Even with this large amount of comic books that have been collected in trade paperbacks, there are still a number of great comic books that have never been reprinted (I'd say roughly 60% of them are DC Comics from the 1980s through the mid-1990s). So every day this month I will spotlight a different cool comic book that is only available as a back issue. Here is an archive of the comic books featured so far.

I want you folks to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com with your suggestions for comics that I should feature this month. I'd like to see what you all would like to see get more attention.

Reader Jill S. wanted me to spotlight the bizarrely unreprinted Birds of Prey #8, where Babrara Gordon and Dick Grayson go out on a date together. Written by Chuck Dixon and drawn by Greg Land and Drew Geraci, this was a fun issue.

It certainly helps that the writer of Birds of Prey was also the guy writing Nightwing, so he could do some notable stuff with Dick without worrying about messing up the plans of that Dixon guy over on Nightwing.

The book is all about Dick and Barbara getting together for a date (a non-date date, of course)...

What a striking sequence. First with the well-executed transition from their date to the "bomb" and then with the Joker bit and the realization that it was a joke, all capped by a nice, happy caption.

Drew Geraci is a wonderful inker and he did a bang-up job inking Greg Land on this issue.

This issue is filled with great character moments. Here's another one...

This eventually leads into the key exchange of the book...

and then THE scene of the book...

You really should pick up the book to see what else happens out there on the trapezees. Also, the framing sequence of the story is notable in the development of the relationship between Oracle and Black Canary.

This is just a really well-developed, well-designed comic book by Chuck Dixon that managed to feel filled with action even though there is nary a villain in the book. Land and Geraci did a good job on the artwork.

This story really should be collected. The single issue sells for over FIFTY dollars on eBay!!! I'm sure DC can find a DC Comics Presents where they could fit this one in!