Pendant Preview: Batman: The Ace of Detectives, Issue 27!

This is non-spoilery, so no one needs to worry about the Assassins. Just thought I'd show you my first couple of sketches for the Batman 27 cover—the final cover, by the way, looks nothing like these. My first thought for the cover, since it is essentially the end of this story arc, was to show various scenes and/or characters from the past episodes. Thus, we begin with this:


A GCPD badge and a spent shell casing; a small grouping of Harley (my first attempt at her), Riddler, and Mr. J; and a rather odd-looking Dr. Hugo Strange.

I thought M. Siero Garcia, the voice behind GCPD Detective Renee Montoya, might like this sketch of Montoya I did in anticipation of a "flashback" sort of cover. In my humble opinion, it looks a heck of a lot better than the Montoya who appeared on my Batman 25 cover—but that's just me.


And finally, the last sketch before I got my new idea—a scene from what I believe was episode 5 of TAOD: Harley, Riddler, and Joker standing around just after Riddler put the ol' lead to Misty's boyfriend Bill Vogel. Catwoman's peeking in through the window there. There's nothing I really like about this particular piece—it's my second attempt at Harley, and she looks half-decent. Joker looks old, Riddler just looks...no...and this marks my first attempt at Catwoman, which is just all right, in my opinion.


I meant for there to be a blood spatter on the wall under the window. That would've been taken care of with a custom Photoshop brush from a DeviantArt user. I would've added a little smoke from the gun there as well.

So there you go. Those are bits from my first few cover attempts on Batman 27. The final product, which I have finished and sent off to Jeffrey for full Pendantization, will be made available here, Pendant's site, my personal journal, and my DeviantArt account on Wednesday.