Showcase '94 #4

Issue four of DC's twelve-part Showcase '94 anthology brings an unsettling chapter of the Arkham feature, alongside Blue Beetle and Psyba-Rats stories, all for under two dollars. Kyle Baker's cover sets a genuinely disquieting tone: a woman in a top hat and vine-patterned outfit swings a mallet down onto a caged, crouching figure numbered "10½," while a crowd of shadowy onlookers watches from the background against a smoky sunset sky. The carnival-nightmare atmosphere Baker conjures here is a fine preview of the darkly offbeat energy that Alan Grant and Tim Sale bring to "Madmen Across the Water" inside.