Next Wednesday sees the release of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - The Last Crusade #1, a prequel to Frank Miller's classic comic The Dark Knight Returns. Re-teaming with Miller is his Daredevil: Man Without Fear partner John Romita Jr., who drew this 57-page one-shot story.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - The Last Crusade Interiors & Variant Covers 9 IMAGES

Brian Azzarello is co-writing with Miller, like they did with The Dark Knight III: The Master Race.In The Dark Knight Returns, there's passing mention of how Jason Todd's Robin was killed by the Joker. This story will unveil what happened to him and flesh out the troubled relationship between the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder. Also, we never found out precisely why Batman went into retirement, and that's another big question that gets answered.We hopped on the phone with Miller and Romita to talk about what it was like crafting a TDKR prequel, showing this version of Jason Todd, and how the Joker is something worse than insane.Also, we've got your exclusive first look at some interior pages by Romita (: one in particular is a bit graphic) as well as some variant covers, one by Miller himself. Click through the slideshow gallery below to check them out.Warning: while we don't talk about direct spoilers, Miller and Romita do talk about the story generally, so if you are spoiler sensitive, bookmark this page and come back after you've read it.

My attitude toward John is "anytime, anywhere." The guy's just too much fun to work with. The dangerous thing is, you give him an inch, he creates a mile. When we worked back on the Daredevil series, I gave him this treatment for a story, and he just kept adding to it, and it ended up being about 15 times longer than it was planned to be.[Laughs] That's actually, the words are the same: "anytime, anywhere."But interestingly enough, because Frank started out as an artist, I think he knows what to put in, what not to put in, how much room to allow. It's a comfort with an artist that becomes a writer-artist that a lot of people can't understand unless you work with somebody like that. That's the best thing about it.The two best things I've worked on in my life have been with Frank. This most recent job, it was a revelation. It just brought back all the good memories of Man Without Fear, and I still say Man Without Fear's about as good as I can get.The main thing is that implicit in Dark Knight Returns were a bunch of questions that were sort of raised, and that always means stories can be told. There was that lingering line in Dark Knight Returns where Batman just referred what happened to Jason -- when he broke the Joker's neck, he referred to Jason, and that begs what the earlier story is.Also, there was the hanging question of, why in the devil did Batman quit in the first place?They're all questions that Dark Knight raised. Any good story includes a backstory, and if the story's good enough, you want to go back and revisit it and figure out what the hell you were talking about. [Laughs]I think, after what Frank just said, that one line, "What happened to Jason?" you can grab a 57-page graphic novel out of that. That is a testament to the guy who wrote the original story.Well, Jason would naturally be very aggressive, because -- you know, Dick Grayson grew up in the shadow of Batman. Poor Jason's growing up in the shadow of Dick Grayson. This kid had a lot to prove. You'll see in my All-Star Batman how I showed Dick Grayson started out as pretty reckless and dangerous -- and Jason even more so. There's no reason he wouldn't be a touch unstable. There had to be something that made Batman quit, and I think this story could continue to answer that question.I had to use reference of previous versions. Honestly, I just took a couple of images I had seen that were sent to me, and because of reading the story, Frank and Brian's story, I just added a couple of subtleties. But there wasn't much I could do on my own, because the character had existed previously and because of what happened in Dark Knight Returns. So there's not a whole lot I could do with that visual character.But, because of what literally happens to the character, you can add to expressions and moods and themes because of that. It plays itself out, especially with the character.Now, the other stuff, the reactions from everybody around him, that's probably as good as if not better than the story of Jason himself. That's what's great about it. The whole story is brilliant.The other thing -- I found this out, also -- back when I did Elektra, there's a particularly haunting, strange thing about writing a character that you know is doomed. It gives the writer, any artist, certain advantages you otherwise wouldn't have, certain things you can foreshadow, and there are certain risks you can take. So it's a very different position to be in.There's another part of this that needs to be said about Frank's storytelling that hearkens back to both of our childhoods and watching film: the subtleties of the discretionary violence, in that you don't literally show -- you allow your imagination to run wild with what happens. You can just get a screen from a doorway that would give you nightmares. Whereas if you watch what actually happens it won't be as bad. There's some of that in this. Your imagination will run wild in what happens, but you do know what happens. That's brilliant, cinematic storytelling, and that's what you get out of this.And anything that involves Joker, you often don't want to see what's going on.[Laughs] It's true!I did a Batman/Punisher story in 1995, and the Joker was the main villain in that. So it's not the first time I've drawn the Joker in a story, but this is so much different. It's a whole different appearance of the Joker and also the connection to The Dark Knight Returns. So this is the way the Joker should be told. And the position he's put in for the visuals just allows the artist to do anything he wants. To draw Arkham Asylum inside and legitimize where he's sitting, what he's doing, is a little bit daunting, until you get to it, and then you have fun with it. I hearken back to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with a couple scenes, and that's when the imagination goes wild again. It was fun. I actually had more fun with it than I worked.You'd have to ask Frank for that one.Alan Moore and I once had about a six-hour argument about the Joker, back when he did comic books -- because he believed that the Batman and Joker were almost parallels that were separated at birth. Alan had a much more, a sort of attitude of moral relativism about what was good and what was evil. I took a much more arched view, because I believe that the Joker is not so much insane as satanic. He's evil incarnate, and he's so malicious that it goes beyond anything we could understand. That's what's so terrifying about him, is that he simply wants to do as much harm and damage as he possibly can.And the answer to your question, as far as visuals go, is to manifest that. You allude to the camp of Caesar Romero and Jack Nicholson, and then you draw a satanic character that's the truth. You put him in positions in Arkham and getting out of Arkham, and you do the opposite of what the cliche would be -- and that makes him even more terrifying. Then you don't see the horrors until you know the horrors. This is just brilliant storytelling. So the argument that Frank had with Alan, it allowed this to happen. It allowed Dark Knight Returns to happen and this version of the Joker. It's not campy in any way; it is evil incarnate, and that's how you come up with a visual. You go from there, you don't go from the camp.Yeah, if I had to cast the Joker from Dark Knight, I probably would have used David Bowie, who I think was capable of great menace.Actually, the reference that -- the White Duke, is that the reference you threw at me? It was beautiful.Well, it made for a good argument between me and Alan. You know, someone who is completely and absolutely insane wouldn't be as effective, if you ask me. I believe that people who are absolutely crazy, with very rare exceptions, don't get very far in life. They do kill people and so on -- I mean, there are people who are absolutely malevolent and insane but somehow capable of uncanny evil, obviously Hitler, Joseph Stalin, like that. But they are exceedingly rare, and usually the crazy ones get caught. But the truly evil ones can go on for a long time.I'm much more involved. The whole thing is implicit in the first Dark Knight, and we're just expanding upon that. So it's much more involved.No tricks. We're trying to scare the pants off you.It's a brilliant story, and it's printed differently and produced differently than normal. And it is a chilling ending, if you want to call it that, but it doesn't end, because it leads to Dark Knight Returns.John, here's a lesson about craft: It never ends.[Laughs] Alright! Well said. Here, here. Bravo. All that stuff.

Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN