Prelude to Legacy // The Starman Companion
Every once in a while, we at YDRC take a look at James Robinson's essential Starman series from 1994. There will be deep spoilers for the issues covered, which will be listed near the front of the article. If you do not desire to be spoiled for this wonderful comic, we recommend steering away or reading those issues first before coming back.
This chapter will be covering content prior to James Robinson’s Starman run, including the immediately prior events of Zero Hour, a 1994 DC Comics event.
If you would like to see what other chapters are available, click here to open the Table of Contents.
Comics are difficult magic to explain sometimes. On some occasions, a handful of creators who may not be remarkable on their own come together and make a work of sheer magic. Other times, already inventive creators are pushed over the top by another's input into something utterly legendary. There are even times where fantastic creators work on a project together, and something horrible comes out rather than the expected spectacular.
For this series, a special form of magic was unlocked when James Robinson was given the character legacy of Starman to work within the turbulent year of 1994. We plan to cover that… next time. However, we feel to understand why James Robinson's Starman wound up being so spectacular and a home run, we actually have to stretch back to the Golden Age of comics in 1941.
The original Starman showed up as one of many heroes in the anthology book Adventure Comics. His premier issue was 61, published in April 1941. Created by Hardin "Jack" Burnley and Gardner Fox, Starman was also known as Theodore Knight, a wealthy heir to fortunes untold. Bored with his lot in life in Opal City (at the time printed as Gotham City), Ted would explore the world and even try to analyze the stars themselves through Science. Working alongside a friend, Professor Abraham Davis, Ted would develop a device that would harness the energy of the stars themselves, the Gravity Rod. Donning a garish costume of red and green, Ted would soar the skies at night and fight all sorts of odd crimes… mainly by punching them really, really hard.
That said, he was also a man of science, though. The introduction for Starman would at least establish Ted as someone who could use his brain, even if he preferred the fist.
Unlike heroes of the day, however, Starman didn't have a large supporting cast. There was no child sidekick to endanger continually, though Theodore did have a girlfriend named Doris Lee. Ted would continually work alongside the FBI and law enforcement of the time as well, without a specific contact. To provide himself excuses to go run off and be Starman while on dates, Ted would play himself up to be a hypochondriac, and often excuse himself to go off to asylums for some time. This would be played for laughs, with Doris convinced her man just wasn't as manly or incredible as Starman.
When it came to foes, however, Starman didn't have a vast array of reoccurring villains. Coming from the Golden Age of heroics, Starman generally fought the odd Nazi or racist caricature of a Japanese soldier, as well as various random evil scientists and mobsters. However, there would usually be some kind of pseudoscience or space slant to the foes he fought, and it kept to the general 1940s science theme Starman had with him. One of his rare regular foes was The Mist, an older gentleman who had gimmicks to appear like he was half-invisible or made of smoke, showing up in the pages of Adventure Comics 67 and 77.
Ted would also join forces with the Justice Society of America as one of the members added to the first superhero team's roster with issue 8 of All-Star Comics in January 1942. While not as popular as other contemporaries like the Flash, Green Lantern, or the big three of Superman / Wonder Woman / Batman, Ted Knight would still make regular appearances with his contemporaries and would even be remembered alongside the rest of the JSA for what was to come. Amusingly, the stories found in All-Star Comics would be told in a round-robin format, with each hero taking center stage for a few pages in their own solo adventure. Simultaneously, an overall framing device had the JSA piecing together how their adventures fit together into a larger narrative. In the days of massive crossover movies and comics, it's a novelty, to say the least.
To also excuse some of his time away from the JSA, it would be cited that Theodore Knight spent some time in the Air Force as a pilot, one of the few DC heroes to serve in the American Military to any capacity during the Second World War.
Adventure Comics wasn't just Ted's book, however. True to the time, Adventure was an anthology book with other heroes. The Sandman had made his introduction (gas-mask and all) a few years earlier, created by Gardner Fox and Brent Christman. He would be later reinvented a few years later by comic legends Joe Simon and Jack Kirby into a more physical and punching hero with a kid sidekick named Sandy and overtake Starman's place as the cover-hero. Other Golden Age heroes like The Shining Knight, Manhunter (in several forms), and Hour-Man would also make frequent appearances, with super-heroics slowly taking over from the more traditional "adventure" theme of earlier issues.
After 1946, however, Ted Knight would fade by the wayside for several years, replaced in the pages of Adventure Comics 103 by Superboy. In fact, most heroes of the day would. DC Comics would barely scrape by with superhero comics as their popularity plummeted after World War 2 ended. Branching out into different comic fields, the Comics Code Authority was eventually restricted when they came into being in the 1950s. When DC would reinvent their characters for what has become known as the Silver Age of Comics in 1956 with the Flash, Starman would be one of the many to not receive a counterpart. Presumably, this was because a name like "Starman" would likely give way to a space cop of some kind, and DC would have that covered with Hawkman and Green Lantern.
Even Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman would be reinvented in subtle ways for this new era of superheroics, and fans would note the change. It seemed like the early days of the Nazi punching pulp heroes had gone by the wayside and taken Starman with it. However, one comic would provide a way for the older heroes to still be remembered, and even have new adventures.
1961's The Flash issue 123 would introduce The Flash of Two Worlds, a story where then-modern Flash Barry Allen would join forces with the older Flash, Jay Garrick, from Flash Comics pages. Fans, many of whom either had parents who remembered these older heroes or themselves remembered the heroes of their childhood, wrote to DC in droves demanding a return of these older heroes. It would be another two years before DC would bring these older heroes back once more, with 1963's Crisis on Two Earths.
These comics would reveal that these classic heroes like Starman and the original Flash lived on an entirely different Earth, named Earth-2, for various reasons. There would be a near-yearly team-up between the two worlds and other former rivals of DC Comics joining the fun as other Earths in the multiverse. Ted himself would be instrumental in saving both sets of heroes from the evil Injustice Syndicate of Earth-3, fighting off their version of Superman solo. However, while there was no Ted Knight on the main Earth-1, it doesn't mean there wasn't always a Starman.
1951 had a Starman palling around with Robin in Detective Comics 247, but that turned out to be Batman after a crook had hypnotized him into being afraid of bats. Issue 286 would also feature a Star-Man as a one-shot villain who was defeated by Batwoman.
Comics are really, deeply, weird.
The Legion of Super-Heroes would also have their own version of Starman, first named Star Boy. Created by Otto Binder and George Papp, Thom Kallor is a resident of the 30th Century, deep in the future where a club of heroes defends their present from all sorts of evils and mischief. His powers tend to be limited to increasing an object’s mass, gravity, or density up to that of a star. While the Legion is a crew of non-lethal heroes, he would be booted from the team for killing in self-defense for some time. Thom would also spend quite a bit of time in the present day in the 2000s, thanks to some time travel antics.
In 1975, DC had this really weird anthology series called First Issue Special. Since DC publisher and creator Carmine Infantino noticed that first issues sold incredibly well, he came to others within DC and proposed a series of nothing but first issues. Each issue would be about a different subject. While two different tales would eventually expand into new works (Warlord and the New Gods, specifically), it was allegedly not a try-out series to try and play new ideas by the fans. It lasted for 13 issues and was a solid vehicle for Jack Kirby and Joe Simon to put out some experiments and weird concepts no one else would publish. Issue 12 of the increasingly-weirdly-named First Issue Special featured Starman, by Gerry Conway with Mike Vosburg and Mike Royer. This Starman?
Mikaal Tomas was an alien from a far-off distant world, both a tribute to David Bowie's Starman song and the Starman from yore days. Landing on Earth, he originally landed with the intent to conquer but found that Earth was worth defending against his own war-like people. However, Mikaal would vanish after, mostly forgotten by time and the nature of the one-shot comics in the 1970s. But DC wasn't done using the name of Starman.
1980 would bring Starman into the new decade. This time, an alien prince named Gavyn was a spoiled brat and playboy of a distant empire. He discovered his mutant abilities to survive in space without harm when his sister took power of said empire and tossed him into orbit. Premiering in Adventure Comics 467 from the hands of Paul Levitz and Steve Ditko, Gavyn would be given equipment that would allow him to channel cosmic energy into blasts and fly interstellar distances. He would eventually take over his people's rule and would even destroy the empire to save them from a threat by the self-proclaimed Emperor Mongul.
With the multiple Earths and all the various comic lines now owned by DC compressed into a single continuity, the adventures of Ted Knight as Starman now existed as 100% canon alongside the adventures of Superman, Batman, and the various hawk-people. With a new history needing to be fleshed out, Roy Thomas would convince the people at DC to release a new series set during the time of the JSA: the Young All-Stars.
Intended to cover for the fact that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman no longer existed in the Golden Age of Comics, Roy Thomas would introduce substitutes for them in canon alongside the JSA. And, of course, Ted Knight would get to show up from time to time as well. He would also show up in the rare modern JSA adventures, almost unaged with this weird hand-wave excuse that some radiation everyone in the JSA had been exposed to had somehow left them all aging way slower than usual. However, despite the fact that Mikaal had vanished into the ether, and Gavyn hadn't shown up since the Crisis, there was still another Starman on the block. This time, in the modern era of 1988.
Will Payton was a simple magazine copy editor, off hiking in the wilderness of… somewhere. However, a lance of energy from space strikes him and winds up, granting him various cosmic powers. This includes flight, super strength, the ability to shoot cosmic energy from his hands, and the ability to alter his appearance to some degree. He would use this to appear almost entirely different as a superhero, and even take Superman's place for a brief period when the big blue was under the effects of Red Kryptonite.
It was weird.
From the minds of Roger Stern and Tom Lyle, this Starman was seemingly unrelated to the pre-Crisis Starmen who came before him, much less the one Starman left in Ted Knight. That doesn't mean he wouldn't run into any of them, however. Issues 26 and 27 of his series would feature an all-new Starman showing up to challenge Will for the title of the man from the stars. This Starman? David Knight.
Apparently, Ted had some children in this new timeline, and David was intent on becoming Starman like his father before him. With the same outfit, and his father's Gravity Rod (now called the Star Sceptre), David was intent on becoming a Starman like his father, partially because Ted Knight had gone missing. Both Starmen would meet on neutral ground, and one of those contractually-obligated fights would ensue.
However, both Starmen were manipulated by a third party. The Mist, the only reoccurring foe of the Ted Knight Starman, had befriended David and slowly manipulated him into taking up his father's mantle. However, the Mist had claimed the cosmic energy from both Starmen, as well as a belt that Ted Knight had made for another Golden-Age hero named the Star-Spangled Kid. Now powered well beyond his original means, the Mist now called himself…
All the good names must have been taken, it seems. Both Starmen would work together and overload Nimbus, defeating him by destroying both the belt and possibly Nimbus, which would also overload David's own Star Sceptre. Left without powers, David would accept the new Starman as the current heir to the name. Unfortunately, Will Peyton’s Starman would apparently die during DC's 1992 Eclipso event, where the darkness that lives within man became a tangible threat and almost obliterated the world.
Ted Knight’s past would be dug into during the 1991 miniseries for the Justice Society of America, set in the 1950s. Knight had been captured by the immortal caveman Vandal Savage to make weaponry that would harness the power of the horoscope and stars to empower him to rule the world.
Comics, man.
Ted was in a wheelchair for most of the mini, having suffered several mental breakdowns after being instrumental with the creation of the Atomic Bomb back in World War 2. Luckily, Savage’s plot to take over the world would bring Ted back to his senses temporarily, and he would help win the day for the JSA. However, the rise of Joseph McCarthy and his Communist paranoia would canonically drive the JSA underground and into retirement not long after. This would, officially, be the reason why so many Golden Age heroes faded from the public eye after the second World War.
There were other small adventures, like the 1986 one-shot called The Last Days of the Justice Society of America, where the JSA fused with the Norse Gods in order to stop Adolf Hitler from taking over the world in 1945. Ted himself would fuse with Heimdal, and hold the line on the Rainbow Bridge of Asgard. Like the rest of the JSA, Ted would die and be reborn hundreds of times to keep the Nazis from their goal of corrupting time and space to win the second World War.
However, aside from both Ted and David’s two Starman outfits being considered interchangeable by artists of the day, Ted seemed to have mostly retired, or be stuck in limbo depending on the creative team. Finally, we reach the last piece of our puzzle, the prelude to James Robinson's Starman: Zero Hour, the Crisis in Time.
Like the Crisis, this weird event was intended to streamline DC continuity and iron out the few remaining kinks that remained behind after the Crisis on Infinite Earths. One of the event's villains, Extant, would take on the Justice Society and strip them of the radiation that had kept them young. Not only that, but he would forcibly age and annihilate some of the members of the Justice Society, while others would be forced to age normally from there on out. One of the members of the JSA cursed to their natural age was Ted Knight.
As the world collapsed under the strain of reality being warped by the story's villains, Ted Knight would finally stand down as the Starman. He would hand his Cosmic Rod down to his son David, while his other just-introduced son Jack looked on. Time would be fixed, of course, in the end. And so, the title of Starman would be passed on to a new generation, and David Knight would become the Starman of 1994, soon to premiere in James Robertson's Starman issue Zero (it was the 90s, don't ask). In his first issue as the new Starman, David would take to the skies, and-
Oh, hell.
