Preacher #23

The penultimate chapter of the "Crusaders" arc arrives in March 1997 with Glenn Fabry's cover delivering something genuinely unsettling: a demonic, blue-skinned creature with fanged jaws lunges down toward a struggling human figure, both engulfed in a roiling hellscape of fire and flame. The raw physicality of the composition — all grasping claws and contorted desperation — sets an appropriately intense tone for part five of six in Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's acclaimed Vertigo series. If the arc has been building toward something, this cover makes clear the reckoning is close at hand.