Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: Stargirl by Geoff Johns, Lee Moder, Scott Kolins, Dan Davis, et al.

04 July 2022

Stargirl by Geoff Johns, Lee Moder, Scott Kolins, Dan Davis, et al.

Stargirl by Geoff Johns

Collection published: 2020
Contents originally published: 1999-2003
Read: March 2022

Writers: Geoff Johns, James Robinson, David S. Goyer

Artists: Lee Moder, Scott Kolins, Dan Davis, Chris Weston, John Stokes, Mike McKone, Wayne Faucher
Colorists: Tom McCraw, Carla Feeny, John Kalisz
Letterers: Bill Oakley, Kurt Hathaway

This volume collects the entirety of Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., a modernized take on the Star-Spangled Kid that began slightly before and ran alongside the Robinson/Goyer/John JSA revival of 1999. Our main character is Courtney Whitmore, a teenager who has recently relocated to Blue Valley, Nebraska because her mother has remarried, to Pat Dugan, who back during World War II was Stripesy, sidekick to the Star-Spangled Kid. She ends up becoming the new Star-Spangled Kid, eventually dubbing herself "Stars" and then "Stargirl," while Pat operates as her sidekick in a robotic suit called S.T.R.I.P.E. (As the cover of my edition indicates, it eventually became the basis for the CW tv series Stargirl starring Brec Bassinger.)

As a concept, it's great. Definitely a good storytelling engine: you have high school stuff, secret identity stuff, interpersonal stuff, legacy stuff. Courtney is ultimately the inheritor of the Star-Spangled Kid mantle and the Starman mantle. But I ended up feeling like Geoff Johns might not have been the writer to successfully pull off his own idea. The idea here is that Courtney becomes a superhero to annoy her stepfather, and then sort of grows into it... but I felt like this is an idea that we were told more than we actually saw on the page. The interpersonal dynamics were often crowded out by the superhero plots and the crossover storylines; some of Courtney's development as a hero was seemingly happening over in JSA, not here. I never really got a feel for her and Pat's relationship in a meaningful way.... but of course this is Geoff Johns. Great idea, but hand the execution over to, say, a John Rogers or a G. Willow Wilson, and I think this would have soared.

Heck of a kick for a brand-new superhero.
from Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #1 (script by Geoff Johns, art by Lee Moder & Dan Davis)

Still, it's entertaining stuff. Johns picks up on the kind of "legacy" work Roy Thomas was doing in Infinity, Inc., and the result is strong. I liked the story about Courtney interacting with Starman, for example, paralleled with a flashback adventure about how the original Star-Spangled Kid became Skyman, and also tying in how Star-Spangled Kid got the cosmic converter belt way back in the very first story I reviewed for this project, Only Legends Live Forever. I don't know if this kind of storytelling is meaningful to people who haven't been reading JSA comics nonstop for over two years now, but I dug it.

Of course I am always up for an Infinc flashback!
from Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #4 (script by Geoff Johns, art by Lee Moder & Dan Davis)

The Teen Titan appearances were fun. The story delving into the post-Crisis version of the JLA/JSA/Seven Soldiers of Victory crossover that brought the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy into the present day was fun... almost certainly better than the original story, actually! (Although, since when was the Crimson Avenger's sidekick, Wing, a kid? In the Roy Thomas version, he was the chauffeur!) I liked the occasional conversations between Pat and the original Starman, Ted. The villain being an evil cheerleader was good. The only "legacy" element I disliked was learning that Danette Reilly, Firebrand in All-Star Squadron, was fridged off-panel sometime in the decades since WWII in order to give the Shining Knight some angst. She is too good a character to deserve that, but apparently has made no post-A-SS appearances except in the All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant.

Poor Danette.
from Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #13 (script by Geoff Johns, art by Lee Moder & Dan Davis)

Overall, this is fun, and I look forward to seeing Courtney shine in JSA. But I can't help feel that somewhere in the multiverse there's a version of this comic that rivals G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel!

This post is twenty-seventh in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers The Sandman Presents: The Furies. Previous installments are listed below:

All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)

The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)

All-Star Squadron (1981-87)

Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)

Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)

Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)

America vs. the Justice Society (1985)

Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)

Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]

Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)

All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)