Outsiders #3

The Joker's rictus grin dominates the cover of Outsiders #3 as he wraps his purple-gloved hands around a battered Lex Luthor, while Nightwing and a gray-skinned teammate look on with the blunt, morally charged question — "The Joker is killing Lex! Should we care?" — hanging in the air. Tom Raney and Scott Hanna's cover art perfectly captures the team's defining tension: these aren't heroes who play by comfortable rules. Written by Judd Winick, this October 2003 issue promises the kind of thorny, action-charged storytelling that set this run apart from the DC pack.