Strange Adventures #2

The second installment of Vertigo's four-part Strange Adventures anthology delivers three science-fiction tales — from Bruce Jones & Edvin Biuković, Klaus Janson, and Colin Raff & James Romberger — that the cover tagline promises will "put the punch back in SF." Phil Hale's painted cover makes good on that claim, depicting a pale, tattooed boxer in red trunks and gloves taking a stunning blow from a ghostly, mechanically distorted opponent, while a small, gas-masked figure watches impassively from the lower corner. It's an unsettling, viscerally rendered image that perfectly captures the off-kilter, mature sensibility Vertigo was bringing to science fiction in 1999.