The Books of Magic #36

Part ten of "Rites of Passage" arrives with a cover by Michael Wm. Kaluta that carries a quietly haunting mood — a dark-suited boy sits hunched and contemplative against a gnarled tree, while scattered around him on the ground lie tumbled toy-like figures and a broken red contraption, all rendered in Kaluta's delicate, watercolor-tinged linework. The dreamlike landscape of pale hills and skeletal branches gives the scene a melancholy fairy-tale weight that feels entirely at home in DC's Vertigo line. John Ney Rieber and Peter Snejbjerg continue their extended arc here, and this cover alone suggests the emotional stakes of the story are running deep.