Starman (1994) #7 pg 15

Jack Knight leaves Opal City in search of antiques for his shop and ends up at a circus with an actual factual freak show. Along the way, he literally bumps into a woman who tells him to watch out, then walks away. Now, it's a bit of a stretch, but an argument could be made for this being a first appearance page. Let me explain...

***SPOILER WARNING FOR A 30 YEAR OLD COMIC***
The woman on the page is Sadie Falk. She shows up again in a later issue where Jack bumps into her again. And then it happens a third time, later still. On their third meeting, Jack invites her out. She accepts and eventually the two start dating and even end up in a relationship. After they have been together for a while, Sadie tells Jack that she has a secret to tell him. She reveals that she is really Jayne Payton, sister of Will Payton who used the Starman before Jack. Will Payton was believed to be dead, but Sadie/Jayne felt that he was alive, somewhere deep in space. She asked Jack, in his capacity as Starman, to go out into space, find her brother, and bring him home. In fact, this had been her goal all along. After thinking about it, Jack accepts the quest and goes of into space with a hologram of his father, the original Starman, and Mikal Tomas, the Starman of another planet.

So yeah, Jayne Payton was a pre-existing character that was a regular character in volume one of Starman in which Will Payton was the lead. But, in this issue, on this very page, we aren't meeting Jayne. We're meeting Sadie, though we don't know that yet. So at the very least, this is the first appearance of another identity of a character. Either way, I enjoy having this page because Sadie/Jayne is a fairly important figure in the series. The storyline where Jack goes off into space takes up a fairly significant chunk of the second half of the Starman title. Sadie/Jayne is the driving force behind Jack's hero quest, and it all starts here.

This is essentially a page of talking heads with very little in the way of action. Jack isn't even wearing his trademark goggles or holding his cosmic rod. Harris still gives us some great acting through a variety of facial expressions and body language. Jack's face is super emotive throughout the page, almost comically so. There's also a good amount of detail here, from Sadie's hair and necklace to Crusher's spurs.

Pencil and ink on 11x17 DC bristol board.