The Books of Magic #44

MW Kaluta's cover for this 1998 Vertigo issue is a haunting, dreamlike composition — a bespectacled young boy sprawls across a sea of scattered books in the foreground, while above him a chaotic tangle of fantastical creatures, including a winged figure brandishing a staff, tumbles atop an avalanche of towering, toppling book stacks. It's a wonderfully strange image that captures the series' spirit of knowledge, peril, and the uncanny all at once. Written by John Ney Rieber with art by Peter Gross, this "Slave of Heavens Prologue" promises another deeply imaginative chapter in Tim Hunter's ongoing magical journey.