Shade, the Changing Man #14

The Fish Priests Cometh" announces itself boldly on this August 1991 entry in DC's mature-readers series, and Jamie Hewlett's cover art delivers something genuinely unsettling: Shade, his wild hair erupting in a burst of golden flame, faces a towering dark-robed figure whose hands and shoulders are crowded with grotesque, sharp-toothed fish creatures in place of heads. The painted palette of deep reds, purples, and blazing yellows gives the whole image a feverish, hallucinatory energy that perfectly captures the series' offbeat sensibility. With Peter Milligan writing and Bryan Talbot on interior art, this is the kind of beautifully strange comics package that made Shade one of DC's most distinctive titles of its era.