The Dreaming #26

Dave McKean's cover for this July 1998 Vertigo issue is a richly layered, dreamlike composition bathed in deep blues — a winged figure hovers above a kneeling, semi-transparent form, while an inverted face rests at the center beneath a dark archway ringed with cryptic script, and a hooked star dangles at the lower left like a fragment of half-remembered myth. The overall effect is unsettling and beautiful in equal measure, perfectly suited to The Dreaming's atmosphere of fluid identity and strange reverie. Writer Caitlín R. Kiernan and artist Duncan Fegredo bring their talents to "Restitution," a title that promises consequence and reckoning in the shifting landscape of the Dreaming.