Nightwing #16

Part of the Batman crossover event "Death of the Family," this 2013 New 52 issue delivers a genuinely unsettling cover by Eddy Barrows and Eber Ferreira: Nightwing lunges forward through driving rain, wearing the Joker's horrifying grinning face as a mask, with a burning amusement park blazing behind him. The juxtaposition of Dick Grayson's acrobatic grace with that sinister visage is deeply wrong in all the right ways. Writer Kyle Higgins brings Nightwing into the heart of the Joker's twisted game, and the stage — a rain-soaked, fire-lit carnival in ruins — couldn't feel more personal for a man who grew up under the big top.