleashes what appears to be Hebrew script in its speech bubble, a red rotary phone lurking ominously nearby. It's a striking, atmospheric image that captures everything this mature-readers series does so well — dread, the occult, and the feeling that language itself can be a weapon.