I finished “Avengers Retreat!” and of course I shared it everywhere I could think of; Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Except Facebook isn’t just posting to your own page and there are a few groups that focus on sketch covers. Naturally, I posted to them too.

And through one of them I met the person who would become the patron of these little characters and would have more mini character sketch covers than anyone else!

He reached out and told me he liked what I’d done with the Avengers, and could I do the same with Batman? I’ll be completely honest, after how much I’d struggled with how to fit all those characters onto the last book cover, I was worried I couldn’t do it again. I came very close to saying “no, I can’t do that again.”

I’m glad I didn’t. I did, however, tell him I didn’t know how many I could fit. He was okay with that, so long as I got in some of the Bat Family and the major Rogues.

I sat down and started making a list, which has become part of the process now. I write down everyone I can think of that I want to get down on paper if I’m able to. Then comes research, reading up on the characters, going through their various costume designs over the years. Some I liked newer designs and some older, except it wouldn’t make sense having characters from different eras on the same cover… unless I created a backstory in which they did.

The client, who’s become a friend the last couple years, asked if I could set the cover around Arkham Asylum, maybe a break out or something.

It hit me: what if some mysterious force had pulled members of the Bat Family from various Earths and timelines to the one moment to stop this breakout?

Stopping an Arkham breakout of the worst of the worst Gotham has to offer would certainly be a good thing, right? Turns out it wasn’t and I knew who was behind it. If you want to know too, you’ll have to finish reading all the parts of the Mini Journey series of posts!

I had my set-up. The two characters facing off in the middle would be classic purple suit Joker with Joker Fish in hand versus classic blue suit Batman. I laid out the background in the tradition of a side-scrolling fighting game like Street Fighter or King of Fighters and tried to see how many of those characters from my list that I could fit. I needed to make sure enough was visible to identify them. I didn’t want people unable to figure out who they were, unless it was because they didn’t know them. Even if I could only fit in a character’s head and an arm because they were too big (I’m looking at you Killer Croc and Mister Bloom).

I managed to fit in roughly 22 characters and a handful of Easter Eggs hidden throughout the cover. And I made it look like The Batman Who Laughs was the villain behind the break out.

That’s what you were thinking, right?

You’ll have to stick around for the next parts to find out for sure!

Take care, folks!

Fox