BAD ZOMBIE! BAD!!!
I have a new “most money paid for a comic”. Picked up a copy of Uncanny X-Men #126 for $80.
Um... $80?
Have you considered ordering comics online? Because considering the money you've been spending lately, it sounds like you could easily order enough at a time to qualify for free shipping, and get good prices.
I have two "go to" places for old comics. One is MyComicShop. I don't know how good a condition you expect your comics to be in, but let's say you wanted X-Men #126. As you can see here, you could have gotten it in Good condition for $10.75, or Very Fine 8.0 for $60.
The other is Mile High Comics. If you subscribe to Chuck Rozanski's newsletter there, you'll usually get a discount code, typically worth 50% off. The discount is 50% at the moment. Furthermore, Rozanski has lately been intentionally "downgrading" comics, so you might get your books in better condition than advertised. So if you look here, for instance, you'll see that you could have gotten 126 in Good condition for $95 - really $47.50 - or in Very Fine condition for $159 - really $79.50.
Well, I haven't stayed up to date with any comic in over 20 years, but I enjoyed reading Superman: Son of Kal-El, or rather, the 3 trade paperbacks that reprinted it. I've been very much interested in watching Jon Kent grow up, ever since his infancy, and now... well... he HAS grown up! He's developed his own ideas of how to be a hero, somewhat different from his father's.
Mind you, I didn't like the business of his homosexual relationship. DC didn't have to make Jon bisexual to make him look like a different character from his father. And besides, I disliked Jay Nakamura; even given Jon's bisexuality, I still think he could have done better.
But despite that, I found it a decent story, well worth reading (for free at the library, anyway).
Jon Kent is a great Superman. And while, yes, Jay is a kind of annoying...I think it gives Jon his own impetus to be more...empathic than even his father might be. (Not saying Clark isn't! He's freaking SUPERMAN. but still!!)
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I was reading Uncanny X-Men #161 yesterday. It’s the issue that introduced Gabrielle Haller. It reminded me that, at one point in time, Charles Xavier was a Korean War veteran. I don’t know if that still the case.
Also, seeing Magneto and Xavier fight Hydra was cool. It’s too bad the MCU made Strucker a joke. Might have been cool to see a comics accurate version. Another missed opportunity. Not the first. Won’t be the last.
Heh. It's funny that just last week on this thread I was talking about watching Jon Kent grow up... but the comics kind of copped out by abruptly giving us a Jon Kent several years older, by saying that he had spent time on another world where time passed at a different rate. It made me think of Uncanny X-Men #160 which you just got, coincidentally.
And yeah, it had only been a few issues earlier - #150 - when the series gave us the background to make Magneto a sympathetic character, and issue 161 is what cemented that sympathy in my mind. I was reading my friend's copies of that stuff back in the 1990s and I was fortunate enough, when browsing in a comic book store in those days, to find an affordable issue of X-Men Archives that reprinted 161. I have it still.
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Oooh….that was a bit more expensive visit than I thought it would be.
I got my copy of X-Men #94, that first Claremont issue. Then I couldn’t resist - also picked up copies of X-Men 132 - 134, 137 -139, and the one shot crossover with X-Men and New Teen Titans.
That last was thanks to Walt Simonson, who had posted about it just the other day.
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Oooh….that was a bit more expensive visit than I thought it would be.
I got my copy of X-Men #94, that first Claremont issue. Then I couldn’t resist - also picked up copies of X-Men 132 - 134, 137 -139, and the one shot crossover with X-Men and New Teen Titans.
That last was thanks to Walt Simonson, who had posted about it just the other day.
I loved that X-Men / Teen Titans crossover! Just neat all around, and a fun read.
Best Marvel/DC crossover along with the JLA / Avengers thing (by Busiek & Perez, IIRC).
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Then I couldn’t resist - also picked up copies of X-Men 132 - 134, 137 -139, and the one shot crossover with X-Men and New Teen Titans.
I was a big Teen Titans fan back in the 1980s. I collected over 100 issues (if you include related titles) at a time when I had never collected more than 4 issues of any other title. It would be roughly a decade before I got that deeply into any comic book series again.
Then in the 1990s, I used to go to a friend's house and read his X-Men comics. That was when I had the chance to read the X-Men / Teen Titans crossover. It had some good moments, but I didn't think it a highlight of either title.
But even some people who hate X-Men have told me that they took exception to the Dark Phoenix saga.
And it's funny that you got 139. Back in the 20th century, I took an interest in Alpha Flight (for reasons that had nothing to do with X-Men) and got a few issues, including #1. And to read X-Men at home, I got a few "Essential" volumes (the black-and-white reprints). Just a few months ago, I felt my interest in Alpha Flight return, so I re-read its first appearances in X-Men 109, 120, 121, 139, and 140, and finally my coveted copy of Alpha Flight #1.
Hungry for more, I wrote up a wish list of Alpha Flight issues (and also Iron Man issues, but that's another story). At first, I planned to order only a few issues from Mile High Comics, but then I realized I wouldn't be content with only a few. If I had to pay for shipping, I should take better advantage of that and get more issues that I knew I would want. And the total came so high that - with great reluctance - I gave up on the idea and decided to content myself instead with getting a certain old prose novel from ThriftBooks, and with a certain computer game, the two cheapest things on my wish list at the time.
I tell you, it's not easy being a cheapskate when budgeting for entertainment. I (sort of) envy your drive to collect.
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I tell you, it's not easy being a cheapskate when budgeting for entertainment. I (sort of) envy your drive to collect.
My collecting of older stuff is very recent (within the last few years). It started because I was buying less and less of new books (because I think many of them suck), but still wanted new (to me) stuff to read.
At the same time, I had been bagging and boarding my entire collection, and realized I had some gaps. These gaps were singing to me……fill us, fill us
So, that’s how this started. Me filling in gaps. Now I’m expanding beyond those gaps, to stuff from before I started collecting.
Oooh….that was a bit more expensive visit than I thought it would be.
I got my copy of X-Men #94, that first Claremont issue. Then I couldn’t resist - also picked up copies of X-Men 132 - 134, 137 -139, and the one shot crossover with X-Men and New Teen Titans.
That last was thanks to Walt Simonson, who had posted about it just the other day.
No lie I have maybe 3 - 4 different copies of that X-MEN / TEEN TITANS crossover which next to Busiek/Perez JLA/AVENGERS is the best DC/Marvel crossover ever.
I know one of my copies is signed by Simonson and Terry Austin.
I think one is just signed by Chris Claremont. Either that or he's signed the one with Simonson and Austin.
I know (Hope?) one is just a virgin copy.
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I was reading through two of my recently purchased X-Men back issues yesterday, #’s 138 and 139 to be precise. They seemed familiar, but I knew I hadn’t already bought them. So I checked some trade paperback collections I have.
Sure enough, they were included in a “Days of Future Past” collection. Presumably, they needed some filler material to make the collection a bit bigger, even if they were tangentially connected. Kitty Pryde centric stuff fit the bill, I suppose.
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Since I wasn’t feeling well and skipped the comic book store last week, I figured I was due some back issue goodness.
And I was not disappointed.
Picked up a bunch of stuff on my list.
Uncanny X-Men #140
Batman #’s 301 -306 and 497
aaaannnddd……
Detective Comics #’s 441 & 442 - containing two parts of Goodwin and Simonson’s epic Manhunter story!!!
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On top of all that…..
As I was perusing the back issues, the chick who works there came up to me with a list. They’d recently made a big purchase and wanted to give good customers first pick.
So now I’ll have Uncanny X-Men #141 waiting for me, along with….
Wolverine #1, which I’ve been hoping to acquire for quite a few years now. That’ll cost a bit, but not as much as my purchase from two weeks ago.
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So….turns out not only did they have Wolverine #1 (the ‘82 limited series, not the original ongoing series), they had the other three issues as well. So now I have the entire limited series!
Huzzah!!!!
And, of course, they had my copy of Uncanny #141, part one of the classic Days of Future Past. Sweet.
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So….turns out not only did they have Wolverine #1 (the ‘82 limited series, not the original ongoing series), they had the other three issues as well.
Oh! When you mentioned Wolverine #1 a week ago I assumed you meant the ongoing series.
Yeah, I have a trade paperback reprinting that 4-isssue 1982 series. When Wolvie first joined the X-Men, he just seemed a cantankerous berserker psycho-killer, with no more depth or complexity to him than that. But someone who's been around as much as he has, with as many years of experience as he has, could become many, many things, including a Samurai.
Yeah, I do think Wolverine is one of the more interesting X-Men characters... but not nearly interesting enough to deserve the hype and popularity he got! What with all that overexposure, I sometimes grow tired of him and feel greater interest in Professor X, the Beast, and maybe Cyclops.
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I was just thinking about a comic book feature you don’t see as much of as used to - what I call “the history lessons”. Maybe they had an official name, but old man brain doesn’t remember (though I’m sure some “all-knowing” kid out there might). Those little reminders a past event occurred in previously published issue, either of that comic or another. They still make appearances, but rarely it seems.
My first theory is most editors and writers just don’t know the history of the books they work on. I certainly see that as a possibility, but with a heavy dose of “it depends”. There are certainly some writers out there I know have the knowledge (Mark Waid comes to mind). I’m sure there are also some editors with that same knowledge.
Which leads to my second theory - they don’t care. Maybe they see
it as too much bother to research and put in. Or maybe whatever business model they follow thinks it’s not very cost/beneficial.
Anyway it’s something I was thinking about this morning. Not even sure why.
Picked up some more Batman issues. This time I got #'s 309-312 and 314-316.
Yeah, I read "A Caper a Day Keeps the Batman at Bay" from Batman #312, because I have the trade paperback The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told. That issue is obviously what inspired you to write your Calendar Man post in your Did you know...? thread.
I'm afraid I didn't find that story impressive. I was fine with gimmicky stories like that when I was a kid. (Even now, I guess that childish approach can sometimes work surprisingly well in some comics, like some Legion of Super-Heroes stories.) But even by 1979 (when Batman #312 came out) a lot of people at DC were waking up to the fact that comic-book readers were getting older and looking for more serious stories. And Batman strikes me as the prime example of a character that needed more serious treatment. Once I discovered the grim-and-gritty Batman, I found that the gimmicks didn't sit as well with me anymore.
And that brings me to another of your points:
I was just thinking about a comic book feature you don’t see as much of as used to - what I call “the history lessons”. Maybe they had an official name, but old man brain doesn’t remember (though I’m sure some “all-knowing” kid out there might). Those little reminders a past event occurred in previously published issue, either of that comic or another. They still make appearances, but rarely it seems.
Yeah, those "history lessons" as you call them are handy references, but they seem a tad unprofessional. You wouldn't typically see them in other media such as novel series'. Again, I was fine with that stuff in my childhood, but these days, I feel it disturbs my immersion in the story. It keeps me from pretending that the story is really happening, and instead gives me images of the writers, editors and artists telling the story in a casual, informal way. And anyway, these days, if you're wondering about a question like "in what issue of what comic did that event happen?" you can easily look up that information on the internet.
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So….turns out not only did they have Wolverine #1 (the ‘82 limited series, not the original ongoing series), they had the other three issues as well. So now I have the entire limited series!
Huzzah!!!!
That first Wolverine limited series was so damn good.
Can't remember now if I bought it as it came out or tracked it down early in my collecting. Probably the latter, it came out a bit before I was really able to buy stuff regularly.Definitely bought the Kitty/Wolverine series that came out a couple years later, that built on the whole Wolverine/ninja thing.
I bought it in collected format. It wasn’t until a few years ago I even contemplated getting the individual back issues. That was about the time I started my “fill in the gap” list.
Wolverine/Kitty Pryde series is one I didn’t think about getting, but now I will.
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On this thread (and elsewhere on these forums) I've talked about my favorite Conan writer, Roy Thomas. I must have collected hundreds of the Conan stories he wrote for Marvel Comics.
I'm not so much a fan of Robert E Howard, Conan's creator, but because of Roy Thomas, I read most of Howard's Conan prose stories to get an appreciation of the origin of the character. And one of the few Conan prose stories that I liked enough to read twice was "People of the Black Circle" which had a few interesting plot twists. But even that had its weaknesses.
One gripe I have about Howard is that unlike Thomas, Howard fails to give me a good sense of continuity. For instance, some Howard stories start Conan off as a leader of men very different from himself, but fail to explain how he achieved that position; Roy Thomas would fill in those details, making the story seem more real. Even in "People of the Black Circle" Howard starts Conan off as the Hetman of a tribe of Afghulis in Vendhya. The first time we see those Afghulis, they were quick to turn against Conan in distrust; how had they come to accept this foreigner as their leader in the first place? I never found any explanation of this, even in Roy Thomas' stories.
Until now.
I was in a public library, looking for some (unrelated) recreational reading material when I happened to find Conan the Gambler, a trade paperback reprinting some 2019 "Savage Sword of Conan" issues. And 2 of the 6 issues that volume reprints were written by Roy Thomas. Like I mentioned earlier in this thread, Thomas is no longer the writer of the bulk of Marvel Conan stories, but he still does a good job writing what little of Conan he does write. So I took that out.
Even before the Roy Thomas material, I found those stories interesting. Even the blurb on the back cover made the stories intriguing (and that sort of thing usually fails to interest me). That "Conan the Gambler" story had some twists on the usual cliches, although the ending disappointed me.
But then I read Thomas' contribution, which had a weak spot or two, but I found it satisfying overall. After all these years, I finally got a story of how Conan became Hetman. And it wasn't quite as straightforward as it might have been.
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Yeah, that's why I got a lot of "Chronicles of Conan" trade paperbacks. (Dark Horse printed them, but they're reprints of the original Marvel series.) Without "Chronicles of Conan", collecting all those old stories would have been quite impossible for my budget!
Back in the 1990s, when my interest in X-Men comics was at its peak, I bought a few odd issues that my friend (whose collections I was reading at the time) didn't have. I wasn't an avid collector, but now and then I found an issue in a comic book store or a flea market that grabbed my attention. I still have those odd issues, including issues 2 and 5 of the 6-issue Kitty Pride and Wolverine limited series. After I read mention of that limited series in this thread, I got curious about things I didn't remember from it. So just today, I re-read those 2 issues. To my surprise, I found that I had remembered NOTHING from #2 at all!
My guess is that I must have bought #5 early on, when I was a big X-Men fan, and read it multiple times. Maybe it was later, when my interest waned, that I bought #2. It seems too incredible that I would have bought it without reading it at all, so maybe I read it once, but only lightly and with little attention.
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Picked up some more old X-Men comics - #95 (when Thunderbird dies), #99 (first appearance of Black Tom Cassidy), and #120 (I think the first of Alpha Flight, as a cameo).
Yeah, I touched on the subject in this thread last month, but maybe I should provide a few more details.
The first mention of Alpha Flight was in X-Men #109 in which Vindicator (who, at the time, was only called "Weapon Alpha") made his first appearance and tried to capture Wolverine. When more X-Men joined the fight, Vindicator fled, thinking "...next time, to equalize the odds, I'll bring Alpha Flight with me." That's the first mention we hear of the name.
But as you say, Alpha Flight's first appearance was in X-Men #120-121.
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On a whim, I’d decided to look for some old Doctor Fate issues. Lo and behold! They had issue #1 of the the old DeMatteis and Giffen. I can remember seeing an issue of this miniseries (either #1 or #4) when it first came out. Couldn’t afford it at the time. I’ve wanted the series ever since. So now, after 36 years, I have the first issue.
They also had issue #1 of Immortal Doctor Fate, which was the first of a three issue miniseries reprinting stories that had appeared in other titles.
Now I’ve just got to get the other issues of each series.
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On a whim, I’d decided to look for some old Doctor Fate issues. Lo and behold! They had issue #1 of the the old DeMatteis and Giffen. I can remember seeing an issue of this miniseries (either #1 or #4) when it first came out. Couldn’t afford it at the time. I’ve wanted the series ever since. So now, after 36 years, I have the first issue.
It's funny that you should mention those two issues - #1 and #4. Those are the two issues of the miniseries that I have.
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I had originally intended to begin this post differently, but it's funny that Aberzombie recently brought up The Plague of the Zombies. I dislike horror movies in general, for several reasons, not the least of which is that I see no appeal in being frightened out of my wits. The real world is scary enough. So I have no intention of ever watching, say, Night of the Living Dead, but I acknowledge that movie's importance in forming the popular image of zombies, used in stories that I've enjoyed. Because some people have used those cliches to write some other kinds of stories... like FUNNY stories that made me laugh, such as Santa Clarita Diet. Yes, even murderous, flesh-eating ghouls can be funny.
I mean... I read and watched SOME horror stories. For instance, I read Bram's Stoker's Dracula and saw one of the movie adaptations of it, but one nifty thing about the popular vampire mythos is that it opens the door to so many FUNNY stories on the subject.
And that brings me to the topic I REALLY wanted to discuss here, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
For many years, I wanted to watch that show, but I wasn't in a position to watch much video. When I did have some leisure time, I could generally only read. So I tried to seek out a novel that imitated Buffy's show. But those imitations had problems. Most of them weren't even SUPPOSED to be funny. What was worse - and I remember griping about the problem on these boards, years ago - was that most of the heroines were pathetic. "Help me, friends! Save me from those scary vampires; I'm helpless against them!" Reading that stuff, I realized that one of the appeals of Buffy was that she was a strong, tough, kick-butt vampire slayer, and few imitators captured that.
Well, I'll admit to one major exception: Blood Song by Cat Adams. But I couldn't get far into the first sequel, Siren Song, because after a while that one got into the mundane day-to-day details of the business the heroine was running, which got boring.
The bottom line was that there was no substitute for Buffy. And I expected that the vast majority of the Buffy books and comics assumed at least some familiarity with the show. And my video-watching habits were such that it typically took me a week to get through one movie. Forget about watching 144 episodes of an hour-slot show!
But then in 2019, my life changed. In 2020, I found I was able to watch a lot more video. So I started on Buffy. And this year, I finally finished the show!
To me, it was quite an accomplishment. I've never completed such a big video-watching project before. And now I'm reaping the rewards! During those times when I may read for entertainment but not watch video - because such times still exist in my schedule - I'm free to read Buffy novels and comics.
My first thought - after finishing the 7 seasons of the show - was to read the "Season 8" comic series. And in fact, I HAVE ordered the first volume of the trade paperbacks which reprint that series. But as I was browsing those Buffy trade paperbacks looking for that stuff, I happened to find something that I bought first, and read over the weekend: the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Volume 1. That Omnibus series compiles Dark Horse's original 1998-2003 Buffy comic book series... but in chronological order.
What most made me want it was that it told the story of the 1992 Buffy movie as Joss Whedon intended it. Well, I was disappointed to find that version wasn't so different from the actual movie after all (at least in my view). But that volume had some other interesting stuff, like the reason Pike left.
But without a doubt, my favorite part of the volume was "Slayer, Interrupted", which relates how Buffy's parents (before their divorce) had sent her to a mental institution (as she briefly mentioned in the episode "Normal Again"). One highly controversial design decision of these prequel issues was their inclusion of Dawn. Surely, she wasn't supposed to exist in the original timeline; the past got rewritten to include her. But clearly, the writers wanted Dawn, so why not? After all, that's how Buffy (and everyone) REMEMBERED the past.
So as I read the story, I pondered. In the comics, 10-year-old Dawn read Buffy's diary, which talked about being a slayer. Dawn then told her parents about this, which is why they had Buffy committed. As I read this, I frowned. It looked like Buffy would never have been committed if not for Dawn, so why did Buffy get committed in the ORIGINAL timeline? And for that matter, in the episode "Becoming, Part 2", why did Joyce act like the "vampire slayer" stuff was completely new to her, if she had had exposure to the idea from Buffy's diary?
And all of a sudden, an answer came to me. Maybe, in the original timeline (without Dawn) Buffy NEVER WAS COMMITTED! After all, she had never mentioned the matter until AFTER Dawn's arrival! I think one of the fun aspects of fantasy is its ability to make me think in ways I never would outside of a fantasy context.
Another cool part of "Slayer, Interrupted" was Giles' backstory of how he qualified to be Buffy's Watcher... but I've probably talked about that story for too long already.
One day, I'd like to read "A Stake to the Heart", Dark Horse's story of Buffy's reaction to her parents' divorce. I'd like to see how she learned to cope.
Ah, there are so many Buffy stories available to me, now that I know enough to get the references!
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And that brings me to the topic I REALLY wanted to discuss here, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I dismissed it out of hand when it came out. My roommate made me watch an episode, which turned out to be the one where Xander gets possessed by a hyena (The Pack), and I was really impressed, and became a fan. (He did the same thing with Supernatural. I was all 'meh,' and he sat me down and made me watch an episode that introduced the Crossroads demons, and I was hooked...)
I ended up a big fan of the 2nd and 3rd seasons, particularly. The humor really popped. 1st season was a little spotty, I think everyone was finding their voices. 4th and 5th seasons seemed a little bleak, at times, and the humor wasn't as on point as in seasons 2 and 3, IMO. Season 6 and 7, not really to my taste. I feel like there were some really interesting ideas touched upon in later seasons, that were not explored or developed at all well, and the show kind of suffered for that. (Joss, IMO, tends to glom into the new shiny. He shifted focus to the Angel show for a time, and Buffy was left in the hands of a showrunner who, IMO, did not get what made the show fun, and subversive, AT ALL, and then he pivoted again to focus on Firefly, itself a show with great potential, and again, Buffy was kind of the red-headed stepchild he didn't have time for, and abandoned to the wolves.)
For that kind of horror-humor-drama, I've found very few shows that even came close, but iZombie has what feels a lot like the same mixture of horror and hilarious, the same sort of witty writing that I enjoyed so much in Buffy. (Other, non-horror shows, have gone there as well. Killjoys, from sci-fi, was more of a 'fun sci-fi' but also hit the same notes, for me.)
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That said, next week’s going to be a whole other kettle of fish. Someone brought in a box of Batman comics. And most of them just so happen to be in the 300s and early 400s. Which, it just so happens, constitutes a large portion of my current Batman Gap List.
So I’ll knock out a large portion of that particular list in one swell foop! Because they’re giving me first dibs on all of it. Of course they are. I’m that awesome.
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I got a couple of big surprises this weekend. But to set up the context for those, I should reprise a few points from earlier in this thread.
Two months ago, Aberzombie mentioned getting a lot of issues of The Uncanny X-Men from the 1980s, including #160. I waxed nostalgic, reminiscing about how, back in the 1990s, I used to visit a friend regularly and read his old X-Men material. I cited #160 in particular as the issue where Illyana Rasputin spent 7 years in Otherplace, hence aging 7 years, while only seconds seemed to go by on Earth.
Last month, the Kitty Pride and Wolverine limited series also came up on this thread. Reading about that stuff made me curious to read the 2 issues that I have of that title. I remarked on my surprise that I had no memory of reading one of them previously. It seemed ridiculous that I would buy an issue without reading it, but I can't imagine not remembering anything from it either, even if I should have read it over 20 years ago.
Anyway, I felt intrigued enough to add the remaining issues of Kitty Pride and Wolverine to my wishlist (meaning that maybe one of these months I'll order something from Mile High Comics or Lone Star Comics, and add a few issues of that series to my order, once I'm paying for shipping anyway). And I thought: While I'm at it, what about other X-titles of that era? For instance, I have the first 3 of the 4 issues of Beauty and the Beast (starring Dazzler and the Beast from X-Men). Maybe I should complete my collection and find out what happens.
On Friday, after work, with such thoughts in mind, I dug out the bag containing my issues of Beauty and the Beast, so easily accessible from my bookcase. And in that bag I found... ALL FOUR ISSUES!!!
This weekend I read the whole limited series. I had memories from the first 3 issues, but none whatsoever from the fourth!
Could I, twenty-some years ago, have gotten some issues (one of Kitty Pride and Wolverine and one of Beauty and the Beast) and forgotten about them to the point where I forgot even to read them? How could that have happened?!?
Anyway, I began to wonder what other X-Titles might interest me. I noticed a few about whose existence I had never known back in the 20th century, like the Magik limited series and the Iceman limited series.
Also this past weekend, I happened to run into that same friend, from whose X-Men collection I had so greatly benefitted decades ago. I brought up Magik and he surprised me by saying that series described what happened to Illyana during those 7 "lost" years. That sounds intriguing!
I didn't bring up Iceman though. I'm not aware that anything interesting happened in that limited series. For that matter, I never thought Iceman was an interesting character outside of the movies.
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Well, I took a massive bite out of the Batman section of my Gap List. Seventy-five issues from the 300s and five from the early 400s. That’s probably way more than half the Batman comics I was missing.
They asked me if I wanted to split up the buy, but since it was under $2K I just got them all in one go.
I remember reading my friend's comics back in the 1990s, including many of his old Batman issues. His earliest of those issues showed Jason Todd trying to help Nocturna - who had been stabbed - to escape in a balloon. We don't know whether she died, and I would assume that she did, because we never see that version of the character again. It was the first time I saw Nocturna (although I had heard mention of her in other books such as The New Teen Titans). I got curious about the character, so I bought what I thought were her first two appearances in Batman #363 and Detective Comics #530.
But a week ago, when your mention that era of Batman made me think back to those issues, I looked it up and discovered that no, Nocturna's first appearance was in Detective Comics #529. D'oh!