The Books of Magic #3

The third chapter of "Bindings" arrives with a painted cover by Charles Vess that's genuinely hard to look away from — a wide-eyed, bespectacled young Tim Hunter sits perched atop what appears to be a great beast, clutching scattered magical cards to his chest with an expression caught somewhere between wonder and dread. A second bespectacled figure peers up from the lower corner, while a misty, stone-dotted landscape recedes behind them, lending the whole image an atmosphere of uneasy enchantment. With John Ney Rieber writing and Gary Amaro and Peter Gross handling interiors, this 1994 DC/Vertigo installment looks every bit as atmospheric and unsettling as the series deserves.