Sandman Mystery Theatre #65

A cracked, wide-eyed porcelain doll streaked with blood dominates this deeply unsettling 1998 Vertigo cover, with ghostly children's faces fading into the shadows behind it — the kind of image that lingers long after you set the issue down. The rhyme printed across its chest — "Little Molly Dropped Her Dolly… Lost Her Life In Monstrous Folly…" — sets a dark, nursery-rhyme tone perfectly suited to "The Goblin," the opening chapter of a four-part arc by writer Steven T. Seagle and artist Guy Davis. The cover photography and design by Gavin Wilson and Richard Bruning makes this installment of Sandman Mystery Theatre feel less like a comic and more like a found artifact from something genuinely sinister.