Batman: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (1990)

Dave McKean's art for Grant Morrison's 1989 Batman graphic novel mixes paint, photography, collage and found textures into a haunted-house book where nothing is quite solid. Batman is mostly a silhouette, the Joker barely holds a human shape, and the asylum's rooms dissolve into stains, symbols and scraps. It is a book to look at for its surfaces, the way you would study a mixed-media canvas. The story leans heavily on symbolism and is easier to admire than to follow on a first read; some panels are dark enough that the action is hard to make out, by design. The anniversary editions that include Morrison's annotated script help with both.