Pat Dugan

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55 years ago - Pat Dugan is born on a farm in Nebraska.
42 years ago - 13-year-old Pat Dugan inherits his grandfather's barn and derelict autoshop.  He begins working on his rocket car.
38 years ago - 17-year-old Pat submits pictures of his rocket car project to hot rod magazine.  He's first contacted by Sylvester Pemberton, who offers to give him the funds to build a real rocket car.  ​
36 years ago - 19-year-old Pat finishes construction of the rocket car for Sylvester Pemberton, who offers to pay for his education if he works as his valet and sidekick.  
33 years ago - 22-year-old Pat first starts working as Stripesy, the valet & sidekick to Sylvester Pemberton's Star-Spangled Kid.  They help the All-Star Squadron fight the Injustice Society, and become their newest members.  ​
28 years ago - 27-year-old Pats efforts to keep Sylvester Pemberton safe lead to his firing as his valet and sidekick.  He is not there when Sylvester sacrifices himself to stop Brainwave.  Blaming himself for not being there, Pat quits the All-Star Squadron and becomes a robotic engineer.  
13 years ago - 42-year-old Pat starts his own private robotics firm.  
8 years ago - 47-year-old Pat meets Barbara Whitmore & her daughter Courtney Whitmore.
7 years ago - 48-year-old Pat's designs are the basis for the Argo Harness, a suit flown by Celia Forrestal.
5 years ago - 50-year-old Pat marries Barbara Whitmore, who moves into his Nebraska home with her daughter Courtney Whitmore.
4 years ago - 51-year-old Pat's workshop is discovered by Courtney Whitmore, who steals the starbelt, becoming the new Star-Spangled Kid.  Pat allows her to adventure but only with him accompanying her as S.T.R.I.P.E. They are asked by Power Girl to join the Justice Society.  Pat accepts to give Courtney the opportunity.
2 years ago - 53-year-old Pat steps down from the Justice Society to show Courtney Whitmore that she has earned his trust, and accepts a request from Will Magnus & Karen Beecher to join the new staff at Oolong Island, working with the Doom Patrol.
1 year ago - 54-year-old Pat's wife Barbara Whitmore gives birth to their daughter Patricia.
It is really fun to see just how much characters can evolve over time.  Pat Dugan, as he was originally depicted, was a big goofy-grinned behemoth that palled around with a kid and fell into awkward traps the kid had to rescue him from.  Decades later, even though he would appear along with other members of the Seven Soldiers of Victory in Silver Age Justice League stories, he was already a relic of a nostalgic bygotten past.  

Fast forward another twenty to thirty years, and he's this fantastic take on the whole idea of stepparent-as-superhero.  He's almost an entirely new character, except there is this wonderful through-line between the two ideas where you can absolutely see how one leads to the other.  Stargirl is just a phenominal touchdown of a character, but a huge part of that success comes from Pat. 

Pat Dugan's Comic History

Pat Dugan's first appearance was technically in a preview for the new comic series Star Spangled Comics in Action Comics #40 in 1941, but of course his actual debut was in the new series.  The book was a pretty clear reaction to the hugely popular debut of Captain America a few months prior, introducing the 'American flag come to life' concept of the Star Spangled Kid and his sidekick Stripesy.  Pat was the adult sidekick of the child hero; he was so big and clumsy and child-simple that he was almost a bumbling assistant like Green Lantern's Doiby Dickles or Plastic Man's Woozy Winks, but he just narrowly avoids that role by also being a reliably strong and capable partner in crimefighting, and by regularly being part of the fun acrobatic maneuvers that were the Star Spangled Kid's trademark.

While Sylvester & Pat continued to appear in their titular series, they quickly were relegated to back-up stories as fellow Captain America copycat the Guardian took over the cover.  They would also become founding members of the Golden Age hero team the Seven Soldiers of Victory, but once that team stopped appearing, so to did the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy.  The seventies brought a resurgance of attention to Golden Age characters as they build up their Earth-2 stories in the newly-returned-to-publication All-Star Comics, but while Sylvester was featured as a member of the Justice Society, he was now an older, solo character.  Pat was relegated to the history of DC as one more beloved, classic relic of a simpler, sweeter time.  
Fast forwarding to the 90s; there was a period of huge innovation innovation as creators like Matt Wagner, John Ostrander and James Robinson gave us fantastic takes on classic Golden Age characters while also creating whole new characters build on Golden Age concepts.  Geoff Johns was a relative newcomer to comic writing, but his first comic series was the introduction of his incredibly personal take on a brand new Star-Spangled Kid, modeling new hero Courtney Whitmore after his recently passed teenage sister.  We've seen literal mountains of John's storytelling in the decades since this series, but I would argue that the sheer amount of love on the page in this short little 15 issue book from 1999 absolutely cannot be surpassed.  

The series featured the return of Pat, now depicted as a much older guy (although not as old as he COULD have been, thanks to some time-travel shenanigans that the Seven Soldiers of Victory got up to in the Silver Age) He's Courtney's stepfather, and when she discovers his secret superhero workshop and steals the original Star-Spangled Kid's cosmic converter belt, Pat suits up in his big mech suit to keep up with her as they both try to get the other to quit.  It's one of those rare concepts that just works perfectly right out of the gate, as Courtney quickly became one of the best new characters of the decade. 

Pat would appear in series featuring Courtney, but would sometimes just be out in the world operating on his own in large crossovers.  It's a huge return to prominence for a character that has basically been rendered obsolete decades prior.  As Courtney was given the Cosmic Rod and became Stargirl Pat's role was diminished, but only because her star was rising and he seemed happy to let her shine.  

Our Pat Dugan Story

We actually had a wildly different timeline for both Pat & Sylvester originally.  Stargirl is such a fantastic character and her story is delightful, and a big part of that is how loveable and incredibly relateable her relationship with her stepdad is, but we had to work out how we were going to incorporate Pat's backstory and all it's shenanigans.   Just by virtue of the shape of our timeline, we had to stretch a little bit to make sure Pat was in all the places he needed to be.  

Canonically the original Star-Spangled Kid and Stripsey operated in the Golden Age, but Pat's role with Courtney is by far the most important one, so we are making them members of our All-Star Squadron.  Their relative ages are a little tricky; their whole dynamic necessitates that he be very specifically an ADULT in contrast to the younger Sylvester, but we struggled not to make him noticeably TOO old with Courtney.  Reading the book, I took him to be in his late forties, which is about how old Luke Wilson was when playing him on the Stargirl series.  He's just about fifty in our timeline.  
A big part of what we needed to work on was just in figuring out how his relationship with Sylvester came to be. We imagine him as a smart young man who is contacted by this brash, incredibly wealthy kid that keeps giving him these outlandish offers, comissioning his dream car project, offering to pay for college, all if he suits up and becomes a part of that kid's crazy adventures.  It must have been a wild time, becoming a superhero, fighting alongside the Squadron... but of course, he had to also have realized that he was enabling Sylvester.  Imagining Pat as this twenty-something guy working with a young Sylvester, developing what must have felt like a big brother bond over those years, feeling a growing dred of what could happen to him if he's not careful, but not quite knowing if it was really his place to do anything about it? It would be something he would feel guilty about for years, especially after his death.  It has to be a huge part in how protective he was over Courtney... especially since, when he meets him, she just happens to be the same age that Sylvester was when THEY met.  

Of course, Pat eventually acknowledging that Stargirl is ready to work on her own is a huge part of her amazing story, so we wanted to give him a new role to fill.  He's actually a perfect fit for the new expanded staff of Oolong Island, the new think tank being built by Karen Beecher to work with the Doom Patrol.  That does sort of loosely imply that he and Barbara might actually be MOVING there.  Maybe not right away, but perhaps once Courtney graduates high school?  

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