Shade, the Changing Man #21

The subtitle "A Shade of His Former Self" says it all — this March 1992 installment of DC's mature-readers series pairs a surreal, dreamlike cover with Peter Milligan's offbeat storytelling sensibilities. Jamie Hewlett's cover art frames a wild American road-trip scene: a convertible carrying several eclectic passengers — including a spiky orange-haired figure and a grinning character in a cowboy hat — cruises through a desert landscape while a looming, green-tinged apparition of Shade himself peers down from above, buckled into his flower-adorned costume with an unsettling wide smile. It's a perfectly disorienting image that captures everything this series does so well, with Chris Bachalo and Mark Pennington bringing their distinctive energy to the interior pages.