Vermillion #4

Part four of "Starlight Drive" arrives in January 1997 under DC's Helix imprint, and Mike Kaluta's cover sets a genuinely unsettling tone — a long-haired figure hangs suspended, clutching a glowing light source while surrounded on all sides by panels crawling with pale, unearthly creatures in various menacing poses. The eerie green atmosphere and that central dangling figure give the whole composition a dreamlike, slightly vertiginous quality that feels perfectly suited to this mature-readers series. With Lucius Shepard writing and Al Davison on interior art, Vermillion #4 looks like exactly the kind of strange, ambitious genre work Helix was built for.