Shade, the Changing Man #43

Subtitled "Invitation to a Hanging," this January 1994 installment of DC/Vertigo's Shade, the Changing Man arrives with one of the series' most unsettling covers: Duncan Fegredo paints two distressed figures — one tangled near an ominous noose hanging from a bare, skeletal tree, the other recoiling in horror against a bruised purple sky — capturing the raw psychological tension that made this Vertigo title so compelling. The patterned coat marks Shade himself, caught in yet another collision between madness and reality that Peter Milligan, Chris Bachalo, and their collaborators deliver inside. A striking chapter in a run that consistently pushed the boundaries of mature-readers storytelling in 1994.