Stargirl

17 years ago - Courtney Whitmore is born

8 years ago - 9-year-old Courtney's parents are divorced.

5 years ago - 12-year-old Courtney's mother marries Pat Dugan. They move into his Nebraska home.

4 years ago - 13-year-old Courtney finds Pat Dugan's workshop & 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.

2 years ago - 15-year-old Courtney is given Jack Knight's cosmic rod, supplementing her cosmic powers. Courtney changes her name to Stargirl to honor both her legacies. Pat Dugan steps down from the Justice Society to show her that she has earned his trust, and accepts a request to join the new staff at Oolong Island, working with the Doom Patrol.

1 years ago - 16-year-old Courtney's baby sister Patricia is born.

Modern audiences are all getting the distinct pleasure of meeting Stargirl in her own live-action TV series, but comic fans have been loving her for decades. Comics are full of great, loveable characters that are a joy to follow, but it's very rare that they arrive so fully formed. From the moment we met her we knew she was going to be a huge part of what we love about DC.

Stargirl's Comic History

Technically, Courtney Whitmore's first appearance was in a 1999 comic called DCU Heroes Secret Files #1, an anthology book telling stories of current and upcoming series. The whole reason she appeared there, of course, was to promote her ACTUAL first appearance; in her own original series Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. by Geoff Johns.

DC was having a bit of a renaissance at the time, introducing new takes on it's classic Golden Age characters, and that clearly influenced the creation of Courtney (at the time going by Star-Spangled Kid). However there was a much bigger influence in her creation. Geoff Johns, who had never worked in comics and was an intern for film director Richard Donner, pitched the character concept in a meeting with DC Editors. While we might not have known it at the time, she was heavily based on Geoff's younger sister Courntey, who had tragically passed in the 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800. Later, while showrunning the Stargirl TV series about his very first comic creation, Geoff said "It is her spirit and optimistic energy that I wanted to put back in the world with Stargirl... It is celebratory, forward-looking and positive. And I hope that comes through when you watch these episodes. I've written a lot of superhero stories in my career, but this is by far the most personal on every level."

John's love of the character is really, really obvious when you read the original series. Courtney discovers that her new stepfather Pat Dugan was Stripey, the sidekick of the Silver Age hero Star Spangled Kid. She takes the cosmic converter belt and makes her own superheroic identity as the new Star-Spangled Kid largely as an act of fun teenage rebellion. Pat creates a mech suit to follow her and try, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep her out of trouble. The whole premise is wildly fun and original; you've just never seen a comic partnership where both parties are trying to get the other one to quit, and as time went on we got to see them grow closer, with Courtney even coming to view him as her true father.

The JSA series started the same year, and Courtney was a founding member, which soon led to Johns being invited to co-write the series. She was such an obvious fan-favorite that even when the her original series completed it's 15-issue run she remained a main character in every subsequent JSA series for as long as they ran, eventually taking the Star Rod from Jack Knight and taking on the name Stargirl in JSA: All-Stars #4 in 2003.

By 2011, as DC reset itself in the New 52, the entire JSA was largely taken out of continuity, but Courtney was quickly brought in anyway, added to several spin-off Justice League teams.

Our Stargirl Story

There's really very little we can possibly do to improve the story of Courtney Whitmore. She's an absolute slam dunk of a character, and she deserves every bit of fan love she gets. In her live action TV series they skip over her time as the Star-Spangled Kid and jump straight to being Stargirl, giving her the Star Rod right away. It works really well for that show, but in our timeline, which includes the original Star-Spangled Kid as well as several modern takes on Star Man, it works much better to follow the original comic book progression.

One change we did make is to actually begin her story earlier, with her first donning the cosmic converter belt at 13 instead of 15. It might seem like a small thing, but it's always been a little weird that Stargirl never found her way to the Teen Titans. She even teamed up with the modern team when they went by Young Justice. The real reason why this happened is because she's very specifically a Justice Society character, but it all makes a little more sense when you consider that she's just a little bit younger than those characters. They're still friendly. but she just has her own group of heroes.

Stargirl's Future

Courtney, as she appears in the pages of the New 52, comes across a little bit older, but there's also been a lot of alternate-universe takes on an older Courtney. (My personal favorite being this Jack Knight-esque version of her as Starwoman from the 2000 miniseries Young Justice: Sins of Youth, which actually predates her getting the Star Rod in continuity)

As far as her actual future. Courtney is going to be a superhero for life... she loves it, is amazing at it, and has clearly earned her place among them. She's found her home with the Justice Society, and while she's happy to be one of their new generation of heroes and follow the lead of her surrogate big sister and the current chairwoman, Power Girl, it's probably inevitable that she will someday become the leader of that group herself.

In the meantime, she likely has college in her future, although she might actually just decided to focus on her super-heroics full-time. There were also a few interesting romances in her story that the comic hinted toward. While in our timeline Al Rothstein is way too old for us to include their relationship, she and Billy Batson happen to be exactly the same age...

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