Profile: Starfire

Koriand'r, Starfire
First appearance: DC Comics Presents #26, 1980

Current status: looks like she’s joined Adam Strange on a space adventure!

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: following her sister Komand’r’s vicious attempt to put her to death in a gladiator-like battle, and betrayal of their home planet Tamaran, Koriand’r was sold into slavery, abused by the many slavemongers who kept custody of her, before being, along with the evil sister who’d betrayed her, subjected to an experiment by a race of alien scientists who performed a light-energy experiment upon the two of them that gave the two sisters their starbolt powers. In 1993, in the 100th issue of New Titans, Raven disrupted the wedding planned between her and Nightwing, injecting an influence into Starfire that made her decide to take a flight off into space.

What’s wrong with how this was done? There was nothing wrong with how Koriand’r’s origin was done, but there was with how the botched wedding was. It was just a needlessly nasty way of avoiding the possibility of having Dick Grayson and the princess of Tamaran tie the knot.

Was there anything good to come out of this? In the case of Starfire’s origin, it’s what helped build her character, as a girl who’d been violated, yet maintained a thick skin and managed to keep an optimistic viewpoint as the New Teen Titans and other DC superheroes gave her new hope on earth. And, it helped establish many stories involving her home planet, Tamaran.