Shade, the Changing Man #29

The cover of this November 1992 Vertigo-era DC title is a genuinely unsettling piece of work by Brendan McCarthy — a grotesquely transformed figure crouches in the foreground, skin mottled and distorted, wearing a necklace and a haunted expression, while a melting, screaming face looms on a door behind them. The whole composition is framed by a vivid collage border of neon cityscapes, mutating figures, and psychedelic imagery that crackles with the series' signature visual restlessness. With Milligan, Doran, and Pennington handling the interior story titled "The Locket," this issue sits squarely in one of DC's most adventurous creative runs of the early nineties.