Vermillion #10

Part two of "Lord Iron and Lady Manganese" arrives in this July 1997 installment of DC's Helix imprint, with a cover by John Totleben that draws the eye immediately to a pale, dark-haired woman in a corseted gown wearing a choker labeled "LEA HISTORY," her cool gaze confronting the viewer head-on. Behind her, set among crumbling stone archways, two figures — a woman in a red cape reaching outward and a man in black poised as if caught mid-motion — add a sense of tension and unresolved drama to the scene. With Lucius Shepard writing and Gary Erskine on art, Vermillion continues to deliver the kind of strange, atmospheric storytelling that made Helix one of 1997's more intriguing corners of comics.