I'm having the same trouble posting photos as Eric seems to be having, so I'll just quote from one relevant panel I was able to find on-line,"I have been gone a long time, young man, further from here than you can possibly imagine, and although I made the occasional sojourn home, the way was long and difficult. I did not come often and I have much catching up to do."

As for the thought balloon, if a telepath can be fooled by a Doombot, and they are programmed to "believe" they are Doom, I think it perfectly reasonable they can have thought balloons.  If they could routinely fool anybody, they would easily have the Turing Test beat.  They'd count as a sentient machine.

Nowadays, you don't get footnotes directing you to the source of what is being discussed, even when it is a major plot point. Now, unfortunately I can't give you full details regarding title, issue, character etc on the following example because I just couldn't be bothered to remember everything and I'm not at home to look things up but here goes .....

In a recent issue of a comic, a villain comes back having been away for a while and proceeds to bang on about how they were much maligned during the last encounter with the hero. The entire thrust of the comic is about getting back at the hero for the wrong that was done, which is described in vague detail. The inference I got was that I was supposed to be familiar with both the encounter and the villain.

I was familiar with the villain but not with what he was talking about, and thought it would be useful to the understanding of the story to reread the previous encounter since it plays such an important part in the reason for the current story.The current story only describes the previous encounter in vague details though.

At no point in the issue am I told where I can find the original story.

That is a serious error in my view.