The Books of Magic #17

Part three of "Playgrounds" arrives in this October 1995 Vertigo entry, and Greg Spalenka's painted cover sets an unsettling, dreamlike tone that feels wholly earned. A bespectacled young boy — unmistakably Tim Hunter — stands at the center of a crowded, hellish tableau, loomed over by a pale, hulking giant and surrounded by a menagerie of strange figures: a robed creature clutching a flask, a masked figure to the right, a canine shape, and burning, flame-edged darkness pressing in from all sides. John Ney Rieber and Peter Snejbjerg continue their run on this DC/Vertigo series, and this cover promises the kind of off-kilter, mythic unease that makes The Books of Magic such a distinctive corner of the 1995 Vertigo lineup.