Shade, the Changing Man #36

This Vertigo gem from June 1993 opens "The Passion Child" arc with one of the series' most quietly unsettling covers — two figures in matching wild, circle-patterned coats stand with their backs to us on a checkerboard floor, an ornate dagger tucked against the larger figure's back, while smaller echoes of the same pair recede into a hazy pink distance. Collaged newspaper text defining words like "passion," "hate," and "fury" frames the scene, giving the whole image a dreamlike, cut-and-paste unease that perfectly captures the tone Peter Milligan brings to the title. Chris Bachalo's cover art — simultaneously surreal and intimate — makes this one of those issues you'd stop and stare at in a spinner rack.