Sandman Mystery Theatre #19

The third chapter of "The Scorpion" arc arrives in this October 1994 installment of DC Vertigo's Sandman Mystery Theatre, with a cover by Gavin Wilson and Richard Bruning that fills the frame with an unsettling, luminous mask — mouth agape, rendered in ghostly blue and green tones that feel both theatrical and deeply menacing. A haunting fragment of prose drifts across the image — "…as the lash split open his chest… the mask, hidden away, the gun out of reach" — promising the kind of hard-edged noir atmosphere that Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle consistently deliver, with interior art by Guy Davis. With one chapter still to come, the tension is clearly at a peak.