Shade, the Changing Man #16

The surrealist energy of Peter Milligan and Chris Bachalo's run crackles right off this Jamie Hewlett cover, where a wild-haired, long-coated Shade strides forward wearing his bizarre M-Vest, cigarette dangling from his lip, while a skeletal top-hatted figure lurks below clutching a large ornate clock and oversized playing cards scatter through the air around him. The story title "How the Vest Was One" promises that the Vest itself — that strange, reality-warping garment — is front and center in this October 1991 issue. Mature-readers DC comics don't get much more inventively weird than this.