The Books of Magic #31

This 1996 Vertigo entry in John Ney Rieber and Peter Snejbjerg's ongoing run brings "Rites of Passage" to its fifth chapter, and Michael Wm. Kaluta's cover sets a suitably dreamlike and unsettling tone. Young Tim Hunter — red shirt, round glasses — is swept along by a rushing current, surrounded on all sides by pale, ethereal figures with wild hair who seem to emerge from the water itself, their grasping hands and watchful faces framing him in eerie intimacy. It's a beautifully rendered image that captures the sense of a boy caught between worlds, pulled along by forces far older and stranger than himself.