One of my favorite creations.

A few years ago, I created this when I had a revelation of creativity.

I’m a huge Batman fan and Harley Quinn is one of my favorite characters. I wish she would have been portrayed in one of the movies that have been made throughout the years. Her portrayal in Arkham Asylum was brilliant. But anyway, I’ve always considered Harley one of those ironic sex icons. Most of the female villains in superhero stories are ironic sex icons. They’re crazy women but you can’t help but love them and want to be like them.

I thought it would be really fun and interesting to put Harley on a Maxim cover. It actually took me awhile to find an image of Harley that would be sexy enough to put on Maxim. There’s a lot of portrayals of Harley that are sexy but none had like a high end quality look, until I found this one.

I looked up actual covers just to see how they are formatted and the type of wording the use for the article tag lines. I wanted to keep up with the batman theme so I mentioned Bruce Wayne and Poison Ivy for other articles. But I didn’t want it to be covered with the names over other character’s and I wanted it to seem like it was filled with the type of articles that would be in a Maxim issue. I know Maxim and a lot of similar magazines have countdown lists, articles that provide different tips for things so I thought up some good taglines that would resonate with the premise of the cover.

One of the covers I would looking at as an example had a sub headline for some award ceremony so I thought it would be clever to have the Gotham Awards.

But my favorite details within the cover are the issue date and issue number. I used the same date and issue number that Harley Quinn made her first actual appearance in the Batman comic books. It’s small details like that, that I really enjoy. Only passionate people who love Batman as much as I do, if not more, would notice the reference and understand it. When a design is already good and I see small details like that it makes me admire the design and designer even more. So I try to do the same things in my artwork, when I can. I hope the people that have seen this think the same of me as well.

I was hoping to have a full cover series. But I’ve lacked the time over the past few years since I’ve done this cover. Here is list of the different heros/villains and the cover’s I was going to put them on. Hopefully I’ll find the time one of these days to complete it.

Poison Ivy- Home and Garden

Bruce Wayne- Forbes

Bane- Health and Fitness

Cat Women- Cat Fancy

The Joker- Time

The Riddler-  Puzzle book.

Alfred- Good Housekeeping