Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the comics posted so far!

Today we look at the official debut of Tim Drake as Batman's regular partner in Batman #465, "Debut" by Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle and Steve Mitchell.

Enjoy!

Quickly, to give you an idea of what kind of story this one-off issue (which was the first issue of Batman to feature Tim Drake as the official sidekick to Batman. Tim had debuted in #442, and was soon named Robin, but he trained for a loooong time and did not even debut in the new costume until the #450s, at which point he did MORE training, which was captured in the hit mini-series, Robin, by Chuck Dixon and Tom Lyle) is...



So yeah, this was an issue to rejoice. I'll let Alfred's good news be a mystery to those who have not read the issue (there are two major bits of good news in this issue - that's one and the other one was revealed on the previous page, as well).

In any event, Grant, Breyfogle and Mitchell by this point in time were a well-oiled machine, cranking on top-notch comics month after month. This was no exception.

Check out this sequence of pages from early in the issue...











Besides the exemplary artwork by Breyfogle, you can see the sort of character-driven stories that Grant told, while also managing to work in a goodly portion of humor (while still keeping the book dark enough to be, you know, a Batman comic book).

This was a stand-out issue in a stand-out run (that lasted over THREE different titles, as the trio went from Detective to Batman to Shadow of the Bat).