Sandman #[16]

This Polish-language Vertigo collection brings Neil Gaiman's "Panie łaskawe" (The Kindly Ones) arc to Egmont Polska readers in 2007, with interior art from a rotating team including Marc Hempel and a cover by Dave McKean that is characteristically unsettling. McKean's painterly image presents a grotesque, mummy-like figure with a wide, teeth-baring grimace and wild hair, its bound, cord-wrapped form clutching a skeletal staff against a fiery amber backdrop that hints at a European street behind it. It's a brooding, atmospheric piece that perfectly captures the dreamlike dread at the heart of the Sandman universe.