Starman came late to the party.
Although DC’s Man of Night didn’t show up until three years into the superhero boom, he arrived with considerable fanfare in Adventure Comics 61 (April 1941).
And he would need it to stand out from the crowd. The month Starman debuted, he shared the newsstands with 42 other cover-featured superheroes.
Comics historian Ron Goulart observed that Starman was “…auspiciously launched in #61, getting the cover and the leadoff position. Starman, whose abilities derived from radiated starlight he collected by way of his gravity rod, was the joint effort of the prolific Gardner Fox and former sports cartoonist Jack Burnley.”
However, Burnley said that Fox did not write the first Starman story, although Fox and science fiction legend Alfred Bester wrote many of the other stories.
“The villain who had the most impact was Bester’s the Mist, a menacing character with an invisible body whose ugly head floated above a small misty cloud,” Burnley recalled. “The Mist’s ‘inviso-solution’ which turned his henchmen into faintly discernible shadowy figures made him a difficult foe.” The publisher clearly expected great things from Starman, and explicitly said so in ads that compared him to Superman and Batman. He was oversold, as it turned out.
Wealthy astronomer Ted Knight, as a caped, flying energy projector clad in red and green, bore a strong resemblance to his fellow Justice Society member Green Lantern, who earned a title devoted solely to his exploits in 1941.
The superheroes who debuted in 1941 and endured — characters such as Wonder Woman and Captain America — were more original conceptions.
“DC had a lot of hopes for Starman, but despite good scripts by Gardner Fox and splendid artwork by Jack Burnley, the character failed to seize the imagination of the readers,” Goulart wrote.
“(I)n the beginning, both Superman and Batman were drawn in a semi-cartoon style,” Burnley observed. “Starman was illustrated in a conservative, realistic style that didn’t excite the kids… Perhaps he was ahead of his time; he needed the older readers that would come later.”
Although his stories were smoothly professional, in 1941, the character verged on the generic. For example, Ted Knight’s pose as a cowardly weakling was long since covered by Sir Percy Blakeney, Don Diego de la Vega, and Clark Kent.
Starman was a character created by committee, and it showed.
He had a five-year run in Adventure Comics, taking over as cover feature from Hourman and Sandman in April 1941 but losing his cover spot to Manhunter and then the revamped Sandman a year later. His last appearance, in Adventure Comics 102 (Feb. 1946), made room for Superboy to move over from More Fun Comics. Starman also shared 16 adventures with the Justice Society in All-Star Comics.
In the 1960s, an attempt was made to revive Starman in two team-ups with Black Canary. Then three other DC characters appropriated his catchy name, one in 1976, another in 198,0 and yet another in 1988 (a movie alien even absconded with the name in 1984).
But arguably the most successful iteration of Starman wouldn’t be Ted Knight but his reluctant son Jack in a 1990s series by James Robinson that explored generational differences in the superhero genre. That Starman title ran 81 issues, plus specials.
Many of DC’s 1960s cartoon shows were narrated by Ted Knight, who became famous as anchorman Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It would have been weirdly amusing if he’d ever voiced Starman.
About Author
