Despite being relatively young as comic book characters go, Stargirl is the latest hero to continue two legendary legacies, but some fans may not be familiar with her origins or powers. Nevertheless, she's the ideal protagonist for a series centered around the themes of family and history like DC Universe's Stargirl, which will introduce Stargirl and the other heroes making up the Justice Society of America to a mainstream audience for the first time.
While the Justice Society of America may not have been the world's first superhero team, they were the most prominent group to come out of what is now known as the Golden Age of Comics. Their ranks included the original versions of some of comics' most famous heroes, such as The Flash and Green Lantern, but they are largely unknown to the public at large. This is due to their spending most of the last seven decades either existing on worlds set apart from the mainstream DC Universe or being trapped in Limbo - metaphorically and literally, in the case of one 1980s storyline.
The JSA is poised to return in a big way, however, both in comics and on the streaming screen in Stargirl. Yet Stargirl, a.k.a. Courtney Whitmore, has not been immune to the confusion caused by the DC Comics multiverse being continually rebooted and revamped. As a result, Stargirl has two distinct origin stories in the comics, and both of them are drawn upon for the new DC Universe series. Here's everything you need to know about Stargirl, her powers, and her weapon of choice, the Cosmic Staff.
To understand the history of Stargirl, one must first look back upon the Starman legacy. It began with Ted Knight, the first Starman, who first appeared in Adventure Comics #61 in April 1941. Scion of an old-money family, Ted played at being a privileged playboy like Bruce Wayne to mask his secret life as a brilliant astronomer and engineer. It was these talents that allowed Ted to isolate a unique form of cosmic energy generated by starlight and harness it through a device he called the Gravity Rod. Ted adopted the Starman name and used the powers granted to him by the Gravity Rod to fight common criminals and Nazi saboteurs as part of the Justice Society of America.
Ted found an heir apparent in the form of Sylvester Pemberton, an acrobatic boy wonder known as the Star-Spangled Kid, who first appeared in Star Spangled Comics #1 in October 1941. A spoiled rich kid who snuck out at night to fight crime with his parents being none the wiser, Pemberton was unique among the kid superheroes of the day because he was the star of his book and had an adult sidekick, Pat "Stripsey" Dugan, the Pemberton family chauffeur. They both later joined the Justice Society of America, and Pemberton briefly wielded the Gravity Rod when Starman was incapacitated. The two later worked on refining the Gravity Rod technology and fit it into a wearable device, the Cosmic Converter Belt, to better suit Pemberton's gymnastic fighting style. Pemberton went on to adopt the name Skyman and established the superhero team Infinity Inc. but tragically died young in a battle with the zombie Solomon Grundy.
The Starman name was used by many heroes published by DC Comics over the years, but they never had a common link beyond drawing off the same light-based energy Ted Knight and Sylvester Pemberton had tapped into. That changed with the publication of the 1994 Starman series, where Jack Knight, Ted's black-sheep son, took up his father's role and learned how to be both a hero and a good person - and that there was often a distinction between the two. Over 81 issues and several specials, the series established connections between all the heroes who ever bore the Starman name and set up a legacy for the future through a teenage girl named Courtney Whitmore.
Courtney Whitmore first appeared in Stars and STRIPE #0 in July of 1999. Born and raised in Beverly Hills, California, Courtney was tragically forced to move across the country to Blue Valley, Nebraska, a small town whose only claim to fame was being the birthplace of Wally West before he ran off to Keystone City and became The Flash. This was due to her mother remarrying a mechanic named Pat Dugan and the two of them deciding they'd much rather raise their children from their respective first marriages in a small town. Naturally the kids weren't consulted on this choice and the only thing Courtney and her step-brother Mike ever agreed on was that moving to Nebraska sucked.
While unpacking, Courtney stumbled across a box containing some of Pat Dugan's mementos from his time as Stripesy, including the original Star-Spangled Kid costume and the Cosmic Converter Belt. Courtney modified the costume and wore it to a patriotism-themed school dance as a means of mocking Pat, who was at the dance acting as a chaperone. The dance was attacked by weird cultists in snake-themed costumes and Courtney leapt into action to protect her classmates. She was surprised when she was joined by a giant robot in defending the crowd.
It turned out that Pat had been thinking of getting back into the superhero game and had built a suit of Iron Man-style armor: the Special Tactics Robotic Integrated Power Enhancer, or STRIPE for short. This led to step-father and step-daughter reaching a bargain, as they realized they had stumbled across a mystery in need of exploring. They would work together and continue to hide what they were doing from the rest of the family, with Pat playing protector to another teenager wanting to play superhero.
Thankfully, Courtney mellowed considerably and proved to be a natural for the life of a superhero. She was later invited to be part of a reformed Justice Society of America, made up of other young heroes who had taken up the names of the heroes of yesteryear, including the daughter of the original Black Canary and Starman Jack Knight. Jack would later retire from superheroism to focus on being a father to his two children, entrusting his trademark jacket and goggles to Courtney along with the Cosmic Staff, a refined form of his father's original Gravity Rod, worked into a fighting staff. Courtney didn't wear the goggles or jacket, but she did start wielding the Cosmic Staff and took up the name Stargirl.
Stargirl would get a revised origin story as part of the New 52 reboot in 2011, with Courtney Whitmore being introduced into a world where there had never been a Justice Society of America or a Starman. In this world, Courtney retrieved both the Cosmic Converter Belt and the Cosmic Staff from her stepfather Pat Dugan's office and took them for a joyride around Los Angeles. While doing this, Courtney spotted a fire and stepped in to help rescue the people trapped on the upper floors. This turned her into a celebrity overnight and her stepfather begrudgingly agreed to train her in how to use the belt and staff. Courtney assumed the Stargirl name without ever having been the Star-Spangled Kid, and it never was explained just how Pat Dugan had come by the belt and staff in the first place.
Stargirl was recruited to be part of Amanda Waller's Justice League of America, an ARGUS-backed superhero team that was meant to undermine the independent Justice League. Courtney thought she was honestly recruited to be part of an effort to help people but was displeased to find that Waller was less interested in helping people and more interested in using Courtney's All-American Good Girl image to deflect attention away from the activities of her more questionable colleagues. Stargirl eventually quit the team in disgust and briefly joined a new independent group, Justice League United, before disappearing after the book was cancelled. Stargirl was last seen in the mini-series Doomsday Clock, among those Justice Society of America members who had been removed from the current DC Comics Universe by Dr. Manhattan.
Stargirl's origin story as presented in the pilot episode of Stargirl contains elements from both of her origins in the comics, though it does favor the original story in its fine details. Courtney Whitmore discovers her step-father's secret life while unpacking after a move to Blue Valley, Nebraska and accidentally uncovers something sinister about her new school. The biggest change here, and where her new comics origin comes into play, is that Courtney only discovers the Cosmic Staff among Pat Dugan's belongings rather than the Cosmic Converter Belt, and she leaps to using the Stargirl name without first being the Star-Spangled Kid.
Stargirl has no innate powers; Courtney Whitmore is an ordinary teenage girl, albeit an athletic one in prime physical condition, with extensive training in gymnastics and martial arts. All of Courtney's superpowers as Stargirl in the comics and the show come from either the Cosmic Converter Belt or the Cosmic Staff.
Tapping into a unique form of energy radiated by starlight, the Cosmic Staff is an artifact of great power, comparable to a Green Lantern ring in terms of energy output and versatility. The Cosmic Staff can be used to control the primal force of gravity, allowing its wielder to fly and levitate other objects or increase the pull of gravity upon them, making them harder to move or crushing them outright. The Cosmic Staff also generates a force-field which can absorb most forms of energy and refocus it, allowing Courtney to generate blinding light blasts, focused lasers, heat rays, and virtually any kind of energy on the electromagnetic spectrum. Because the Cosmic Staff is attuned to her, Courtney can control it without touching it, though she's still learning how to fully master its potential and get it to respond to her commands.
One interesting new wrinkle in the show that was never in the comics is that the Cosmic Staff seems to have a mind of its own and some degree of sentience, like Dr. Strange's cape. The Cosmic Staff keeps trying to drag Courtney into action, but it reacts with far more violence than Courtney would prefer, such as setting a bully's car on fire when she was just trying to puncture his tires. Another mystery to be explored as Stargirl continues is why the Cosmic Staff responds to Courtney at all and refuses to work for anyone else.
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