Shade, the Changing Man #30

Few comics from 1992 could match Shade, the Changing Man for sheer surrealist audacity, and issue #30 is a striking reminder of why. The cover — penciled and inked by Chris Bachalo — presents a deeply strange still life on a billiard table: a towering, disembodied eyeball perched atop a neck-like form, cradling a black 8-ball in pale hands, while numbered pool balls (1, 2, 3, 12) scatter across the green felt behind it, all draped against a backdrop of polka dots and geometric shapes. Subtitled "Another Life" and suggested for mature readers, this thirtieth chapter of Peter Milligan, Duncan Eagleson, and Mark Buckingham's run promises the kind of dreamlike, unsettling storytelling that made this DC series stand apart from the crowd.