Though I liked “Stargirl” a little
better than most of the new heroes introduced at DC during the first
part of the 21st century, I was fairly surprised to see
the CW group decide to devote a series to the character. Though as
I write this only one episode of the TV-show has aired, I’m
currently theorizing that either Greg Berlanti or some other
CW-bigwig had some notion of re-living the producers’ first big
superhero hit, the equally teen-oriented SMALLVILLE. Be that as it
may, I decided to look over the fifteen issues (fourteen
regularly-numbered comics and a “zero”) in which Stargirl made
her series debut.
Not surprisingly, despite the title,
the feature has nothing whatever to do with American patriotism.
STARS is first and foremost a legacy concept, devoted to a millennial
version of a Golden Age DC series, “the Star-Spangled Kid and
Stripesy.” To be sure, the original concept, conceived by Jerry
Siegel,, did not display strong patriotic content except with respect
to the costumes of its two heroes. In essence the Golden Age concept
was yet another version of “Batman and Robin,” but one in which
the teenager, rich boy Sylvester “the Kid” Pemberton, was the
boss of a full-grown man, his employee Pat Dugan, a.k.a. Stripesy.
The feature was not particularly successful, any more than was the
super-team of which the two flag-draped heroes were members, the
Seven Soldiers of Victory, the others being the Crimson Avenger, the
Shining Knight, the Vigilante, Green Arrow and Speedy. (The latter
three were retconned as “Earth-Two” versions of characters who
had become best known to readers as their Silver Age “Earth-One”
counterparts.)
No comics-writer seemed in a great
hurry to revive this part of DC history. A 1972 JUSTICE LEAGUE story
revived the Seven Soldiers, explaining that the team’s members had
been dispersed through time. The consequence of the time-travel
gimmick was that all of these 1940s heroes returned to the 1970s
without having aged, including teen-hero Sylvester Pemberton. He was
the only one who got fast-tracked into a regular series, appearing
for a time in DC’s revival of the Justice Society, while his
partner Pat Dugan got out of the superhero game entirely. Dugan (and
from now on I’ll use that name for him, even when speaking of his
tedious-to-type identity S.T.R.I.P.E.) made occasional appearances.
Pemberson at least enjoyed a varied history in his revival—using a
“cosmic converter belt” (to upgrade from his former dependence on
simple athletics), changing his name to Skyman, and ultimately
getting killed.
I don’t imagine any fans were
clamoring for a new version of the Star-Spangled Kid in 1999, but
Geoff Johns had already made his bones with assorted “DC
continuity” stories, and he presumably promoted the idea of a new
character taking up the costume. Despite sporting the name of
Courtney Whitmore—which, by accident or design, sounds nearly as
upscale as Sylvester Pemberton—the new female “Kid” was just
your basic middle-class high-schooler, albeit somewhat more athletic
than most. However, she has the fortune—be it good or bad—that
her mother divorces her father and eventually marries Pat Dugan.
Courtney fumes with teenaged hauteur
about her mother’s new marriage and her own transplantation to a
new dwelling-place in Blue Valley (traditionally the home of another
teen hero, Kid Flash). However, the move coincides with Dugan’s
decision to get back into the superhero game, building a gigantic
robot exoskeleton for himself, given the aforesaid acronym. Despite
resenting her new stepfather, Courtney soon learns about his heroic
heritage. Though she mocks his old cognomen of “Stripesy,” she’s
quick to take on the equally ludicrous title of “Star Spangled Kid”
once she, like Pemberton before her, gets hold of a
super-technological power boost. (To be sure, during the series a
character suggests that she ought to call herself “Stargirl,” and
at present that’s the name the character currently uses.)
For the most part, the short run of
STARS is just another routine superhero opus, slightly enlivened by
Lee Moder’s humorous artwork and various references to DC
continuity. Neither of these justify my calling the series a “near
myth,” though, and indeed Johns’s cumbersome use of continuity
works against the serial’s only mythic aspect: the psychological
bonding of a young girl’s to a new father, in order to replace the
one who deserted her. In the space of fifteen issues, Johns had ample
opportunity to show the relationship of Courtney and Dugan grow, as
she comes to respect the man she originally resented as an intruder
upon her family. But Johns is more comfortable with silly jokes than
with any dramatic arc. A particular point where the continuity bug
nullifies the drama is a scene when another of the Seven Soldiers,
the Shining Knight, involves himself in the supervillain problems of
the two stars. To satisfy readers with the continuity jones, Johns
has the Knight go into a long recap of his history with the Soldiers
and the All-Star Squadron. Yet at no point does the writer deem it
necessary to tell his readers how all these hyper-dramatic stories of
World War Two heroism sound to a child of the 21st
century. This sort of shift in perspective might have contributed to
Courtney’s ability to bond with her stepfather. But because their
bonding feels forced, the current star-spangled team is just about as
mediocre in terms of its psychological myths as the original Golden
Age feature.
After the cancellation of the series,
Courtney, taking the more mellifluous name of Stargirl, has mostly
participated in larger super-groups. I haven’t read most of these,
but given this middling beginning, I’d be surprised if she ever
became much more than a pretty face and a cool costume.
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