Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #493: Nocturna

So, there I was, making my way through Batman: Caped Crusader, when I got to the episode featuring Nocturna.  I vaguely understood her to be a Batman villain, and I was a little surprised to learn shortly thereafter that Nocturna was supposed to appear in Batman the Animated Series but the network put an end to that to avoid a blood-drinking vampire’s appearing on the show.  Regardless, I opted to look Nocturna up and see what I could find.

I found…a lot.  Sort of.

So, here’s the thing:  there are multiple different versions of Nocturna to choose from.  The first went by the name Natasha Knight.  Created by Doug Moench and Gene Colon in 1983’s Detective Comics #529, Natasha was a street orphan adopted by a gangster who only learned what her adoptive father did for a living when she was an adult at his funeral.  She was approached by his biological son Anton about going into crime, but she turned him down until an accident involving a radioactive laser at an observatory altered her.  She basically became pale and light sensitive, and then she changed her mind about Anton’s career goals.  Anton went by the Thief of Night, probably because he wasn’t very clever, but after Batman and Robin (Jason Todd in this instance) caught the pair, Natasha actually reformed after a prison stint and helped the Dynamic Duo capture Anton when he got out and went from thief to killer using the equally clever name of the Night-Slayer.

Heck, not only did Natasha turn over a new leaf, but she became a Bat-ally, knowing Bruce Wayne was the man behind the mask and even adopted Jason Todd to give the boy a mother.

And yes, that is all Pre-Crisis stuff, and only some of it still counts.  Regardless, this Nocturna would return in the Salvation Run mini-series where Amanda Waller was exiling supervillains to an alien planet, and she ended up there with people a lot more dangerous than her.  At some point, she also gained some short-distance teleportation powers and pheromone-discharges, but was still basically human, being mostly a thief that battled various Robins.

However, that was the first Nocturna.  There are (maybe) two more.  The Post-Crisis version first appeared in Robin #100 by Chuck Dixon, Jon Lewis, and Pete Woods while a New 52 version would first appear in Batwoman #29 by Mark Andreyko, Jason Matthews, and Jeremy Haun.  These later Nocturnas went by the name Natalia Mitternacht, and this one was something like a real vampire.  This Nocturna would even use a hypnotic bite to put Batwoman under her power for a period because Kate Kane snapped out of that particular spell.  Meanwhile, an alternate universe version of Nocturna popped up as a member of one of the more recent Suicide Squad teams where she had a romantic relationship going with Superboy clone Match.  Depending on how you count, that may be yet another Nocturna.

And that’s not counting the one from Batman: Caped Crusader voiced by actress McKenna Grace where she’s a young girl who sucks the life out of some familiar-looking orphans (they all got better) and Anton was an older, protective scientist brother trying to find a cure for his sister’s condition before she, not realizing her own strength, hit him too hard.

So, there may be a good reason I didn’t cover Nocturna before:  there’s too damn many versions of her.