Jab’s Builds! (Whomp 'Em! Plumbers Don't Wear Ties! ToeJam & Earl!)

[Ares]

STARFIRE IV (Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, aka Kory Anders)
Created By: Marv Wolfman & George Perez
First Appearance: DC Comics Presents #26 (Oct. 1980)
Role: Funny-Skinned Space Babe, Hot Amazon, Hot-Blooded Warrior, Miss Fanservice, The Good Girl
Group Affiliations: The Teen Titans, The Titans, The Royal Family of Tamaran, The Outsiders
PL 10 (190)

Look wise, I'd say those two are my overall favorites. The second one is just fan-service-y enough to pay tribute to the classic outfit while being moderately more sensible, missing just that iconic red gem to complete the look. Maybe some hybrid of both images.

Also Jab, on the odd chance you hadn't seen it, Starfire now has her own Sailor Moon style magic girl transformation sequence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFaHzCuYmLA

I've never really gotten the idea of Kory having a skirt tho. That just seems weird.

Complications:
Relationship (Dick Grayson)- Kori & Dick were desperately in love during their run on the Titans. Though Kori's bloodthirsty attitude often frightened Dick, and duty often kept them apart, they were nearly married. Things... happened, they split up, and they did that thing in comics where they just TEASE the relationship endlessly and never really get back together.

Yeah, I've said enough on this. Breaking them up was stupid, in other news, water is wet.

Relationship (The Royal Family)- Kori loved her parents (now deceased), and remains close with her brother Ryand'r of The Omega Men.
Responsibility (Tamaran)- Kori is one of fairly-few Tamaraneans left in the universe (after their homeworld blew up THREE FRIGGIN' TIMES). She will violently defend her remaining people.

Tamaran is tied with Xandar for "planet casually destroyed for drama because comic writers don't care about it". It's frankly a hilarious drinking game by this point. Even Krypton only blew up the one time.

And yeah, I'm not a fan of the phrase "Women in refrigerators", because it implies that it's some kind of intentionally sexist thing in comics that a character's supporting cast will have bad stuff happen to them to motivate the hero. News flash: bad things happening to someone the hero cares about is one of the oldest ways to create drama in fiction. It works especially well when people care about said supporting cast. It's especially important when the character is someone the hero has a romantic relationship. And when the majority of heroes are heterosexual men, that means that a lot of the most important people in their lives are women.

When it's a female hero, surprise surprise, the same thing happens. Her love interest will also get imperiled, traumatized or killed. Even the Wonder Woman film had Steve Trevor get "refrigerated" for her own character growth, and similar things have happened to her in the comics. Donna lost her ex-husband, Jesse Quick lost her dad, Katana lost her husband, etc.

And that's not even getting into children or other family members. Aquaman lost his son, Donna lost her son, Arsenal lost his daughter, Superman has lost his adoptive father, Tim Drake lost his actual dad, Peter Parker lost Uncle Ben, it goes on and on.

It's almost like bad things happening to a hero's loved one isn't gender specific and implying otherwise is disingenuous.

Starfire- Hard to Write... if you suck at writing:
-Ugh, that "do you want to have sex with me?" line, though. THAT IS NOT HOW STARFIRE FREAKING ACTS!!! Starfire is a creature of PASSION- yes, she takes lovers and junk, and she's obviously a sexual being (an early Titans issue would feature her & Dick in bed together, which did NOT happen a lot back in that era), but she doesn't just bang ANY DUDE- at worst, she's easy (as in, she falls in love quickly and lets loose from there). Never mind that both Nightwing and Jericho have a THOUSAND times as many bedmates as Kori ever did. This also reflects her warrior nature- of all the Titans, she was the one most likely to fight for the kill (a realist trained in actual warfare, she didn't "get" the whole "letting your enemies live" thing, and had to be restrained by Dick)- quick to love, quick to anger. Kori was a devoted, somewhat "innocent" character, but was often extremely dangerous as well.

Pretty much. I've never really understood the idea of a character being "hard to write", because either they have a large body of work you can research, or they have relatively few appearances. Regardless of which one, either there are core consistencies that you can pick up on, or the character is written inconsistently from one writer to the next. If the former, you can gain an understanding of the character and figure out how to make them work for you. And if not, then you're free to make them however you want and no one will complain.

If you do the latter and people are complaining? Then the character had some core consistencies that you should have picked up on and were just very lazy.

Starfire is like you said: passionate. Everything she does has an intensity to it. She feels her emotions strongly, love to her friends, intense love to her romantic partners, and anger to her enemies.

-Her looks is crazy-awesome as well, and REALLY unusual when you think about it. I mean, orange skin and PURPLE armour? With a giant batch of hair that was quite often the size of her whole body? And yet it actually WORKED- in part because Perez made her Part-Fanservice/Part-Innocense, giving her cleavage and a ton of skin (the outfit actually looks uglier when covered up- like in the Grayson-era Titans, but looks worse when it goes Full-Bore Streetwalker, like in the "Nu52"), but also gave her huge eyes, a wide smile, rounded features (GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER I MEANT HER FACE... but also she earned the "so round, so firm, so fully-packed" comment from Changeling, now that I mention it), and more. Perez even went as far as to use her frontal-bangs to curl up over top of her eyes, obscuring her eyebrows- these curls meant that she always looked like her eyebrows were always up in child-like innocense. Comparatively, she could still bring them DOWN when angry, giving her a much more fearsome appearance.

This is why Perez is the man and one of the top contenders for Best Comics Artist Ever. To me, his only competition are guys like Jack Kirby and Alan Davis, as well as Ivan Reis when he's really on his A-Game.

And while no one could replace George, when the Titans got Tom Grummett to replace him, I don't feel like it was too much of a step down:

Starfire's Stats:
-Kory's the long-range powerhouse of the team, usually modifying her +10 Starbolts with Power Attack and doing unholy amounts of damage with them. She's also great in melee, can fly in space, and, in one of the great forgotten powers of comics, is remarkably strong. She's listed as superhuman officially, but she barely EVER showcases it- despite me having read something like 150 comics featuring Kori, I've seen her use actual Super-Strength MAYBE twice. I mean, how does that even HAPPEN? There's actually a Strength-Feat back in the day (when she picked up a giant Spear and slew a Giant with it), but another was never seen until the Modern Era- her Who's Who bio AND the Technis Imperative bio both left it out! At PL 10, Starfire is even with her teammates, though seems stronger off-and-on after the 2000s- she was clearly the same as everyone else in The Titans, but all of a sudden she seemed PL 11-12-ish in other books. DC is weird that way.

Yeah, it's weird how some people feel Starfire's stats are all over the map. She almost never uses her super strength, but then out of nowhere she'll get into a fist fight with Wonder Woman. It was even weirder on the cartoon where she was clearly the team's strongest person, basically twice as strong as Cyborg, making her essentially the team powerhouse.

It worked out better in the comics where Donna was clearly the team powerhouse strength wise, Starfire had the most powerful energy blasts, and Vic was the tech guy with some versatility, having solid strength and energy powers. Having her around the Spider-Man strength level seems a decent fit, where she can do some heavy lifting if Donna or Vic aren't there. She should really be all about blasting stuff and maybe flying in for an energy amped punch, but Donna and Dick should be the real close-in fighters.

[Ares]

Also, congrats Jab on getting to 1000 pages!

[catsi563]

OMG ! That is TOOOO funny !

My favourite iteration of Kory is from the Justice League vs Teen Titans animated movie recently... The more mature version, leader...

yeah that's my favorite version as well the animated team really nailed the look and Kari Wahlgren nails her voice and personality imo

[Thorpocalypse]

Look up “finger stripes” online. I dare you.

NIGHTWING (Dick Grayson, aka Robin II, Batman III)

Advantages:
No he doesn't get Attractive read below

A) Wasn't he Robin numero uno?

B) Dick Grayson is Attractive to me and that's all that matters, hater!

[greycrusader]

The (Teen) Titans...yeah, another example of DC absolutely blowing the chance to build a multi-generational team-book franchise the way Marvel has with the Avengers, X-Men, and even Fantastic Four (which is mostly a nothing book now in terms of influence, but had a forty year run). TitI remember just how red-hot the Titans were at one time, and how AMAZINGLY quickly the book declined in quality and sales. Now, the X-Men has had its share of terrible writing periods (Chuck Austen and Scott Lobdell, anyone?) but by then the characters were already popular, well-established, and (perhaps most importantly) highly merchandised enough to survive the low points and nonsensical storylines (it also helps to have a kajillion different books out, I suppose), while the Titans just lapsed into obscurity if they weren't Nightwing, Kid Flash/Flash III, or Robin III (Tim Drake). Then DiDio got control over the company and decided even Dick and Wally had to go, though he got talked out of the former. And yeah, the JLA/Titans cross-over was incredibly well-done, and almost promised a genuine rebirth of the team....but as Jab noted, numerous editorial decisions ended up tanking the series AGAIN.
And while the Cartoon Network iterations have actually proven fairly popular (and at least keep the characters in the public eye), both Teen Titans and Young Justice essentially re-wrote the entire roster's personalities.

All my best.

PS: Yeah Jab-I'd likely tag Starfire's last 2-3 ranks of STR with the Unreliable [limited uses) flaw, or put them in an array with her star-bolts, or something. The super-strength comes up almost NEVER (as you mentioned, even her DC Wiki omits it) and was sort of redundant anyway given the team Koriand'r is associated with (since Donna, Vic, and even Garfield can all do STR-related stuff more effectively). A flying blaster who also also has formidable martial skills is pretty effective combo anyway, without making her truly super-strong. Granted, there are LOTS of DC characters who won the superpowers lottery, but the Titans aren't supposed to be the ensemble of world-beaters.

[Ken]

Kory's strength was amped up during the early 2000s, when the animated cartoon version of her was suddenly written as being stronger than Cyborg. It was after that that Starfire was being written in the comics as a "she can lift a tank" kind of heroine.

In the Wolfman/Perez run, her strength was hinted at being more than an Earthman's, but never shown. I recall one time she plowed through a drug laden ship, but they made a point of saying she was using her starbolts to create an energy field in front of her.

The DC Heroes game gave her a Strength of 6, and the Strength scores between the two games are pretty much the same. I think the strength 7 you gave her is just about perfect.

[Ken]

A) Wasn't he Robin numero uno?

Richard Grayson, the Robin of Earth-Two was Robin I.

[Ares]

Yeah, Earth 2 Robin had a notoriously ugly outfit at first, but thankfully got a more classic re-design that was closer to the classic look, and actually worked as a basis for future re-designs.



Turn the green black and the pants red and the second outfit is basically the outfit Tim was wearing during the early 00's.

[Ken]

To be completely honest, I never cared much for the Dick & Kory pairing. It always felt more like a "of course the captain of the football team is going to be banging the hottest cheerleader" relationship.

It didn't feel wrong per se. But the book was called New Teen Titans. They seemed like teenagers who were in love the way teenagers can be. They always seemed like a relationship that was doomed to failure, because they didn't understand one another, they did come from two different worlds, both literally and figuratively. Kory always seemed to be upset that Dick was so reserved. And Dick was often uncomfortable with how passionate she could be. I know it was meant to be some kind of 'opposites attract' thing, but overall it came across like there would be the 'irreconcilable differences'.

In order for things to work out long term, they'd both have to change so much that neither one would be recognisable as themselves.

It seemed like the kind of relationship that would burn brightly for a few years, and then burn out. Of course, in comics, "a few years" can be forever.

Of course, Romeo & Juliet have a sense of endless love. But actually they died after four days together.

Once Dick matured post Titans, his not being with Kory made sense to me.

[Ares]

I kind of like how The Order of the Stick explained it:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0223.html

[Jabroniville]

Look up “finger stripes” online. I dare you.

NIGHTWING (Dick Grayson, aka Robin II, Batman III)

Advantages:
No he doesn't get Attractive read below

A) Wasn't he Robin numero uno?

B) Dick Grayson is Attractive to me and that's all that matters, hater!

LOL, remember the notes I used to put under that Grayson pic in all my old builds of him ?:

Wild NIGHTWING uses HANDSOMENESS.
JABRONIVILLE is confused (and a little curious)!
NIGHTWING uses TONED ASS-SHOT.
It's super-effective!
JABRONIVILLE fainted!

But yes, I use the Who's Who numbering, where the Golden Age versions of the characters count first. Sometimes. I'm probably not consistent with it.

[Jabroniville]

I make your Pl 7 and 8s fighters gang leaders of your Double Dragon and Gear Gang mooks. There were also some City of Heroes gangs out there somewhere on the last mnm site. Good for when you need to find someone to fight the Turtles!

Oh yeah, guys like that are really good for "Elite Mooks" who don't necessarily have to be world-breaking threats.

[Jabroniville]

Oh, whoops. I totally missed this one last time. Sorry, Bladewind!

-There was an awful, WAY TOO LONG Wildebeest Society arc (seriously? Could they have chosen a WORSE animal upon which to base themselves than the Washington Generals of Animal Planet?), Danny Chase got ENDLESS focus, they brought Terra back, but not really, thus diluting the character & concept, and finally the Bat-editors finally cured a longtime bug up their ass solved by taking Nightwing back from the Titans people (Wolfman had been the sole creative force behind Dick Grayson since 1980), The Team Titans (copying an X-Men concept by using a team of future heroes). Ultimately, the book was cancelled- what was once the top book in the industry was ruined.

I liked the Wildebeest. I liked the concept of how it was hinted that his modus operandi was untraceable... and then that it was because he was actually many people, operating one at a time and never to be seen in multiples.

Interesting. I think I've largely only READ about it, and seen some of the "Evil Jericho" stuff.

And then the Titans Hunt happened (which you referenced above).

Ruined Cyborg for the longest time. Ruined Jericho - the concept of him having been taken over by the corrupted souls of Azarath was neat, but... turned a great character into so much filler IMO.

Yeah, Cyborg was just DONE after that. And Jericho... even once they brought him back, they more or less left him with that "partially evil" thing CONSTANTLY, even though he was one of the most sweethearted of the Titans. It's really weird.

But go back a few years, and re-read the "Who is Donna Troy" arc. LOVED that one. Paying homage to the "Who is Wonder Girl?" arc, they managed to fix a bunch of continuity errors without actually having to retcon too much. It hadn`t been overdone at the time IIRC so the whole false memory thing worked. And the ideas behind Athyns, Sparta and Xanthi.... inspired.

But then... Lord Chaos and the Team Titans. (This board needs a barf emoji) The Team Titans started with a bad concept and went downhill from there. We never (at least not before I flushed it from my pull list) got any real explanation who Deathwing was supposed to be. An older, jaded Nightwing? Or someone else pretending to be an older, jaded Nightwing? Blech.

Oh yeah, the Team Titans STANK. Just wait till I get to them in three weeks or so .

[Jabroniville]

Also, hum, I just realized that the Doom Patrol would probably be sorta-relevant to this set, given their connection to Gar and The Brain. How many of their members have been statted before?

Also, I thought of a stupid idea yesterday. Imagine someone like say, the Grandmaster bringing the combatants of a whole bunch of the crappy fighting games together and making them fight in some huge battle royale tournament for the the right to..I dunno, suck less?

Like a tournament of suck? which twisted and nutty individual would do something crazy like that?

Man, I remember reading Jab's Tournament of Suck back when I first discovered the thread. Something like that, but for fighting games, could be pretty amusing, I think.

Reminds me of trying to run the Street Fighter (vs) Mortal Kombat tournament too much, lol. I had some guy publicly (and somewhat rudely) play one round before saying "I'm sorry, I'm going to be dropping out of this" complaining about it "just being dice-rolling". Which annoyed me, seeing as how I flat-out explained that at the very beginning! And then everyone kept dropping out, forgetting to post, or ghosting from the forums, until it was just Luke/L-Space and I, sheepishly avoiding each other because we both got sick of playing and didn't want to admit it to the other one .

[Jabroniville]

The Bat-Editors Come Calling:
-The Bat-Editors really didn't want much to do with Dick when they were going out of their way to make Batman dark and scary... but when The Teen Titans became an industry-defining giant in sales, SUDDENLY they got a bug up their butt about other writers being able to control him. In some ways, I can see it- Batman is this moody, gritty, street-level character... and his Kid Sidekick is now engaged to an orange-skinned Space Princess?

Ironically enough, at the same time, Batman had just quit his long standing membership in the Justice League (the team he was a founding member of which fought off a giant alien starfish in its first appearance), to form the Outsiders, a team involving a samurai with a magic, soul-eating sword, an element man who looked like the paint section of a hardware store exploded, and a dead woman's corpse being animated by the soul of an alien cosmic entity that had rainbow powers.

"We need to get Nightwing back! We can't have Batman's sidekick dating an alien princess! It makes Batman unrelatable as a grim creature of the night!"

"Didn't Batman just have a team up with Superman, one of his best friends who's an alien demigod? Wasn't he just fighting a guy in power armor and an ice gun? Isn't one of his love interests the daughter of a near-immortal James Bond villain?"

"What's your point?"

Not knocking you, just that it'd be extremely silly for the Bat Editorial to get that particular bug up their butts about Nightwing, when its far more likely they were just pissed that someone had taken one of their discarded toys and used it way better than they had, and now they wanted it back.

I think in their attempts to be up their own asses with grittiness, they wanted to ACKNOWLEDGE such links by having Batman be the unfriendly jerk associated with the League, but one of his closest partners MARRYING one of them was too much for them. This was also the late '80s, early '90s, which was ALL ABOUT "removing the silly stuff" from comics, but doing so in that weird piecemeal way where certain things are arbitrarily "less cool".

It's a more exaggerated version of what I described Wolfman & Perez doing, where they wiped out tons of goofy things (oddly, the Wedding of Donna & Terry ended up doing most of it for the Bronze Age stuff).