Swamp Thing #26

This Vertigo entry from June 2006 presents one of the more unsettling cover images in the series' run: a towering, rage-faced Swamp Thing looms out of a darkened forest, his bark-textured form filling the frame as glowing red eyes burn with furious intensity. Clutched before him is a luminous human skull — a grim punctuation mark to the story inside, titled "Burying the Bones" — rendered here in a beautifully moody painted style by cover artist Eric Powell. Writer Joshua Dysart and artist Jock bring their mature-readers sensibility to this Vertigo chapter, and Powell's cover sets a tone that's equal parts primordial dread and haunted melancholy.