Eric Canete’s ‘Arkham Manor’ Cover Is Mind-Blowingly Rad

Listen, all you had to do to get me excited about Gerry Duggan and Shawn Crystal's upcoming Arkham Manor was tell me exactly what it's about. The idea of housing all of Gotham City's most notorious arch-criminals right there in Batman's ancestral home is completely bonkers and incredibly intriguing, and I am exactly the kind of person who is going to be stoked for that from day one.

If, however, there was anything that could get me more excited, it's seeing an amazing variant cover for the first issue by illustrator, animation artist and comic book storyteller Eric Canete. It's a phenomenal image, and while the issue won't be out until next month, Canete took to Twitter to post not only the cover, but his whole process from start to finish.

For starters, here's the rough image that was sent to editor Mark Doyle:

Canete describes the image as "chaotic," and he's not wrong, but it gets the general idea across pretty well: Lots of bad guys gettin' handsy with the Dark Knight. From there, he transferred the image to a larger format...

But rather than inking, he went straight to rendering the image using Copic markers:

And finally added color for the finished cover image:

For more detail and Canete commentary (Canetetary), check out Canete's Twitter and Tumblr. Arkham Manor #1 will be released from DC Comics on October 22.