Starfire

27 years ago - Koriand'r is born the princess of Tamaran.

17 years ago - 10-year-old Kori is sent with her sister Komand'r to begin their warrior training with the warlords of Okaara.

16 years ago - 11-year-old Kori's sister Komand'r tries to kill her in a fit of jealousy during a sparring match.

15 years ago - 12-year-old Kori's home planet of Tamaran is invaded by the Gordanians. Her father is killed, but her sister Komand'r negotiates a truce that required both Kori & her mother to be taken as prisoners, while taking the throne herself as regent for the Gordanians. She and her mother are loaned as slaves, but she volunteers for all of it to protect her mother.

13 years ago - 14-year-old Kori and her sister Komand'r are both captured by Psions from a Gordanian Prison Ship, 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 - 17-year-old Kori, believing her mother to have been killed by the Gordanians, escapes her captivity. The newly formed Teen Titans find her and help her fend off her captors at the urging of Raven. Unable to return to her home planet, She joins them as Starfire, and imprints herself onto Dick Grayson. She takes the human name Kori Anders, becomes roommates with Donna Troy, and finds work as a model.

8 years ago - 19-year-old Kori, after the loss of the Teen Titans, focuses on her modeling career and on her relationship with Dick Grayson, accepting his marriage proposal.

7 years ago - 20-year-old Kori's wedding planning is interrupted by the arrival of General Ph'yzzon of Tamaran who reveals that Kori's mother is alive, and that her sister Komand'r is ruling Tamaran for the Gordanians. Kori & Dick Grayson join Ph'yzzon's resistance, along with the human hybrid prisoner Toni Monetti. They succeed in ending Komand'r's rule and expel the Gordanians, but to secure the new ruling house, Kori must marry Phy'zzon.

5 years ago - 22-year-old Koriand'r protects Buddy Baker from Lobo alongside Adam Strange & Alanna, and helps him get back to Earth, leaving Ph'yzzon to rule Tamaran in her place. She stays with him for a while, working as a nanny for his children.

4 years ago - 23-year-old Koriand'r joins the reformed Titans, sometimes staying with Buddy Baker, sometimes with Dick Grayson, although their relationship is complicated.

3 years ago - 24-year-old Koriand'r moves into the new Titans Tower when Vic Stone forms a new Titans team & becomes a mentor to the new members.

2 years ago - 25-year-old Koriand'r tries to follow Dick Grayson to the new Outsiders, but realizes that he has moved on, and departs back to Tamaran. Ph'yzzon accepts her, and their relationship becoming more personal.

1 years ago - 26-year-old Koriand'r helps all the surviving Titans venture into space in order to save Donna Troy.

now - 27-year-old Koriand'r joins Adam Strange's Omega Men to protect Tamaran from Lady Styx.

It's hard to try to explain just what made the New Teen Titans such an important series; its comic book plots were often so high concept that that they were hard to follow, and became even harder when the book split into two series. What it did incredibly well, however, was play right into it's audience. It was a perfect blend of comic book action and the teen soap opera drama. It was unrelentingly over-the-top, and nowhere was that more evident than in the invention of Starfire.

Kori was obviously drawn as eye-candy. Her bombastic, often-sexualized demeanor was a clear indication of exactly what sort of book you were about to read. Once you got past her swimsuit-model design, however, Kori was so much more. She was written with complete control of her choices and her life, and approached everything with such honesty and joy that she was impossible not to love. The trick, then, is to find a way to depict everything about this character; the joyful, fiercely loving, powerful alien princess... while not being distracted by the fact that she's so often depicted as a centerfold.

Starfire's Comic History

Technically, Starfire appeared for the first time in a 1980 issue of DC Comics Presents in a short preview of the upcoming series New Teen Titans, but she really arrived when the series began properly. Part of the innovation of the new series was the introduction of several new characters specifically built to expand the book's audience; Starfire was obviously meant to feed into the series constant low-level pg-13 sex appeal. Yes, she's obviously designed as eye candy, to the point where it's almost gratuitous, but in fact the entire comic was notorious for its deliberate cheesecake from every character. There's an argument to be made that, even with Starfire in the book, Dick Grayson himself was far more deliberately sexualized.

Beyond her look, of course, Kori was a character all about feeling all of her emotions incredibly strongly, who fought her enemies and loved her friends with the same ferocity. She soon became the love interest of Dick Grayson, and that relationship went on to define her character for most of her appearances across DC history. Her appearances in the post new 52 started out with some extremely problematic, almost character-breaking stories, but she slowly managed to come into her own, even briefly starring in her own series.

Animated Starfire's Legacy

While lots of classic characters have seen a renaissance in their characterization after modern appearances in animation, We really had to make special mention of the way the Teen Titans animated series reimagined Starfire. She's the same character in every way; she's sweet and fiercely loving, innocent to the ways of Earth without being naïve, and every bit the alien princess. They simply removed the overt sexuality and eye-candy costume, letting her just be a teenager.

What makes this so noteworthy is that it found a way to introduce people, who might have been put off by her cheesecake role, to the character she'd always been. This version of Starfire is absolutely adored by fans of all ages and with good reason. She's not just a hero, she's a role model; the sort of character young girls can aspire to be. This is something that every version of the character needs to honor if they really want to do her justice.

Our Starfire Story

Starfire as a character has had a strange history. The characters invented for the New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Perez were all iconic during the run of that series, but outside of it they all struggled to find a place in the larger continuity. Kori might have been a major character whose personality and story drove huge parts of the Titans comic, but outside of that book, you're hard pressed to find much said about her beyond the fact that she was Dick Grayson's girlfriend. There were occasional moments when stories would remember that she's one of the most powerful alien heroes in all of DC and she would be depicted as such, but generally speaking, any time she showed up, it was more about her looks and her relationship with Grayson.

This got even more complicated during the 90's, when Nightwing had his own book that often crossed over into the brilliant ongoing series Birds of Prey, which gradually built on the relationship between Dick & Barbara Gordon. What did that say, then, about Kori, if her entire identity within DC was completely rooted in her relationship with this other character, who didn't actually seem to think of her as anything other than a casual fling anymore? It was such a far cry from the powerful character depicted in the Teen Titans, who felt every emotion with such passion, and who loved so hard that it fueled her superpowers.

We needed to create a definite end to her relationship with Dick, and that's actually easier to do than you might think, because she has a whole world that needs her. The comics have several stories where the Titans go to Tamaran to free them from the Gords. We used that, and also used her responsibility as the princess of her world to end their actual relationship. There are some stories that come later on where she returns to Earth and has to come to understand what it means for humans to end a romantic relationship. She would think at first that they can continue to feel the same romantic passion for each other, but she would come to understand that Dick has moved on. It's going to be heartbreaking, but that's what these types of stories are MEANT to be.

From there, we want to maintain Starfire as a major character, but there is simply no role for her to play on Earth where she's not just lingering there to be close to Dick. Instead, we had her return to her home planet. It's really the only place where she gets to thrive as the powerful character she deserves to be.

Kori & Dick

There's a very real divide among comic book fans; are you on team Nightwing/Starfire, or are you team Dick/Barbara? Mainstream comic continuity seems to have decided that Dick & Kori have finally put their relationship behind them, although that really doesn't mean much. If you grew up reading the classic Teen Titans series, there isn't anything a person can do to convince you that they aren't destined to be together forever.

Personally, I grew up reading the 90's Nightwing series, and Birds of Prey, the series that established Dick Greyson and Barbara Gordon's relationship as such a great path for them to follow. For me, Kori was built to give Dick a near perfect teenage girlfriend; a powerful alien warrior princess with the body of a supermodel... but that doesn't mean that their adult relationship works. The actual comic book depiction of their relationship (largely because it was being written for maximum drama) was often built around miscommunication of expectations and Dick's preoccupation with his own heroic growth. For years, Starfire was continually depicted as still obsessed with him, even though he really seemed to have moved on in practically every way, making them little more than a casual hookup to each other. Which... would be fine, technically, but never really fit with Starfire's passionate personality. Ultimately, their stories work better if they actually do have a legitimate end to their romantic or physical relationship.

Starfire's Costume

There are certain characters that tend to incite a particular type of conversation when it comes to superhero costumes, particularly on female superheroes. Wonder Woman, Power Girl, and of course Starfire... What do you do about these superhero costumes that are so obviously meant as eye candy? Are we really doing these characters a favor when we let them continue to wear these old designs? In practically every case, These characters have undergone huge growth since they were first created, and are incredibly popular, even beloved icons. So what does it say that these icons are all parading around in swimwear?

In Starfire's case, the question is probably even more comprehensive, because in her case, it's not just a look, it's about how she's depicted overall. She was invented to be sexy, there's no point trying to dodge the idea, but she's also a powerful female hero that a lot of girls look up to. When she's made into little more than a sex object (like in her new 52 appearance in Red Hood & the Outlaws), what does that say to those girls?

In many cases, you'll see these characters written in such a way that is obviously trying to justify the exploitative way they're depicted. The character is CHOOSING to be on display like this, they say. She's empowered, and therefore it's fine for her to be drawn for the male gaze.

As goofy as that sounds, there is at least a fragment of a decent idea there, and that's that creating a character that chooses to play up her (or his) sexuality isn't inherently problematic. It becomes a problem when you use that to be exploitive. For as sexualized as Kori often was, she was surprisingly empowered in most of her classic depictions. She might have been created as a powerful, passionate alien princess with the body of a supermodel who wears a skimpy costume, but in the context of the teenage power fantasy that the Teen Titans were meant to be, there's nothing implicitly harmful there, as long as she gets to be a hero, not just sexy set dressing.

So while there are costumes she's worn over the years that do a pretty good job of reimagining her look in a more practical way (I happen to really like the one-piece costume she was wearing in the most recent continuity), her original costume can absolutely work, as long as Starfire's sexuality is treated as just one part of her character, not the entire point.

Starfire's Future

Leaving Starfire's story with her returning to her home planet might be the right thing to do in order for her to really be the hero she deserves to be, but it's really not incredibly satisfying. We want more from her.

Thankfully, we're in the middle of a new story featuring heroes from all across the galaxy with our new Omega Men. The galaxy is being invaded by the forces of Lady Styx, and a group of intergalactic heroes is being assembled by Adam Strange, and that group obviously has to include the princess of Tamaran. Our timeline wraps up as this group is still being assembled, so we don't really know what comes next. One possibility might actually be that something happens to the planet of Tamaran itself. There's no way that Starfire would let her people be hurt, but it's feasible to imagine that she manages to, at some point in the story with Lady Styx, save her people from the destruction of their own planet.

While this would mean that the Tamaranians are refugees in the galaxy, it also means that Starfire would need a new planet to call home while trying to protect her people... and I'm pretty sure she can think of one...

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