Detective Comics #711

Batman leans forward at a high-tech console in this striking 1997 cover by Graham Nolan and Tom Palmer, his cape billowing as a wall of surveillance monitors behind him displays an unsettling gallery of Gotham's rogues — including a leering Joker and several other familiar faces. The composition perfectly captures Batman as the city's watchful detective, surveying every threat from the shadows of his command center. With Chuck Dixon writing and Graham Nolan on interior art, "Knight Out" promises the kind of grounded, tension-filled Batman storytelling that defined the character's mid-'90s era.