As regular readers of these collected editions will know, I sketch out pretty much all of the cover roughs for this series in my notebook at the start of the creative process. Here are the last of those scribbled ideas, alongside the polished, professional finished versions by Frank Quitely.

Issue Thirteen

Back in BATMAN #428, in 1988, the Joker had famously used a crowbar to beat Jason Todd, the unlucky second Robin, to within an inch of his life before blowing him with a bomb. As is the way of comic book characters, Jason Todd eventually made it back from the dead many years later (and even made an appearance as the Red Hood in this very series), but I wanted to see the new Robin redress the balance in his own inimitable way — hence this image of a grinning, unrepentant Joker taking his skull fractures with a smile