Comics need jumping-on points. There’s a certain difficulty in attempting to get someone to join in on reading some characters and series when they only have a general idea of who that person is or what their story entails. It’s why DC’s long-running Year One stories have ended up filling that niche for new fans to jump into the universe without having to learn too much of the lore. This first began in the 80s with Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One and continues to just this last month with Mark Waid, Chris Samnee, Matheus Lopes, and Clayton Cowles’ Batman & Robin: Year One.

Batman & Robin: Year One picks up not too long after the murder of Dick Grayon’s parents and when Bruce Wayne takes him in as his ward. The story itself knows that you know that aspect of the story—those general ideas—but then gives you a bit more of their home life before throwing you into the action. Dick isn’t only the plucky, acrobatic sidekick as he’s learning criminology to become just as much a detective as Batman. And for his first real case as the pair race to the heart of Gotham when the Bat-Signal comes on, he comes into something strange. Two-Face has stolen a file from GCPD. But it’s a single file. This doesn’t fit in with Dent’s normal patterns of taking at least two of everything. Even when confronted with that fact, he has no other excuse other than something coming that makes him drop all pretense of a gimmick.

More than anything, Samnee’s line work sells so much of the action and emotion on the page that you forget this isn’t a deluxe hardcover classic you’ve just pulled from your shelf. The storytelling in the art throughout feels like it’s just as timeless as the story’s script. Take a time machine and slot this into DC’s release schedule in nearly any era and it’ll feel like it belongs. And that’s what a great introductory story should do and we’re seeing it all unfold in just the first issue. Between Waid, Samnee, Lopes, and Cowles, it feels like we’re seeing the way monthly superhero comics should be done and the kind of care that comes from a team dedicated to doing something so well. This is the kind of story you want to bring to friends who know nothing about superhero comics to show them why they’ve remained so popular.

Even at its opening, Batman & Robin: Year One is going to be a series that will be remembered for how it treated the characters and world it inhabits. It shows us the origins of a character relationship we’ve been watching for eighty four years and makes it feel just as fresh as it did in Detective Comics #38. Because that’s what a good introduction should do—it should make the reader feel like they’ve known these characters forever, even if that’s their first time reading. 

Get excited. Get started.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.