Blackfire

30 years ago - Komand'r is born the princess of Tamaran, without their natural ability to convert solar energy into flight.

27 years ago - 3-year-old Komand'r's sister Koriand'r is born.

17 years ago - 13-year-old Komand'r is sent with her sister Koriand'r to begin their warrior training with the warlords of Okaara.

16 years ago - 14-year-old Komand'r tries to kill her sister Koriand'r in a fit of jealousy during a sparring match.

15 years ago - 15-year-old Komand'r home planet of Tamaran is invaded by the Gordanians & her father is killed. She negotiates a truce that required both her mother & her sister Koriand'r to be taken as prisoners, while taking the throne herself as regent for the Gordanians.

13 years ago - 17-year-old Komand'r is on the same Gordian prison ship as her sister Koriand'r when it is taken by Psions who experiment with their Tamaranian biology, granting them both starbolt energy. They are able to work together to escape, but Kori insists on going back for their mother, and Komand'r betrays her.

10 years ago - 20-year-old Komand'r recieves word that her mother and sister have been killed in Gordanian prison.

7 years ago - 23-year-old Komand'r loses the throne of Tamaran in a coup led by General Ph'yzzon, assisted by her sister Koriand'r, & Dick Grayson. She is exiled into citadel space along with her loyalists.

6 years ago - 25-year-old Komand'r defeats Kanjar Ro's pirates, stopping his raids on Citadel Space and taking his ship. She casts him into deep space in a small life-vessel and begins her own fleet with Citadel authority.

3 years ago - 27-year-old Komand'r captures Adam Strange and holds him prisoner as her fleet attacks Raan. Alanna Strange saves him, and together they lead their people to defeat the pirates, imprisoning Komand'r on Rann.

now - 30-year-old Komand'r contacts Lady Styx, bargaining the codes for Raan's defenses in exchange for a role in her armada.

We talk a lot about the comics of this era, and I hope we manage to do it in a way that makes you want to read them, but in this case I really want to come right out and say it; please find and read all of the 1980 New Teen Titans series, because it includes character arcs like the one that introduced Blackfire. It was wild. Beyond wild. It's just the sort of story that only comics can tell, and it gives us characters like Blackfire, who could only ever exist in comics. This is the sort of thing we want to make sure our timeline has in spades.

Blackfire's Comic History

Blackfire's first appearance is actually a neat piece of marketing. In the summer of 1982, while the New Teen Titans were going through the Brother Blood arc, a series of one-shots were published telling the story of the four new Titans characters. August's Issue #22 of the main series ended with a stinger for the next arc, teasing a space fleet of giant lizard aliens and ended on a full page stinger showing Starfire's obviously evil sister. Meanwhile, the last issue of those backstory revealing one-shots shipped in September telling Starfire's tortured backstory and giving background to her treacherous sister, the same month that the comic dove into the first issue of a massive space-opera arc reveling in that same relationship. So technically, the first appearance was that stinger at the end of issue #22, but BOY did we get a massive amount of story to follow.

This story might actually be a high point for the entire run of the New Teen Titans. The team was in space, fighting aliens and gods, twisting their way through a giant cosmic revolution. Blackfire was right at the center of all of it, and was just a fantastic villain. As the Titans series continued she would crop up again pretty regularly, but of course it would be essentially impossible to ever meet the staggering levels of archvillany from that first encounter. Perhaps her best return to form was in 2005 during the buildup to Infinite Crisis series Raan/Thanagar war, where she again played a massive role in a giant intergalactic space conflict.

Animated Blackfire

LIke most elements of the New Teen Titans, Blackfire has also appeared on the animated series. This version of the character was a huge reinvention, building on Starfire's new characterization as a sort of sweet exchange student princess who struggled to understand human culture. Blackfire was her older, cooler, dangerous sister who charmed her teammates and made Starfire jealous, but was also consumed by her own jealousy and insecurity to become a rival to Starfire and the Titans, making some great stories Ultimately, however, the sisters DID love each other, and that is probably the deepest distinction between this version of the character and the comic one, who not only sold out an entire planet to subugation and slavery but who also tortured her sister for YEARS.... I mean it's a big change. Animated Starfire and Blackfire would fight and it would be very emotional before one of them would collapse into tears. Comic book Starfire and Blackfire have every intention of killing each other.

Also, notably, animated Blackfire can fly.

Our Blackfire Story

In pretty much any other medium, the animated take on Blackfire is the better character. She's more nuanced, her motivations are more character-based, and the relationships between her and her sister are way more relatable and conductive to more interesting stories. In any medium but comics. Comics revel in these huge cosmic mega-villains and their galaxy-spanning machinations. Blackfire was instantly a great villain, and her familial hatred of Starfire just made the whole thing personal for the Titans. You really can't ask for a better antagonist, and so that's what we're using.

Our take on the character is largely the same as the comic book origin; we're pulling back just a little bit, because there were elements of that story that made her so evil it was actually kind of unbelievable (the whole invasion of her planet wasn't her idea... she just took advantage of it.) Once she's deposed, we're not actually going to have her continually pop up over and over, we're just going to give her time to build up her own space fleet so that she can come back and play a major role in the conflict with Raan.

Blackfire's Future

After she's defeated by Adam Strange, The next step for Blackfire is a pretty interesting one. We're in the process of building toward a massive space story arc building a new Omega Men team and pitting them against the intergalactic despot, Lady Styx. The new Omega Men team is going to include both Blackfire's most recent enemy Adam Strange, and her archnemesis, her sister Starfire. Even if Blackfire wasn't an absolutely perfect addition to the threat posed by Lady Styx, you'd still want to include her just because of her connections to the heroes of that story.

Part of me does wish we could have included some of that animated series Blackfire, so that we could dig into the sisterly love/hate relationship of that version of these characters, but when the alternative is a great, classic machiavellian super villain with ties to the heroes backstory, who is both a scheming backstabbing pirate AND the leader of a giant space armada manned by huge lizard-aliens... I mean sometimes you just have to let comics be comics.

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