The Dreaming #48

The cover of this May 2000 Vertigo issue tells its own quietly unsettling story: a close-up rabbit — innocent and wide-eyed above a torn horizon line — is paired below with a bloodied knife and darkly rendered claws, the sweet and the sinister split neatly in two by Dave McKean's painterly cover art. That juxtaposition of childhood comfort and creeping dread feels perfectly suited to a story called "Scary Monsters," suggesting the series is in fine, strange form here. With Caitlín R. Kiernan writing and Christian Højgaard on interior art, this late run of The Dreaming continues to deliver the moody, mature storytelling Vertigo fans came to love.