Starman #19

Tony Harris's painted cover for Starman #19 sets an eerie, atmospheric scene aboard a tall ship shrouded in mist, where a colorful pirate-garbed figure grips the ship's wheel while a goggled, more modern-looking companion stands close by — all of it overshadowed by a looming crew of skeletal, undead sailors rising from the fog behind them. The stark contrast between the vivid, living figures in the foreground and the ghastly grey apparitions at their backs gives the image a genuinely unsettling pull. James Robinson, Harris, and Wade von Grawbadger were delivering some of DC's most inventive work in 1996, and this issue — subtitled "Talking with David '96" — looks to be no exception.