Sandman #69

Dave McKean's haunting painted cover for this July 1995 DC/Vertigo issue presents a striking, ash-pale figure with hands pressed to its head, wisps of smoke or dream-stuff curling upward from dark, clawed fingertips against a backdrop of scorched and decayed textures. The image carries a palpable weight of anguish and dissolution, perfectly suited to the thirteenth chapter of "The Kindly Ones." Neil Gaiman and Marc Hempel bring this penultimate arc of the celebrated series to a point where the cover alone makes clear that something of tremendous consequence is at hand.