If you want to know how Courtney Whitmore went from relative obscurity to having her
own TV show, and how she's carrying on a tradition of heroism that stretches back a solid 80
years, keep watching to learn the real truth behind DC's Stargirl.
Golden Age legacy
Courtney Whitmore carries on a legacy that goes all the way back to the 1940s. Before
she was Stargirl, Courtney was the Star-Spangled Kid.
That identity that once belonged to Sylvester Pemberton, who made his debut in the pages
of 1941's Star-Spangled Comics #1. He and his sidekick Stripesy (stars and stripes,
get it?) were a patriotic take on Batman and Robin; a fabulously wealthy crimefighter and
his sidekick. They had no super powers, just a talent for hand-to-hand combat and a cool
car. The twist was that the kid was the hero, and the grown-up was the sidekick. Sylvester
was the teenage heir to the Pemberton family fortune, and Stripesy was Pat Dugan, his chauffer.
The duo started going through some rough times before the end of the decade. They were eventually
shoved out of their own book by a character who was introduced to be their sidekick, Merry,
the Girl of 1,000 Gimmicks. Stripesy would fall by the wayside as the years went on,
but Sylvester would have a much more tragic end.
Skyman's gruesome fate
For characters who had their origins tied to World War II it became increasingly difficult
to explain why they hadn't aged over time. Captain America, for example, had to be a
"man out of time" frozen in a block of ice for however long it's been since the war.
The Star-Spangled Kid, Stripesy, and the other members of their super-team, the Seven Soldiers
of Victory, all got caught in a time warp back in 1948. When they emerged in the future,
Sylvester took the name Skyman and began using a "Cosmic Converter Belt" that gave him super
powers. He teamed up with the children of some characters from his era to form a group
called Infinity, Inc.
In Infinity Inc. #51, a villain called the Harlequin (not the one you're thinking of)
and Solomon Grundy crashed a wedding, literally. In the ensuing fight, Grundy grabs a hero
called Mr. Bones and shoves Bones' hand against Skyman's face. Among Bones' super powers was
"cyanide touch" that killed instantly, leaving a distinct burn on his victims. So Pemberton
got his face burned off, and while that's probably the most metal way to die, it's also
a sad end for an obscure hero.
Enter Starman
In the '90s, there was a trend at DC comics of dusting off long-forgotten heroes and breathing
new life into them, and Starman, by James Robinson, Tony Harris, and Peter Snejbjerg,
was a highlight of the decade.
The name "Starman" had been used several times at DC over the years, starting with Golden
Age hero Ted Knight, who used a "Cosmic Rod" to fly through the air and zap bad guys. 1994's
Starman picks up with his son, David, who carries on his family's tradition of heroism
for roughly 45 minutes before being shot and killed on his first night as a superhero.
The legacy then falls to Ted's other son, Jack, a sullen hipster who, at least at first,
has absolutely no interest in becoming a superhero.
The series unifies all the different Starmen, including two different alien princes, a teenager
from the 31st century, and some dude from the '80s that nobody liked, into the same
legacy. And Jack upgraded the flashlight-sized Cosmic Rod to a five-foot Cosmic Staff. Eventually,
he finds himself raising his own son, which leads him to retire from the superhero business.
He also meets a young woman named Courtney Whitmore, who had no relation to the Knight
family or its legacy. Not yet, anyway.
The new Star-Spangled Kid
Remember Pat Dugan, the bumbling but ridiculously strong grown-up sidekick Stripesy? Well, it
turned out that in the years since he'd returned from being lost in time with the other Soldiers
of Victory, he retired from superheroics and settled down with a woman named Barbara Whitmore.
That's the basis of Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., a 1999 revival of the Star-Spangled Kid by
Geoff Johns and Lee Moder. When Dugan's stepdaughter, Courtney, discovers the relics of his superhero
past, she steals the Cosmic Converter Belt and goes into action as the all-new Star-Spangled
Kid, initially motivated purely by teenage rebellion.
To keep tabs on her, Pat deploys his secret project: a massive suit of robotic power armor
called the Special Tactics Robotic Integrated Power Enhancer, or S.T.R.I.P.E. With that,
the classic duo was reunited in a brand new form, though the series sadly only lasted
14 issues before being canceled.
Starman passes the mantle
It would've been easy for Courtney Whitmore to fade into obscurity after the end of her
series, but she managed to stick around. Like most throwbacks to the Golden Age, she wound
up joining the Justice Society of America for a while, serving as one of a few younger
members tasked with hanging out with crime-fighting senior citizens.
While she was with the Justice Society, Courtney got caught up in the "Sins of Youth" crossover
that ran in Young Justice. The basic idea was that heroes swapped ages with their sidekicks,
so the Justice Society, as the oldest heroes, became a pack of troublemaking toddlers, while
Courtney herself was aged up into an adult "Starwoman" who had to keep track of them
all. During that time, she made use of Jack Knight's Cosmic Staff.
In the final issue of Starman, Jack Knight tied up all the loose plot threads that had
been running through his book for the past seven years, including passing on his own
legacy to the next generation of heroes. Jack and Courtney had never really gotten along,
given that their teenage rebellions took them in opposite directions. But the glimpse he
got of Courtney in "Sins of Youth" made him realize that she was the person who should
be carrying his legacy forward. So when Courtney returned to her correct age, she left the
identity of the Star-Spangled Kid behind, taking up Jack's cosmic staff as Stargirl.
Bad romance
While she was a part of the Justice Society, Courtney met and began a romantic relationship
with one of the most notable icons of the Golden Age: Billy Batson, once called Captain
Marvel, but better known these days as Shazam.
"It's me! It's Billy! It's Billy! You asked me flight or invisibility and I thought it
was stupid. But now I look like this!"
The issue here was that Courtney was 16 years old. For the readers, that's not actually
a big deal at all. We all know that Billy is also a teenager, and that it's just the
magic word and the thunderous boom of lightning that gives him the body of an adult when it's
time to do magical superhero stuff. But the rest of the Justice Society was completely
unaware of this fact. Courtney herself only found out when they were on a mission together
that saw Billy briefly lose his powers. So to their teammates, it seemed a grown man
with Superman powers was dating an underage girl.
Jay Garrick, the original Flash, confronted Shazam about the relationship in JSA #59.
Rather than just telling Grandpa Flash what the deal was, Billy decided that it was better
to destroy his reputation and just quit the JSA to keep his identity a secret from some
of the most trustworthy heroes of the time. He also broke it off with Courtney, explaining
that while he truly cared about her, he didn't want to run the risk of having the team treat
him poorly because he was a teenager. He wasn't exactly using The Wisdom of Solomon right
then, it seems.
Hitting the screen
For a relatively obscure, cult-favorite character, Courtney Whitmore has made a surprising number
of appearances in the world outside of comics. That may just have something to do with how
Geoff Johns went from writing the short-lived Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. comic to serving as
Chief Creative Officer of DC Entertainment from 2010 to 2018, where he took a very active
role in shaping the film and television side of things.
Both Courtney and Pat Dugan showed up on Justice League Unlimited alongside the other modern
incarnations of the Seven Soldiers of Victory.
"For the record, I don't have powers, potty mouth. It's the staff."
As a solo act, Stargirl has made appearances on multiple animated series. She was briefly
seen on Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and more recently, she's been featured on Justice
League Action and Young Justice: Outsiders, although she's not a superhero in that last
one. Instead, she's the host of a celebrity-focused TV show called Stargirl.
In live-action, Stargirl played a big role in Smallville's two-part "Absolute Justice"
event, which dove into the history of the Justice Society and the idea of Clark Kent
carrying on a heroic legacy that dated back to 1940. In that world, Courtney took the
identity of Stargirl after Sylvlester Pemberton was killed, with the idea that he'd been part
of a team of heroes who were branded as criminals as part of a government conspiracy.
Legends of Stargirl
In a truly wild departure from her comics history, Stargirl showed up on Legends of
Tomorrow where, like on Smallville, she was tied to the Justice Society. But on Legends,
she wasn't a legacy character. Instead, she was a founding member back in World War II,
essentially replacing both Sylvester Pemberton and Ted Knight in the Arrowverse's version
of that era.
Here's where things start to get weird, even by superhero standards. First, we have to
talk about the Spear of Destiny, which is supposedly the spear that a Roman soldier
named Longinu used to stab Jesus during the crucifixion. Understandably, it's become a
legendary artifact with powers in superhero stories. For example, in DC continuity, Hitler's
possession of the spear gave him the ability to mind-control anyone with powers, explaining
why the superheroes didn't just go win World War II before all the bad stuff happened.
On Legends of Tomorrow, the spear was so powerful that the heroes broke it into four pieces
and scattered it throughout the time stream. Stargirl wound up taking a fragment of it
back to the 6th century, where she landed in Britain, hid her piece of the spear inside
a sword that was itself inside a stone, and then helped King Arthur found Camelot after
taking the name "Merlin."
"Merlin?"
"Just an identity I adopted to fit into this era."
Though the Legends offered her a ride home, she ended up staying in the past because she'd
fallen in love with Arthur. Going back to Camelot and becoming a mythical wizard is
certainly a long way from her adventures as a high school hero.
Stargirl's star turn
In 2020, Courtney is set to finally get another shot as a starring role, but not in comics.
Instead, she'll be featured in Stargirl, a live-action show on the DC Universe streaming
service, with episodes also airing on the CW after they premiere. It's not to be confused
with the Disney+ series curiously of the same name.
Produced by Geoff Johns, who's also writing the pilot, the show seems to be sticking a
little closer to the original comic than the one where Stargirl goes back in time to become
Merlin. This time, Courtney Whitmore, played by Brec Bassinger, is a high school student
who discovers that her stepfather used to be a sidekick, and she decides to raid his
stash of equipment to take up the family business for herself. In addition to Courtney and Pat
Dugan, played by Luke Wilson, the show is also set to include a handful of members of
the Justice Society, including Wildcat, Hourman, and Doctor Mid-Nite, with Community star Joel
McHale as Sylvester Pemberton.
The one big difference is that the show looks like it's skipping over the "Star-Spangled
Kid" identity, with Pemberton having been Starman back in the day instead. Whether it'll
pick up on other members of Stargirl's supporting cast from that original comic, like her high
school rival, Cindy Burman, who became a supervillain named Shiv and gave Courtney the closest thing
she ever had to an arch-enemy, remains to be seen.
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