Swamp Thing Annual #7

Part of DC/Vertigo's 1993 "Children's Crusade" crossover event, this oversized annual pairs Nancy Collins's writing with Mark Buckingham's interior art for "A Child's Garden Revisited." Charles Vess's cover sets a wonderfully unsettling fairy-tale mood: a crowned figure in robes looms over small children clutching a candle in a forest clearing scattered with candy canes and strange orange creatures, while a dark castle rises through the trees and two massive, monstrous figures hang suspended at the edges of the composition like grim sentinels. It's the kind of cover that promises something both enchanting and genuinely eerie — Vertigo at its atmospheric best.