Comic Book / Starman (DC Comics)

aka: Starman

Jack Knight as Starman, in his Civvie Spandex.

James Robinson's most famous series for DC Comics, Starman was one of the steps away from the '90s Anti-Hero and into The Modern Age of Comic Books. The series followed Legacy Character Jack Knight, son of Ted Knight, the Golden Age Starman (there were plenty of others) and something of an Author Avatar. Forced to take over as Starman when his father's first replacement, his older brother David, is killed on the job, Jack is a reluctant newcomer at first, but over the course of the series, his character develops into something akin to old-school heroes while maintaining a distinct personality.

Starman is also notable for Robinson's dusting off of plenty of older characters. Golden Age Card-Carrying Villain The Shade, for instance, returned as an Anti-Hero, complete with a backstory. The entire Starman legacy was touched upon, with most of the characters involved (especially the original, Ted Knight) growing out of the one-note molds from their original stories. Along the way, Ted Knight's colleagues in the Justice Society of America were highlighted and brought back to prominence, eventually leading to the highly popular JSA title. (Jack was briefly a member, and new-JSA founder Stargirl carries on his legacy.)

Jack Knight first appeared in Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! #1 (September, 1994) and soon graduated to his own title. The ongoing lasted for 81 regular issues (October, 1994-August, 2001), though numbering begun with #0. Starman was also one of the series revived as part of the Blackest Night event.

No, David Bowie was not a Starman.

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List of Starmen

The book makes extensive use of previous Starmen. For a brief list:

• Ted Knight. The original Starman, created by DC editorial and Jack Burnley, who also drew the series for a long time. First appeared in Adventure Comics #61 (April, 1941). Ted was an amateur astronomer who invented the gravity rod when he discovered that he could collect a certain type of cosmic ray as a power source. In his solo career, Ted often worked with FBI chief Woodley Allen to stop various crimes and catastrophes. He also served as a member of the Justice Society of America. Father of Jack and David.
• Starman of 1951. A mysterious character taking up the identity. Eventually revealed to be Doctor Mid-Nite/Charles McNider, a fellow member of the JSA. He would share this role with David Knight, son of the original Starman during an important "moment in time" in David's life. The concept of an established hero using the Starman identity in the 1950s was inspired by Detective Comics #247 (September, 1957). In said story, Batman claims the mantle.
• Mikaal Tomas. First appeared in First Issue Special #12 (March, 1976). A blue-skinned alien, scout of an invasion force. Decided to side with Earth against his people. Originally a one-shot character.
• Prince Gavyn. Created by Paul Levitz and Steve Ditko. First appeared in Adventure Comics #467 (January, 1980). A member of an alien royal family. Condemned to die to prevent him from claiming the throne against the senior heir. The near-death experience activated superpowers within him.
• Will Payton. First appeared in Starman vol. 1 #1 (October, 1988). A regular human mutated by a space-faring bolt of energy.
• David Knight. First appeared in Starman vol. 1 #26 (September, 1990). Son of Ted and older brother of Jack. Claimed the mantle of his father and served as a rival to Payton.
• Jack Knight. First appeared in Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! #1 (September, 1994). Son of Ted and younger brother of David. Took the mantle of Starman when David was killed in action.
• Courtney Whitmore. First appeared in Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #0 (July, 1999). A teenage superhero originally known as Star-Spangled Kid. After Jack Knight retired from superheroing, Courtney received his cosmic staff and mantle. She continues the Starman legacy as Stargirl.
• Thom Kallor: First appeared in Adventure Comics #282 (March, 1961). First debuting as Star Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes, at least two versions of Star Boy have become Starman. One version eventually went back in time and joined the JSA.
• Farris Knight: First appeared in JLA #23 (October, 1998). The Starman of the 853rd Century, whose great-grandfather restored the Starman legacy. His discontent at being expected to take the mantle and live up to his ancestors eventually caused him to turn traitor, but speaking with his ancient ancestor Ted Knight awakened his desire to do good, and he sacrificed his life to redeem himself.

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Starman provides examples of:

• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: After believing Prince Gavyn dead, Lady Merria eventually married his best friend Jediah Rikane. This turns out to have been a terrible mistake, on more levels than just a rough relationship.
• Accent Relapse: After learning about his past life as Scalphunter Matt O'Dare slips into a Western accent more and more often as he speaks.
• Action Girl: Hope O'Dare.
• Addiction Displacement: Mikaal's race has a biological need for conquest and battle, which he displaced with sex and drugs back in the 70's. Lots and lots of sex and drugs.
• Addled Addict: Mikaal's drug addiction in the 70's took a severe toll on his mind.
• The Alcoholic: Billy O'Dare was this, to the point that it wrecked his health, though it didn't affect his quality as a cop or a father.
• Alien Blood: Mikaal's is green.
• Aliens Speaking English: Mikaal and other members of his race were taught English to facilitate their conquering of Earth.
• All There in the Manual: Important bits of backstory which pay off in the "Grand Guignol" arc are found only in the first Shade miniseries and in various text stories, not to mention the re-used Backstory from Robinson's The Golden Age miniseries.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Sans his memories, Mikaal is a calm, gentle soul...from a civilization of violent conquerors. When his memories are restored, his personality develops an edge that threatens to alienate him from his boyfriend, though he remains a fundamentally good person.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Black Condor
• Anti-Hero: The Shade.
  • Jack starts out at this, but by series end is sort of an anti-anti-hero.
• Anticlimax: The ending of "A Day in the Opal". After businessman Albert Bekker goes to drastic lengths to get a magical Hawaiian shirt from Jack's antique shop, the plot is abruptly resolved when his hitman Sands just agrees to buy it from Jack instead. It makes sense: Jack sells antiques for a living, after all.
• Arch-Enemy: The Mist. But in one conversation with his dad, Jack names a rival junk dealer as his Arch-Nemesis.
• Armor-Piercing Question: During the first arc, Jack asks Nash what reason she, specifically, has to kill him when she has a gun pointed to his head. She lets him go. He then proceeds to give her a pretty damn good reason by killing her brother.
• Artists Are Not Architects: Used deliberately. Robinson goes for a retro look, and relies on Rule of Cool with some Handwave explanations.
• Art Shift: During the "Sand and Stars" story a flashback to the early days of Ted Knight and Wesley Dodds (The Sandman) was drawn by Guy Davis, matching his work on Sandman Mystery Theatre.
• Author Avatar: Jack Knight, was blatantly and unabashedly a dual creator avatar. The first volume's introduction has a third party writer note that Jack is writer James Robinson and that he bears a strong resemblance to artist and designer Tony Harris.
• Author Tract: The series featured a scene where Solomon Grundy referred to Alan Scott as "Green Lantern" despite the fact that he was going by the name "Sentinel" at the time (as editorial decreed Kyle Rayner was the only hero allowed to use the GL name). Upon being corrected, Grundy shrugs and says he'll always consider Alan to be Green Lantern no matter what anyone else says.
• Avenging the Villain: Nash takes up the identity of The Mist and becomes Jack's archenemy after he kills her brother Kyle.
• Badass Family: The O'Dares and the Knights.
• Barred from the Afterlife: The Black Pirate, hanged for a crime he didn't commit, curses Port O' Souls, the settlement that would eventually become Opal City, so that anyone who dies there will be unable to find rest until his name is cleared. A few hundred years later, Culp is able to use the thousands of souls trapped in Opal as a power source for his evil magicks, until the truth is revealed and all of them (including the Black Pirate) are set free.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: In issue #28, a “Times Past” story devoted to Mikaal, he encounters a man from his race, Komak, who tells him the rest of their people are dead. He has come for revenge, because Mikaal turned against their people’s plan to conquer Earth. The two of them have a battle, facilitated by a small device, that is entirely within their minds, although its outcome, Komak’s death, is real.
• Big Brother Instinct: Issue #3 shows flashbacks to David’s and Jack’s childhood, illustrating their complicated relationship. David is shown both holding Jack down and pouring sand in his mouth, and beating up another kid who messed with Jack.
• Big Damn Heroes: Adam Strange and Black Condor, of all people, get one of the best in the series when, during Starman #67, they swoop in just in time to save Jack and the rest of the heroes from execution at the hands of Simon Culp and his massive group of criminal underlings.
• Bilingual Bonus: Culp prefers to speak in French, and his lines (and those of the characters who respond to him in kind) go untranslated.
• Blood Knight: Hourman was addicted to the thrill of superheroism as much as Miraclo, neglecting the other parts of his life. He warns Jack about going down the same path.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: At the start of the series Jack uses a Cosmic Rod which is about a foot long. After it is wrecked by a villain, he digs out from storage an older version Ted had built, the Cosmic Staff. There seems to be little difference except the staff is much larger.
• Briar Patching: How Aaron Bodine meets his end, when Adam Strange begs him not to press a button to "disable" his Zeta Beam. Since at the moment Opal is sealed within a shadow shield, the Beam attempts to teleport him and sends him at relativistic speeds against the shield.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Heavily implied between the Mist's children Nash and Kyle in issue 3.
• Cain and Abel: Matt and Barry O'Dare end up killing each other.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Mason for the very, very patient Charity.
• Card-Carrying Villain:
  • The Mist revels in his cackling supervillainy.
  • The Mist's daughter takes up his mantle, and seeks to refine herself into as dark a villain as he.
• "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" Debate: In Starman #13, one of the Mist's goons has a bizarre conversation with the captive Mikaal about who the best big screen Philip Marlowe was. He then admits that he once murdered a man for daring to claim it was George Montgomery.
• Ceiling Cling: Mason O’Dare does this in one issue to get the drop on a couple of thugs sent to murder Charity.
• City of Adventure: Opal City.
• Civvie Spandex: Jack's superhero suit consists of a leather jacket, a pair of goggles and whatever else he happens to be wearing at the time.
• Clear My Name: Jack and Captain Marvel are called on to clear the name of the aging Bulletman, who stands accused of being a Nazi agent during World War II.
  • This is why the Pirate Ghost is watching and helping Starman; he says he wasn't guilty of the crime he was accused of.
• C-List Fodder: Several C-list superheroes took on the Mist and died horribly, just to establish Mist's cred.
• Closed Circle: The final arc has a shield placed around the whole city to keep anyone but the heroes of the story out.
• Comically Missing the Point: This exchange:
  Jack: This one isn't about collectibles but it's the same kind of thing. I'm in a book store ... for new books. I've gone a little bit crazy and I'm about to spend a couple of hundred bucks. I murmur under my breath "money's too tight to mention". Now the guy behind the register, he hears this. He looks at me, nodding his head knowingly like we're in some "club of cool" together. He says, "Yeah, Simply Red" like it's a password, and now we do the secret handshake. And I'm thinking "Simply Red"? Lame English band. More soul at a polka convention. And the book store guy thinks he's on some kind of inside loop with that.
  Sadie: That's the smuggest thing I ever heard. A guy tries to be nice and you stand there hating him just because he hasn't heard of the Valentine Brothers. You're like my ex-boyfriend. He was that way about authors. He'd deliberately drop obscure quotes and references. He'd take over conversations at parties. But none of what he read was for the love of it. His knowledge was like a weapon. Don't tell me you're like that. I don't want another jerk. I've had... Hey, why are you smiling?
  Jack: Because you've heard of the Valentine Brothers.
• Continuity Porn: Perhaps the poster child for this trope in DC comic books. Notably, not only does Starman rely on the greater DC canon, but it has its own strong internal canon as demonstrated in the last few arcs, wherein every Chekhov's Gun is set off.
• Continuity Snarl: Hawkman’s snarl is lampshaded by Charity in issue #2: “And a winged man will come to Opal City. He knew your father, too... and yet he didn’t. That point... it’s vague. Even I can’t make sense of it.”
• Converse with the Unconscious: After Grundy is nearly killed, Ted finds himself watching over him, reflecting out loud about how conflicted he feels taking in the person who killed his friend and protegé Skyman, but who seems child-like and innocent now. Grundy's not actually unconscious.
• Cool Old Guy: Both Ted Knight and Wesley Dodds qualify in spades.
• Cowboy Cop: Played with with Mason O'Dare. He won't break the law, but he will endanger himself pulling crazy stunts to get a collar.
• Crash-Into Hello: Jack's first encounter with Sadie is when he bumps into her at a carnival. She chews him out and is gone in two panels.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Shade, ultimately.
• Dating Catwoman: Averted. Jack's archenemy, the Mist, raped him and gave birth to his son without his knowledge. She frequently talks like they have a Foe Romance Subtext relationship going on, but he knows full well how disturbed she is and just wants to get his child away from her.
• Dead Guy Junior: Nash names her and Jack's son after her brother and his father.
• Dead Person Conversation: Every real-time year included one issue where Jack talked to his brother, who died in the first issue. Later conversations would also include other deceased DC characters, including their father Ted.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Shade.
  • Jack gets in plenty of riffs of his own as well.
• Deal with the Devil
  • Merritt made a deal with a demon to feed people to him, which has kept him alive for over 150 years.
  • All three of the main characters Merritt traps in his demon's poster offer their souls to save the others, and inadvertently defeat him with their selflessness.
  • Doctor Phosphorous made a deal with Neron to gain better control over his powers.
  • Ragdoll is revealed to have made a deal with Neron to restore himself to youth and health once more.
  • The Mist makes a deal with Neron to have his mind restored to him.
• Death Equals Redemption:
  • After dying, Kyle meets Jack in the afterlife, and is perfectly sane and stable, explaining that his former life of evil was purely a result of his horrible upbringing, and apologizes to Jack for making him a killer.
  • After her father shoots her, Nash experiences a moment of clarity and calmly hands Kyle Theo over to Jack before dying.
  • The Mist himself comes to realize that his life as a villain was pointless, and shares a last handshake with Ted before they die.
  • David Knight was something of a pompous ass in life. After his tenure as the Starman of 1951, and a stint in the afterlife, he's a lot nicer.
• Death by Origin Story: Played with. David Knight dies in the first issue after doing nothing of note (apart from fighting the Will Payton Starman), but Jack takes an entire story arc before taking up the mantle. David becomes more interesting after his death, popping up in the annual "Talking With David" stories and even getting his own story arc at the close of the series.
• Death Is Cheap: Jack's back before the end of one issue via a body made out of new body parts.
• Declining Promotion:
  • Mason O'Dare has frequently refused to be promoted above a beat cop, like his father, but Charity reveals that he'll be a plainclothes officer within five years. Probably because of their kid.
  • Another example is revealed to have occurred between Ted Knight and Sylvester Pemberton, the original Star-Spangled Kid and later Skyman, in the past. After Sylvester has helped to protect Opal City from the Icicle and after Ted has subsequently had another argument with his wayward son Jack, Ted asks Sylvester to take his Cosmic Rod and become the next Starman (This was during the time that David was off at college and too busy to think of being Starman and Jack simply wasn't interested). Notably, Sylvester, who had even mentioned earlier in the story that he wasn't a kid anymore and should be called Starman refuses. With Sylvester ensuring Ted that there will be another Starman one day, his reasoning seems to be that he thinks it'd be more appropriate for Jack to take on the mantle, which he eventually does years later.
• Depraved Bisexual: While in prison early in the series the Mist seduces both guards and fellow (female) prisoners, just to get them under her thumb.
• Didn't See That Coming: Nash didn't realize her father planned to destroy Opal City (with her and his grandson still there) by committing suicide and setting off the nuke wired to him. And she really didn't expect him to shoot her.
• Dirty Cop:
  • Matt O'Dare starts out as reluctant one of these but changes his life after learning that he's the reincarnation of Wild West hero Scalphunter.
  • Barry O'Dare turns out to have been one of these, as well, with no reluctance whatsoever.
• Distaff Counterpart: Averted with Stargirl, who only took the name after Jack retired; she was Star-Spangled Kid when they first met.
  • Played straight with the one-off "Stargirl" of the 1940s, who was Ted Knight's girlfriend.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male:
  • Averted with the revelation that The Mist raped Jack while he was unconscious, which is very unsettling for him. A lot of his angst comes from the fact that The Mist also got pregnant and plans to raise the child to become a villain, but the rape angle isn't played lightly either.
  • Also averted in Mikaal's past, which he initially can't remember. He spent part of that time in the possession of a wealthy woman who used him for sex. We only get a glimpse of it, thankfully, but it's definitely presented as a violation.
• Duel to the Death: At the climax of the first story arc, The Mist’s son Kyle insists on an aerial battle against Jack to settle things once and for all.
• Dying as Yourself: Jediah Rikane became a power-mad tyrant and tried to kill his old friend Prince Gavyn, but as Gavyn burns him to death he seems to finally snap out of it. His last words: "Long live Prince Gavyn." He's even smiling while he says it.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Having contracted a fast-acting cancer from exposure to Dr. Phosphorus's powers, Ted Knight decides he'd rather go out saving the city one last time.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Jake Benetti hates the nickname the cops gave him. Unfortunately, "Bobo" stuck.
• Emotion Eater: Bliss is an incubus who feeds on suffering, and especially likes the flavor of the suffering of "special people" (circus freaks).
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Louie Soul, aka No Mercy, was a psychopathic murderer whose relationship with his son switched between loving and abusive. Nevertheless, Frankie Soul is obsessed with avenging him.
• Evil Counterpart: The Nimbus family to the Knight family. The aging former supervillain Kyle Nimbus serves as a dark counterpoint to the aging former superhero Ted Knight, his son Kyle dies shortly after taking up the mantle of "The Mist" from his father (just like David Knight), and his daughter Nash struggles to live up to her father's legacy after taking over for her deceased brother (just like Jack). Lampshaded when Nash tries to toy with Jack by telling him that they're the same.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • This seems to be what Simon Culp suffers from in regards to The Shade from the very beginning, as he never gives a reasonable explanation for why he hates Shade and seems to have despised the man from the very start. This is even though, at the time they met, Shade was a simple, if prominent, businessman with a family who hadn't wronged Culp in any way. Then again, Culp is also Ax-Crazy, as evidenced by his own admission of having killed over 20 people long before he ever gained his Casting a Shadow abilities.
  • The Mist doesn't kill Culp to serve any greater plan—he just really hates midgets.
• Eviler than Thou: Double Subverted. For all her talk of becoming a brilliant villain, it seems like Nash is reduced to a mere lackey for Culp...until it turns out she and her father The Mist were playing him. But suddenly The Mist reveals his plans to destroy all of Opal City, Nash and her son included, and then shoots her once he convinces her to give him her gun.
• Evil Smells Bad: The Mist's...mists...smell like stale flowers.
• Face Death with Dignity: Ted Knight convinces the Mist, who is in the middle of a Villainous Breakdown, to stand up and do this alongside him.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Jediah Rikane, once one of Prince Gavyn's most loyal allies, found the taste of power he got after from marrying Lady Merria to his liking and quickly became a tyrant.
  • Medphyl, former Green Lantern, sides with Rikane in exchange for a planet of his own.
  • Barry O'Dare is offered a place in Culp's organization, and readily accepts.
  • The Mist had been a soldier in World War I, and earned a medal for his bravery.
• Famous Ancestor:
  • Mikaal is known in the 30th Century for heroic exploits, and is an ancestor of Shadow Lass.
  • Ted Knight, ancestor to Farris Knight is regarded in the 853rd Century as one of Earth's greatest scientists.
• Fan of the Past: Jack, though many other characters share similar retro tastes, especially in movies.
• Fiery Redhead: The ‘’Secret Files & Origins” issue refers to Hope O’Dare as “the classic Irish spitfire.”
• Flying Firepower:
  • Ted Knight, the original Starman, used the Gravity Rod and later the Cosmic Rod/Staff which could fly, as well as absorbing and firing stellar energy.
  • Mikaal Tomas the current Starman, has a body which is specifically built for outer space. In addition to being able to fly and survive in a vacuum, he can project energy blasts with his Sonic Crystal.
  • Prince Gavyn of the Throneworld, known as Starman, used a staff which allowed him to channel his in-born power over cosmic energy to fly and fire the same stellar energy as Ted Knight utilized.
  • Will Payton basically inherited Prince Gavyn's powers.
  • David Knight: Starman II, used the Cosmic Rod after his father retired.
  • Starman III (Jack Knight) and Stargirl, used Ted Knight's Cosmic Staff.
  • Farris Knight uses the Quarvat, a mysterious device of unknown origin with amazing powers, two of which involve flight and energy projection.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Merritt's been absorbing people into his poster for over one hundred fifty years, and when his demon is defeated, all of them are restored to the modern world at once.
• Flashback: If we had a Loads and Loads of Flashbacks trope, this would qualify.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Ted Knight
• Foe Romance Subtext: After becoming the new Mist, Nash refers to Jack as "my love" several times. It's completely unrequited.
• Foregone Conclusion: In addition to the many examples of Foreshadowing, the third-person narrator occasionally flat-out tells us what will happen to Jack in the future, spoiling (as if there was any doubt) that he will survive any threats on his life. Just before a major turning point in issue #12, the narrator lists several future turning points Jack will experience, including the birth of his second child.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Etrigan appears to Ted Knight in 1944, and when the scientist in Ted refuses to believe he's a demon, Etrigan tells him of the hell he'll suffer when his involvement with the Manhattan Project bears fruition. The revelation of the supernatural might have compounded Ted's guilt and helped break him.
  • When we get a glimpse into Barry O'Dare's POV, we see that he thinks of himself as the Only Sane Man of the family, who never takes risks and has no taste for heroism or sticking his neck out. We get to see just how different he is from the other O'Dares during the Grand Guignol arc, when he joins Culp's takeover of Opal City and kills his brother Matt.
  • The cover of issue #17 has Charity performing a tarot reading. Jack's card is The Star, Matt O'Dare's card is The Hanged Man, reversed. The Star represents reprieve and renewed hope after a period of turmoil—Jack, after being kidnapped by Nash/Shade II and fighting his way out, has found his store, and runs into Sadie again after being dumped for good by his ex, Lucy. The Hanged Man, reversed, means that one is at a crossroads and has an opportunity to sacrifice their old outlook for something new. After receiving his vision of Scalphunter, Matt has decided to break with his dirty past, and takes the selfless action of entering Merritt's poster to try and stop its demon.
  • The betrayal of Medphyl foreshadows the betrayal of Barry O'Dare. Both were police (or the equivalent in Medphyl's case), both turned traitor when offered power and wealth, and both express their surprise at just how easy it was for them to accept.
  • During a conversation with his girlfriend about the different members of the O'Dare family, Jack admits that he likes pretty much all of them except maybe Barry, who never talks much.
  • Over the course of the series, numerous people, including himself, note some of the ways that The Shade has changed over the years. He's been violent, charismatic, Ax-Crazy, goofy, well intentioned, world destroying, etc. This is mostly chalked up to the fact that he's lived such a long life and has therefore had the time to go through many different personalities and changes. While this is certainly one reason for his many changes, it also makes a bit more sense when it's revealed that he's been Sharing a Body with Simon Culp for over 30 years and that Culp has, without Shade's knowledge, been in control of their shared form at numerous points in time.
• Formerly Fat: Barry O'Dare.
• Former Teen Rebel: Jack, owing to admitted neglect on Ted's part. As a youth he got into trouble with the police numerous times, and even broke into a pharmacy at one point (implying a drug problem). Although he's hardly strait-laced as an adult, he's mostly grown out of it (and matures further throughout the series).
• Fusion Dance: Prince Gavyn was apparently killed, but his essence actually crossed space to reach Earth, where it became a mysterious beam of light that hit Will Payton. At first, it seemed like a Power Booster type where Will Payton received cosmic powers at the cost of Gavyn's existence, but it turns out to be more of a Composite, with Will Payton having been killed on impact and an amnesiac Gavyn taking his body and memories as his own. Probably. They're still working it out.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Ted again.
• Gentleman Adventurer: The Shade notes that Merritt's exploits over 150 years of life would be quite admirable...if it weren't for that whole "feed people to the demon in my poster" thing.
• Ghost Pirate: The Black Pirate.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Averted, as Jack's bomber jacket and aviator goggles are specifically meant to offset the odd conditions of flying with an extremely bright staff.
• Good Is Not Nice: Jack could be the poster boy, at least early on in the series. He is told, point blank, by the ex-girlfriend he is trying to romance again (using his becoming a superhero as evidence of his newfound maturity) that "You may be a hero, Jack Knight, but that still doesn't make you a nice person."
• Go Out with a Smile: Frankie Soul, having failed at avenging his father and knowing that Mikaal is going to kill him, just smiles, knowing he'd done his best.
• Grand Finale: Grand Guignol. It even has 'Grand' in the title! There's a few issues after it to tie up loose ends but it wraps up the story.
• Gravity Is Purple: Thom Kallor/Star Boy sometimes had purple effects show up when he used his gravity manipulation powers. His original costume was also primarily purple.
• Great Detective: Hamilton Drew.
• Happily Ever After
• Happily Married: At the end.
• The Greatest Story Never Told:
  • By Farris Knight's time, Jack's tenure as Starman is almost completely lost to history, and Ted is only remembered for his scientific accomplishments—then again, it is over 83,000 years into the future.
  • The full story of the Starman of 1951 goes unrevealed until Jack goes back in time and meets him.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: Barry O’Dare asks this of Matt and Hope after they tell him they suspect The Shade has a dirty cop in his pocket.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam:
  • Although he never became a villain, Mikaal Tomas went from a superhero to a frazzled, slightly unstable junkie, but was considering getting off the pills and changing his life...getting kidnapped, severely drugged, used a living collectible, then a sex slave, then finally a sideshow attraction put paid to that idea.
  • Inverted in "Bobo" Benetti's case. After deciding he couldn't hack it outside of jail, he decides to rob a bank so he can be sent back...only for said bank to be attacked by the Royal Flush Gang. One fight later, he's got a steady job protecting the bank and is on his way to a respectable life. So it's more like someone threw open the Heel-Face door and yanked him inside.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Matt O'Dare
  • Farris Knight, though believing himself genetically predisposed toward evil and working with Solaris, the Big Bad of his story arc, is inspired by Ted to redeem himself with a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Heel Realization: After his first heist, the Mist has a moment of contemplation and comes to the realization that his life would be defined not by his accomplishments as a scientist or a soldier, but by his evil deeds. He's absolutely thrilled.
  Mist: I'm a villain.
  Henchman: Err...yeah. We know, boss.
  Mist: I'm not sure that I did. Not until this moment, anyway.
• Heroic BSoD: As explained in flashbacks, Ted's response to his role in the creation of the atomic bomb. It forced him to live for years in a mental institution. Just when he was getting better, his first love Doris Lee was killed, making him worse than before. He finally snaps out of it after solving her murder and becoming Starman again.
• Hero Killer: The supervillain known as the Mist kills Jack's brother David who had only been Starman for a few days. The Mist's daugher, Nash kills three members of Justice League Europe in issue 38, they were: the Blue Devil, Amazing Man III, and the Crimson Fox (Constance D'Aramis).
• Heroic Resolve: Jack gets back up and flies off to Fawcett City, after taking numerous beatings from Captain Marvel, instead of going to receive care for his injuries, all because he thinks his father might be in danger.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Ted Knight, after learning he has cancer.
  • As well as Good Grundy dying (or becoming the thuggish villain Grundy we're more familiar with) after saving people from a collapsing building.
• Hidden Depths: One of Jack's defining traits. Most people dismiss him as a snarky hipster with zero ambitions, but he's actually an insatiably curious bookworm with an encyclopedic knowledge of literature and cinema, he can be amazingly hard-working when he sets his mind to something (he once learned Japanese just so he could read a jeans catalogue, for example), and he has a surprisingly refined speaking style in his inner monologue.
• Historical In-Joke: Mikaal claims to have inspired the David Bowie classic Rebel Rebel. Wait... no.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Although the Cosmic Staff has many powers, Jack spends the first half of the series relying entirely upon its flight and energy blasts, at first because he didn't know it could do anything else, and later because he felt that using them would be imitating his father too much. For the fight with Captain Marvel, though, he pulled out all the stops and barely delayed The Captain. He starts using the other abilities more often after that.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: The Red Bee looks upon his life this way. Being a superhero meant a great deal to him, but no matter how he tried he never got recognition, and he was killed before he could do anything great.
• I Hate Past Me: The newly-resurrected Grundy is absolutely disgusted by reminders of his kind past self.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Jack, at first.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Mikaal spends his fight with Grundy trying to get through to the good Grundy he knew, but this reborn Grundy isn't having it—until he suddenly dives to save Mikaal from a sniper's shot, sacrificing his life without being able to explain why.
• Important Haircut: As his memories start to come back, Mikaal goes from, well, a mullet to something more like he wore in the 70s, complete with sideburns.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Some of the O’Dares demonstrate this. Mason, looking down at a hostage situation from atop a three-story building, jumps off the building, bounces off an awning, and shoots the criminals dead as he’s flying through the air.
• In a Single Bound: "Bobo" Benetti can do this thanks in a somewhat limited fashion thanks to his abilities.
• Inadequate Inheritor: David Knight was a good son, who idolized his father, but he was never meant to be Starman, and Ted knew it.
• I Need You Stronger: At the end of the "Sins of the Child" arc, Nash has Jack at gunpoint, but declines to shoot him. Her reason is that they're both only starting their careers (his as a superhero, hers as a supervillain), so it's not fitting for her to kill him just yet. Once they've both reached their peak, then she plans to kill him.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence:
  • Ted Knight and Dinah Lance teamed up on several cases, and eventually the thrill of fighting side-by-side led to other (extramarital, for both of them) thrills as well.
  • Mikaal and Komak's psychic battle in 1977 has many elements of this.
• Irony: Terry Sloane notes that in spite of being a genius Renaissance Man, who could master any skill almost instantly, he was somehow never able to make it big as a superhero.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: David Knight broke up with his girlfriend because of this, even though she was aware and accepting of the risks.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: After Good Grundy dies, Jack and his allies enter his mind to try and bring him back before one of his evil selves can take over. After a brawl against those evil selves, it turns out to have been All for Nothing. Cyrus Gold (the original personality) prefers being evil and Good Grundy doesn't really want to fight himself.
• Just Following Orders: Captain Marvel says this word for word to explain his hunt for Bulletman when the latter is being accused of treason by the press.
• Kitsch Collection: While on one of his buying trips, Jack Knight buys a collection of carnival glass off a creepy old farmer. The farmer says that the collection belonged to his late and, since she died, he has taken to every so often shooting a piece of it with his shotgun. Jack leaves wondering exactly how the wife died.
• (Jack) Knight In Sour Armor: To put it mildly, Jack has a very caustic personality at the start of the series, though not nearly so much as in his youth.
• Large Ham: Shade, normally a quiet Combat Pragmatist, practiced in a mirror when planning to go against Flash or Starman in the Golden Age to get the voice and additional gestures right.
• Last of His Kind: Mikaal thinks he's this. It turns out he's actually the (next-to-)last of his specific tribe. He's a Talokian, a race that would eventually produce Shadow Lass of the Legion of Superheroes—in fact, she's one of his descendants.
• Legacy Character: Jack is actually the sixth or seventh Starman, depending on how you count; the series inspired many other DCU Legacy Characters.
  • Legacy characters is the main theme of the series, and a lot of the action is driven by Jack interacting with all of them, even going out into space and back in time to do so.
• Lemony Narrator: There are two. Jack narrates most of his own scenes in a stream-of-consciousness way, often getting derailed by thinking about his favorite movies, music, and collectibles, while other scenes use a third-person narrator who comments on the action and sometimes spoils future stories.
  Narrator: I suppose by now, you might wonder if Nash has a second name. Don't bother wondering. You'll never know.
• Let's You and Him Fight:
  • In this case, against Captain Marvel. Needless to say, Jack is horrendously overmatched, even after the fight forces him to tap into some of his staff's more obscure powers that he had never bothered with before.
  • Mikaal mentions that when he first met Alan Scott, Scott thought he was part of a criminal gang that painted themselves blue to pretend to be aliens and rob banks. He and Scott therefore fought before realizing the mistake and teaming up to track down the gang.
• Lightning Bruiser: "Bobo" Benetti has overall superhuman physical abilities, including speed and agility, sufficient to go head-to-head with big-name heroes like the Alan Scott Green Lantern (and to wipe the floor with several lesser-knowns like Iron Munro).
• Limelight Series: For the entire Starman legacy, but most of all for the Shade, who got two minis of his own as a result - a four-issue one during the series' run, and a twelve-issue one as part of DC's big 2011 relaunch.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Charity's fortune-telling place. Subverted, as she tells Jack she moved in normally.
  • There's also the storefront Jack eventually moves his own store, Knight's Past, into. He swears he never saw it before when he first sees it.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: Merritt and (usually) The Shade think so.
• Logical Weakness:
  • The Shade's powers are somewhat weakened in the presence of flame or bright light, and he cannot use his powers at all if there is no shadow.
  • Solomon Grundy, as a plant-based being, is greatly weakened by having weed-killers and similar toxins pumped into him.
• Love at First Sight: Mason and Charity. Though it was more love at second sight for Charity, since she foresaw it.
• Love Cannot Overcome: Sadie hates the danger Jack gets into, but thinks she could have handled it if it was just the two of them. After she discovers she's pregnant, however, she realizes she can't raise a family in that world and leaves Jack. Jack, after some deliberation, decides to give up being Starman and join her.
• Mad Bomber: The Infernal Mr. Pip is a merely a selfish, amoral mercenary at first. After getting caught in one of his own bombs thanks to Jack and Grundy, the dying Pip flips out and decides to take everyone with him. Everyone.
• Magic Feather: Although charged with cosmic energy, Prince Gavyn's staff was only a means for him to channel his powers more easily. The true power lay within him all along. Learning this allows him to turn the tables on Rikane, who had been using it to attack him.
• Meaningful Name: Ted Knight is a noble crusader who defends the weak from evildoers, as well as the progenitor of a proud legacy, and he passes his title to his eldest son. More subtly, David Knight is the handsome and charismatic heir to a noble legacy (evoking King David from The Bible), while Jack Knight is a snide and sardonic young man who's viewed as the rebel of his family (evoking the trickster hero "Jack" from English folklore).
• Milholland Relationship Moment: After Jack decides to retire as Starman, he meets his deceased father and brother one last time. With some trepidation he tells them that he plans to quit. Ted's response is basically to shrug and say that there would always be a Starman, no matter who, and when Jack expresses his surprise at how casual he sounded to reply that not everything had to be dramatic.
• Mind Hive: The Shade has unknowingly been one of these ever since his last battle with Culp.
• Mugging the Monster: René, a genius dwarf known as the "Pocket Encyclopedia", figured out that Culp was inhabiting the Shade's body, and demanded ten percent of his takings in exchange for silence. A shadow tentacle through one ear and out the other later and René found himself in need of a new sobriquet.
• Musical Issue: One of the "Talking With David" stories has Jack and David assume the role of pirates. The dialogue disappears for this segment, replaced by a pirate sea-chanty.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Mikaal's race was poised to conquer Earth with him being sent as an advance agent to weaken their defenses. He and his lover Lyysa both believed that conquering a planet of intelligent beings was wrong, but he tried to stop Lyysa from risking her life by taking action against it. When she was killed trying to steal a ship to warn Earth, he lashed out, and managed to eventually escape his planet in order to protect Earth from his race instead.
• Myth Arc: The series as a whole was written as such, with several mini-arcs as well.
• Never-Forgotten Skill: Jack learned Jujutsu years prior to the series, apparently on a lark, and then dropped it. When the series starts, he's able to take down multiple Mooks barehanded.
• New Media Are Evil: Stated by Solomon Grundy of all people (in one of his more intelligent incarnations), when he blames society’s changes in the Sixties on television.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Culp juuust had to eat Shade's favorite shadow imp.
• No Biochemical Barriers:
  • Referenced. By the 853rd century, food has become so pure and healthy that a cup of coffee from our time would probably not kill the drinker, but it would certainly make them quite sick.
  • Averted with Mikaal Tomas's species, that is, Talokian, which is affected more severely by chloroform and for whom herpes is effectively terminal cancer. They're also mentioned to have an inborn need to fight and conquer, which may be biological.
• No Bisexuals: Averted with Mikaal.
• No-Gear Level: The Mist kidnaps, drugs, and rapes Jack, takes his clothes and his gear, and forces him to fight through a maze full of mooks. He succeeds.
• Not Afraid to Die:With her brother-in-law's gun at the back of her head, Faith O'Dare looks her husband in the eyes and tells that that she loves him and to do what he needs to do.
• Not Quite Dead:
  • After Ragdoll threatened the loved ones of Starman and his allies, Ted Knight blasted him—he thought—to death, and spent over a decade feeling guilty about it afterward. However, Ragdoll barely survived, albeit in a terrible state.
  • Culp's ally Crusher beats a restrained "Bobo" Benetti to death, but in a few hours he comes back to life and breaks free.
• The Nth Doctor: Solomon Grundy's Resurrective Immortality is shown to have this as a side effect. Each time he comes Back from the Dead, he comes back with a different appearance and level of physical power, and with a different aspect of Cyrus Gold's original personality rising to the fore. Since Gold was an awful human being who enjoys using Grundy's power to hurt people, this means that kindly, gentle Grundies (like the one seen in this series), are few and far-between.
• Occult Detective: Very few of Hamilton Drew's cases actually involved the supernatural, but this is what he's remembered best for, much to his chagrin.
• Officer O'Hara: The O’Dares, obviously (going back generations).
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Bobo references an incident wherein he somehow managed to get away from Doctor Fate, of all people. Sure it was with only fifty bucks left from his heist and the skin of his teeth, but still, Doctor Fate.
• The Old Convict: After spending thirty years in jail for killing his wife and her lover, "Bobo" Benetti has doubts about being able to live in the outside world.
• Older Than They Look:
  • After the JSA was subjected to weird timey-junk during a mission, they all began aging extremely gracefully, to the point where they would still be active superheroes in their golden years while physically being literally half they age they should be. After the time energy was stolen from their bodies during Zero Hour, they all instantly aged rapidly, but Ted Knight less so than some of the others. He ought to be around eighty-something, but physically he's in his early sixties at worst.
  • Jack also apparently looks a good deal younger than he actually is, though the difference isn't actually spelled out.
  • Bobo Benetti notes that in his seventies, he looks like he's in his fifties, and still has the same body he had in his thirties.
  • Mikaal Tomas doesn't seem to have changed in the past twenty years.
  • Merritt allowed himself to age until he hit an age he felt respectable, about 40, then stopped afterward.
  • The Shade hasn't aged a hair since the 1800s.
• Once a Season: The annual "Talking With David" stories, where Jack speaks to his dead brother's spirit.
• Once Upon a Time: In the first annual, The Shade is telling some children a story. He begins with “All right, then. On the planet – “ A little girl interrupts him and says he has to start the story ‘’properly’’. He realizes what she means, and begins with the trope.
• Only Mostly Dead: During the last arc Bobo Benetti appears to have been killed—and even receives a quick vitals check from a villain who says he's dead—until his healing abilities bring him back from the brink.
• One-Winged Angel: Bliss, when he attacks Jack, takes on a large, demonic, green-skinned form.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Culp once killed a member of the Ludlow family to save The Shade’s life, because he wanted to be the one to kill Shade.
• Orgy of Evidence: When the police find a number of crime scenes doused in remnants of The Shade’s shadow powers, Elongated Man finds it unlikely that The Shade actually committed the murders because he’d have to be pretty stupid to make it so obvious.
• Outlaw Couple: The Bodines, who are a shout-out to Natural Born Killers.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Shade's powers explicitly come from a source outside that of supernatural forces such as magic, worked perfectly well when the Genesis event depowered everyone else, and render him immune to being converted into a Black Lantern.
• Passing the Torch:
  • Just prior to the series, Ted handed the mantle to Starman to his older son David despite knowing all along that it was always Jack who was truly meant to hold the title. After David's death, Jack reluctantly takes on the role of Starman.
  • The Mist intended to pass his mantle to his son Kyle, but upon Kyle's death, his daughter Nash grabs the torch for herself.
  • In the far, far future, the mantle and history of Starman are rediscovered by Farris Knight's great-grandfather, who passes it to his son, who passes it to his daughter, who passes it to Farris who never asked for it.
  • In the final issue, Jack passes the cosmic rod to Courtney Whitmore, who becomes Stargirl.
• Past-Life Memories:
  • Remembering his former life as Scalphunter is what prompts Matt O'Dare's Heel–Face Turn.
  • On a less story-significant note, Jack apparently has occasional dreams of being a spy in the Napoleonic Wars named Rosa.
• Police Are Useless: Averted with the O'Dares, a family of cops that assist Jack. They start by capturing the Mist while Jack fights the Mist's son, and they keep that level of competence for the entire series.
• Polyamory: Mikaal engaged in a relationship with a guy and a girl in the 70's. It ended rather decisively. The girl, while sleeping with random guys for their drugs/money picked up one of Mikaal's old foes, a villain named No Mercy, and Mikaal walked in on them. During their fight, the other man in the relationship showed up and got killed by No Mercy, who Mikaal blasted out a window.
• Power Crutch: Prince Gavyn’s cosmic staff is revealed to merely focus the power within him.
• Power-Up Letdown: Doctor Phosphorous notes that his deal with Neron led to him having much more control over his radioactive powers, but also weakened them considerably.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Mikaal's race has a inborn psychological urge toward conquest and battle. Following his trip into space and the restoration of his memories, Mikaal's personality starts shifting toward this, much more than it had been even before he lost them.
• Psychic Powers:
  • The "octopus woman" from Bliss's circus is a telepath.
  • Charity is a fortuneteller who Jack befriends and often consults.
  • Charity mentions that Jack also has some psychic ability, though less so than hers.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The fourth issue involves a shady businessman wishing to acquire a so-called mystical Hawaiian shirt featuring a design said to open a gateway to heaven. His agent, Sands, originally planned to kill Jack for the shirt. When Jack explains he doesn't want the shirt knowing what it can do, Sands asks if he could simply buy it. Jack lets him do just that.
• Put on a Bus: Jack at the end of his series, at James Robinson's request.
• Rape Discretion Shot: When Jack is drugged into unconsciousness and raped by Nash, the second Mist, the scene occurs from his point-of-view as a very strange erotic dream. Additionally, while the implication is there in the initial scene, it isn't until many issues later that the series confirms the fact that a rape occurred with a Wham Line.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
  • On one of the (first) Mist's earliest jobs a bunch of people were put to sleep. He killed one of his own men who tried to molest one of the unconscious women.
  • Nash's rape of Jack is depicted as a horrifying example of her mental instability.
• "Rashomon"-Style:
  • Downplayed during "Sand and Stars" wherein, Wesley Dodds remembers his relationship with Ted Knight being more friendly than Ted does, and having been ruined pre-emptively by the first time they met. (A later flashback shows that Ted may have overlooked an incident that Wes feels cemented their friendship).
  • In "Taxicab Confessions", three different characters tell three different versions of the story of how Jack and Mikaal saved Starfire from space pirates. The issue takes place in the future, a couple of hundred years after the events recounted, so none of the storytellers have objective knowledge on what happened, though one of the stories certainly sounds more likely than the other two. "Rashomon"-Style is also used to do a little metafictional gag on DC continuity: there have been three different DC characters called "Starfire", so in each of the stories Jack and Mikaal rescue a different Starfire.
• Really Gets Around: Implied of Jack before he became Starman, and shown with Barry O'Dare. In Jack's case it shows what a shallow person he used to be. In Barry's case it makes him look like a sleaze...which makes it foreshadowing.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Jack receives an utterly blistering one from Ted after he is attacked by Kyle, David's killer, and Kyle gets away.
• Red Skies Crossover: The cosmic rod fails in one issue due to the Genesis event... and it is never spoken of again.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Subverted in-series. As part of Jack's original bargain to take up his father's job as the town superhero, Ted had to agree to find applications for the cosmic energy he had discovered and harnessed apart from making weapons. By series end, Ted had apparently patented a number of technologies that would revolutionize the world... but the idea never quite took in the shared universe.
• Reincarnation: Used in one or two cases, depending on how you count it. Matt O'Dare was the DC Western hero Scalphunter and would later go on to be reincarnated as Thom Kallor aka Starboy of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Octavia, the tentacled woman from Bliss’s freak show. He took sadistic pleasure in tailoring specific torments for his freaks, such as dressing up a Jewish dwarf as a Nazi. He made Octavia, who was self-conscious about her physical form, wear a tiny string bikini so she felt more exposed.
• RetCon: If you want to keep track of them all, you'll need a scorecard. Many of them were Author's Saving Throws to redeem older characters.
  • Probably the most notable was the retconning of The Shade, an old Flash villain, who was revealed to have been not so villainous after all, and who would eventually turn into an actual hero. The reimagined Shade was so popular he got two mini-series of his own.
  • There was also a hint from fortune-teller Charity that Jack would someday meet an old friend of his father's. The hint was originally meant to refer to Hawkman but Robinson's plans to revitalize the character in Starman were sidelined. Charity even tells Jack later that their paths have changed and he might never meet "the winged hero" after all.
  • Sand and Stars more-or-less canonizes Sandman Mystery Theatre, and retcons out the period in which Sandman wore yellow and purple spandex. (It gets retconned back in later.)
• Retired Badass: The Shade notes that, seeing the "gentle scholar" of today, people often forget what a physical hero Ted Knight used to be. He can still get the job done when he needs to, though.
• Rip Van Winkle: At the conclusion of the “Demon Quest” storyline, the demon inside Merritt’s poster releases all the souls he’d collected for a century and a half. Those people then have to readjust to life in the future.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After the Tuesday Club blows up Brian "Scalphunter" Savage's offices, killing all his deputies but Carny O'Dare, he and Carny proceed to go on one of these, killing all fifty-seven members in one night. Too bad for him, there were actually fifty-eight.
• Room Full of Crazy: The Mist's jail cell has messages like "Jack is to blame" and "Die Starman" scrawled on the wall.
• Satellite Love Interest: Sadie has no character outside of her relationship with Jack and worry about her brother.
• Science Hero: Ted Knight, who can still use his knowledge to pull off an Indy Ploy when cornered by the new Mist.
• Secret Test of Character: In the “Demon Quest” storyline, the demon inside Merritt’s poster offers Jack, The Shade, and Matt O’Dare the chance to trade their souls for the souls he’s collected over the past hundred and fifty years. Each of them accepts, but he reveals that actually he can’t make the deal, since they all did so selflessly.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Shows up quite a bit, especially with Jack. At one point he compares the original JSA to the Mercury Seven.
  • This even happens in Jack's internal monologues, where he ponders how he always equated maturity with enjoying the musical numbers in Marx Brothers movies that weren't Chico and Harpo goofing around with the instruments.
• Series Continuity Error: When he first appears, the career criminal with a hate-on for Mikaal Tomas is called Frankie Soul, but in his next-to-last appearance, the narration calls him "Louie", the name of his father, instead.
• Sharing a Body: During the Grand Guignol arc it's finally revealed that this is the situation between Shade and Simon Culp and that it has been since World War II. This is used to then explain previously mentioned incidents where The Shade was a little off in comparison to how he usually is. That time he tried to destroy the world? The time where he appeared to be a Cloud Cuckoolander? All Culp.
• Sherlock Homage: Hamilton Drew.
• Shout-Out: More than a few. One example: the "Powdered Toast Man" graffiti and drawing of Ren on a lamppost at the end of issue 1.
• Shrinking Violet: Nash, for much of the first arc — until Jack kills her brother and she becomes The Mist.
• Sidelined Protagonist Crossover: The Jack Knight Starman series was revived for one issue as a Blackest Night crossover. However, the main character of the book was The Shade, as Jack had retired from being a superhero.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: It turns out Farris Knight feels this way, seeing no meaning in his role as a hero or the legacy he inherited, save the money and women it can get him. Meeting Ted Knight awakens his idealism.
• Smokescreen Crime: The "Infernal Devices" storyline sees Mr. Pip committing a series of bombings across Opal City, leaving the heroes and the police baffled about his motivation. The epilogue reveals that Pip was hired to kill a man's wife; the other bombings were done to obscure the real motive and avoid having Pip's crimes traced back to the man who hired him.
• Sophisticated as Hell: At one point two gangsters have a profanity-laced argument about which is the better Stephen Sondheim musical. One argues for the "cohesion of words and music" of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, while the other supports the "resonant narrative purity" of Into the Woods. While gunning them down during his Heel–Face Turn, Matt O'Dare vouches for the superiority of Sunday in the Park with George.
• Spider-Sense: Mikaal's sonic crystal could detect impending danger in his debut issue. It's unclear whether or not it can still do so.
• Split Personality: The Shade and Culp.
• Stable Time Loop: Farris Knight's great-grandfather discovers the mysterious Quarvat when it slams into the asteroid on which he's stranded, and uses it to become Starman. As Farris is battling Solaris, the evil sun lets loose a parting blast that separates him from the Quarvat, sending it back in time for his great-grandfather to discover.
• Starfish Language: How Mikaal's language and Kryptonian are represented.
• Star Power: The entire point of Ted's research that enabled him to build the Cosmic Rod and its derivatives. It's also hinted that the power-wielded by each Starman/Girl is a unique variant of a unified source, not unlike Marvel's Power Cosmic split amongst various beings.
  • In a crossover with Batman and Hellboy, a group of neo-Nazis build a machine to collect power from the stars in order to awaken an Eldritch Abomination.
• STD Immunity: Inverted. Turns out that for Mikaal's race herpes is a terminal, equally-incurable disease. Komak, who had come to Earth to kill Mikaal in the 70's, contracted it and chose to confront Mikaal in mutually-agreed mental duel to the death rather than the slow lingering fate that awaited him.
• Summon Magic: Although the Shade can use his shadow powers in the form of bolts and tendrils, he has a fondness for conjuring demonic-appearing entities. One of them in particular, Smudge, is a sidekick of sorts.
• Super Hero Origin: The first arc, naturally, plus several in Flashbacks.
• Super Smoke: Both Mists.
• Super-Strength:
  • Mikaal has it.
  • Solomon Grundy too, as usual.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: The Cosmic Rod/Staff can fire energy blasts, create force fields, levitate objects (including the user), project intense heat, make bright flashes, follow the user's mental commands and...be wielded like a club/quarterstaff.
• Teleporter Accident: The Zeta Beam works, not by disappear-in-one-place-reappear-in-another teleporting, but by actually shooting its subject across 25 trillion miles of space at Ludicrous Speed. Normally it's perfectly safe (no, really!), but when Opal City has an absolutely impenetrable force field around it, and the Bodines attack Adam Strange and his jury-rigged Zeta Beam device...well, let's just say it's a good thing we don't see exactly how Ms. Bodine became a widow.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Frankie soul feels this way about killing Mikaal Tomas since Mikaal killed his father. To the point of trying to assassinate him while he's fighting the reborn Solomon Grundy.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill:
  • Ted Knight blasts Ragdoll after the insane cult leader threatened the families of himself and his JSA friends, in a legitimate attempt to kill him which failed. Decades later, after Doctor Phosphorous received a major power-up and gave him fast-acting cancer, Ted tears out a chunk of pavement with the Cosmic Rod and smashes him into the ground. Although Phosphorous is brought back in a different comic, for all intents and purposes this was clearly intended to kill him off for good.
  • Jack kills the Mist's son during their fight by using his staff to incinerate him. Horrified, he swears never to kill again. Unfortunately, he had to kill Medphyll in self-defense.
  • Averted with Mikaal. After getting his powers and memories back, he has no qualms about killing those who threaten innocent lives. The ghost of David Knight is taken aback by this.
  • Adam Strange feels sick to his stomach after tricking Mr. Bodine into the above-mentioned Teleporter Accident, but they left him no choice.
• Thinking Up Portals: The Shade's powers let him do this.
• Time Travel: Several instances.
  • Jack and Mikaal travel across space (and time) to arrive in the 31st Century and team up with the Legion of Super-Heroes. Later in the same arc, they travel into the past and visit the planet Krypton, before it blew up.
  • Jack and his brother David, ripped from time before his death, by Doctor Fate are sent back to the year 1951 to help protect Opal City at a time when Ted Knight was still suffering from his breakdown after playing an important role in the development of the atomic bomb.
  • The Shade's powers let him do this, though it takes a while for him to find out.
• To Hell and Back: Jack, The Shade and Matt O'Dare do wind up going to one of DC's Hells at one point.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: "Bobo" Benetti was a Navy Diver who ran afoul of a floating mine during WWII. Waking up in the hospital with barely any injuries, he discovered his other superhuman physical powers shortly afterward.
• Un-Cancelled: Came back for one issue thanks to the Blackest Night event; Jack was absent and the story focused on the Shade and Hope O'Dare.
• Villainous Lineage: Farris Knight, the Starman of the 853rd Century mentions that there have been several evil Starmen by his time, and chalks it up to a latent strain of evil introduced into the Knight bloodline via Jack and Nash/Mist II's son. He's also including himself, as his life of pleasure and dissipation comes with the price of having to be Starman and he's made a deal with Solaris to get out of it.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: The Comic Book.
• What You Are in the Dark: Farris Knight, the Starman of the 853rd century, is a jaded burnout who was thrust into the role against his will and ultimately joined Solaris in his attempt to kill Superman, so that he could be freed from it. Confronting his ancestor Ted Knight, with the intention of killing him for starting the legacy, the old man asked Farris to look within himself and accept the good within his heart as well as the evil. It worked.
• Wham Shot: Culp finally making an appearance at the end of Starman #65, as he expels himself from Shade's body and introduces himself to the shocked onlookers.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Farris Knight has white hair, unlike the other Knights we see, and believes himself destined for evil.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Every few months the series did single-issue "Times Past" stories, usually fleshing out the backstories of the older characters; issue #11 shows us the story of how Ragdoll became a Charles Manson-like cult leader, which Ted had briefly mentioned a few issues earlier.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Mist again.
• Write Back to the Future: While in 1951, Jack hides a note explaining who he and David really are in one of Ted's journals. It's unclear how much detail he went into (Ted seems surprised by things you'd think Jack would have included), but it does explain some of his actions and statements throughout the series.
• Writing for the Trade: Lots of six-issue arcs.
  • Subverted with a lot of one-shots and smaller arcs thrown in. The trades pre-Omnibus were notoriously difficult to keep straight.
• You Killed My Father: Frankie Soul's father (a villain named No Mercy) died fighting Mikaal Tomas, and in spite of their complicated relationship, Frankie seeks to avenge him.

---

The Golden-Age Starman series provides examples of:

• Animorphism: One story involves a scientist who changes men into half-man, half beasts in order to make them better criminals. Starman himself is put through the process and ends up with a lion's head temporarily, though he's able to use the gravity rod to reverse the effects.
• Arch-Enemy: given the number of appearances and how seriously Starman treats him, the Light is clearly his Golden Age Arch-Enemy. The Mist is the runner up, and he would end up taking this role from the Silver Age on.
• Art Shift: The look of the series changes drastically several times. Jack Burnley's photo-like realism is replaced by Mort Meskin's cartoony art, and then back to a more realistic style, before ending with very simplistic, cartoony art.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Even without his gravity rod, Ted Knight is a capable threat to the villains as he is a formidable hand to hand fighter, as well as being exceptionally strong. Where a rich playboy like Ted learned to brawl like this is never explained.
• Gravity Master: Ted's gravity rod is the source of all his powers, and nullifying the pull of gravity is among the uses it has.
• Invisibility Cloak: the Mist uses his "inviso-solution", both for himself, his underlings, and his airplanes. In the case of the latter two, they're completely invisible except under the light of Starman's gravity rod. The Mist usually paints a cloak with the solution and leaves his head visible, resulting in the appearance of an old man's bony head with long hair floating on a cloud, hence his nickname.
• Loves My Alter Ego: the series plays with this a bit by having Doris occasionally compare Ted to Starman, and ask why he can't be as much of a man as Starman. She only does it a few times, and it could be just an attempt to make Ted jealous.
• Millionaire Playboy: Ted Knight is filthy rich. He has no job, went to an exclusive prep school, has a butler to drive him around, and is never once seen working. He's described as "wealthy playboy Ted Knight". Later on he's always seen doing something related to his astronomy hobby, but he clearly has all the time and funds that he needs to pursue that hobby.
• Playing Sick: Ted Knight uses this tactic constantly in order to ditch his fiancee Doris Lee, put on his Starman costume, and go see what new assignment FBI chief Woodley Allen has for him.
• Reckless Sidekick: For (thankfully) only one story, Starman gains a kid sidekick named Mike Muggins, a Brooklyn scrapper who refuses to go away. He almost gets them both killed halfway through the story, but in the end helps bag the crooks. It appears that he will become a regular, but that one story is his first and only appearance.
• Revival: An attempt was made in the Silver Age to revive Starman and Black Canary in the pages of the Brave and the Bold. Despite a couple of issues and some great Murphy Anderson art, the attempt did not catch fire.
• Secret Identity: Ted goes to great lengths to keep his identity as Starman a secret, even from his fiancee. Oddly, his face is completely visible while he's in costume, but neither Doris Lee nor Woodley Allen recognize Ted as Starman.
• Shrink Ray: This is the weapon of choice for the Light, the first of the two recurring supervillains Starman has to contend with in addition to a bevy of normal crooks. The Light reduces his victims to about a foot tall, Starman included, in order to extort money from them and to get revenge on the scientific community that scorned him.
• Star Power: The gravity rod draws its power from the stars, and can only be recharged at night. This leads to the occasional problem when it runs out during daylight, and Ted has no way to recharge it.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: In one All-Star issue, Starman is in South America trying to figure out how the Nazis are bypassing the guards on mines that are producing ore vital to the war effort. The Nazis have developed a drill tank, that lets them tunnel right into the mines and steal whatever they like, with no one the wiser until Starman came along.
• Super Hero Origin: Ted never gets one. He's already active and known to Chief Allen in his first story, and the series never bothers to tell us just how or why he decided to become a costumed mystery man.
• Superhero Sobriquets: Starman is often referred to as "the Man of Night", but occasionally other names pop up, such as the "Astral Avenger". He's even referred to once as "The Dark Knight", a nickname that now belongs pretty much entirely to Batman.
• Superheroes Stay Single: Averted. Ted has a steady girlfriend in his first story, and by the second story they're engaged. They remain so for the rest of the series. A wedding or breakup is never shown.
• Superheroes Wear Tights / Superheroes Wear Capes: As Starman, Ted wears a classic cape and tights superhero costume.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Ted's gravity rod can nullify gravity so Ted can lift heavy objects and fly, project intense heat for melting and cutting, deflect bullets, and various other things as the plot requires. The gravity nullification may account for some of Ted's feats of strength such as throwing criminals around as if they weigh nothing.
• Time Travel: In two different stories, the plot revolves around a time machine built by an older inventor being taken and used by criminals. The first involves the Light, Starman's arch-enemy, stealing a time machine to go into the future and return with future tech and armored men in order to pull off unstoppable crime sprees. The other involves some pretty dense thugs using the stolen time machine to find a historical genius to be their gang leader and help them pull off better crimes. They kidnap William Shakespeare, of all people.
  • An All-Star story involves Starman traveling 500 years into the future to help retrieve portions of a bomb defense formula. Another has him travel into the past to try and help a man redeem his life and make up for past mistakes. Starman deals with time travel linked crimes in his own series, but actually travels in time as a member of the JSA.
• Two-Fisted Tales: Like so many Golden Age heroes, Ted Knight is a man of action, using his fists and his brain (and good luck) as often as he uses his gravity rod. Many of the other staples of pulp storytelling appear over the course of the series, especially early on.
• Western Zodiac: Astrology becomes a theme of several stories once Alfred Bester takes over as writer from Gardner Fox. Generally either someone is letting his horoscope run his life, and Starman has to set him straight, or else some crooks are making use of faked horoscopes to commit crimes.
• What Does She See in Him?: In one story, Bill Baxter asks Doris Lee why she stays with Ted, when all he does is claim to be sick and ditch her any time something exciting happens. She responds that she just feels sorry for him. At other times she remarks that he's a lot of fun when he's not having one of his fainting spells, so presumably we only see the two of them at the worst possible moments, when Ted has to make up an excuse so he can go be Starman. Or Doris could be a Gold Digger, because Ted is loaded with money.

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