Starman #26
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeStarman Vol. 1 #26 marks the debut of David Knight — the elder son of Golden Age Starman Ted Knight — who arrives to challenge the then-current Starman, Will Payton, for the right to carry his father's name. Although David's tenure as a hero would prove brief, his introduction here planted the seed for one of the most celebrated legacy narratives in 1990s comics: James Robinson's Vol. 2 series opens with David's murder on his very first day on duty, making that death only dramatically possible because this issue established the character's existence, personality, and rivalry. By seeding the Knight family dynamic four years before Robinson's acclaimed run, this issue functions as the quiet first chapter of a much larger, multigenerational story about inheritance, heroism, and the weight of a father's legacy. It also introduced Jules Black, the Knight family attorney, and marked an early appearance of the Mist (as 'Nimbus') in the ongoing Vol. 1 continuity — small details that Robinson would later fold into his intricate tapestry.
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The issue was written by Roger Stern, who served as the primary architect of the Will Payton Starman series from its 1988 launch, with pencils and cover art by Dave Hoover, inking by Carlos Garzón, colors by Carl Gafford, lettering by Bob Pinaha, and editing by Katie Main — the regular creative team for this phase of the Vol. 1 run. Dick Giordano is credited as Executive Editor. The story, titled 'Next Year's Model!', appears to have been a deliberate attempt to introduce a legacy complication for Will Payton's tenure — asking who has a better claim to the Starman name — while simultaneously setting up the Knight family as a presence in the wider DC Universe. The series ran from October 1988 to April 1992 and existed as a modestly-regarded ongoing before James Robinson retrospectively elevated its supporting characters into the foundation of his landmark Vol. 2.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of David Knight (Starman VI), the elder son of Golden Age Starman Ted Knight and older brother of Jack Knight, created by Roger Stern and Dave Hoover.
- David Knight enters the story having independently trained in Europe with his father's Cosmic Rod after Ted Knight disappeared alongside the Justice Society, believing himself the rightful heir to the Starman mantle.
- The story's central conflict has David — manipulated by the Mist (operating under the alias 'Nimbus') — confronting Will Payton and demanding he relinquish the Starman name; Nimbus's appearance here is his last before a later flashback in issue #27.
- First appearance of Jules Black, the Knight family attorney, a supporting character who would be referenced in the Starman legacy going forward.
- Written by Roger Stern with art and cover by Dave Hoover; the full creative team includes inker Carlos Garzón, colorist Carl Gafford, letterer Bob Pinaha, and editor Katie Main.
- The issue was published with both a Direct Edition and a Newsstand Edition (the latter confirmed by the Grand Comics Database as a separate variant of the same issue).
- The issue has been made available digitally on Amazon Kindle (as part of DC's digital back-catalog for the 1988–1992 Starman series).
- David Knight's debut here is retroactively significant to James Robinson's Vol. 2 series (1994–2001), where David's assassination in issue #0 — the inciting tragedy that forces Jack Knight to become Starman — is only narratively coherent because this issue established David as a living, characterised hero.
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