Shade, the Changing Man #68

By 1996, Peter Milligan and Richard Case's Shade, the Changing Man had become one of DC Vertigo's most compellingly strange ongoing series, and issue #68 opens a new chapter with "After Kathy, Part One: The Living and the Dead." Duncan Fegredo's cover sets a haunting, introspective tone: Shade reclines in an overstuffed armchair amid a chaotic tangle of gears, clocks, a dangling pocket watch, and surreal machinery, his wild red hair framing a weary, closed-eyed expression as he holds a book ablaze with golden flame. The whole image feels like a man suspended between worlds — contemplative yet surrounded by the wreckage of something much larger — which is exactly the kind of mood this series does so well.