The True Story of Starfire (Cartoon vs. Source Material)
It's been said that when the Teen Titans cartoon from 2003 was made, the main characters were grouped into high school cliches. Robin was the cool kid, Raven the goth, Best Boy the class clown, Cyborg the jock, and Starfire the foreign girl.
For some characters (looking at you, Raven), this had the effect of giving them personalities VASTLY DIFFERENT from their source material. But for others...the differences are fewer or more subtle. So let's talk Starfire.
Where Did the Show Come From?
Before I begin, and on the off chance you don't know any more than the cartoon, context. While the Teen Titans as a group were invented back in the 1960s, the show was based most prominently on the book The New Teen Titans, a run of the team from 1980-1988 that also became their most iconic and beloved version. I'm also pretty sure it's considered some of the best of the Bronze Age of Comics, being put into trades far quicker than other stuff of the period.
The New Teen Titans was done by the ever amazing duo of writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez. Sadly, Perez is no longer with us. He passed away in May of 2022, and he will be missed. But Marv is still here.
These guys invented Raven, Starfire, Cyborg, Trigon, Terra, Deathstroke, and even Dick Grayson's Nightwing identity, to say the least. From what Marv said in the introduction he wrote for the first trade collection, I think I can safely say that if these two hadn't gotten together and done this book, the cartoon would not have existed, and the Teen Titans themselves would have been forgotten as a relic of the 1960s and 70s.
Starfire's real name is Princess Koriand'r. Yes, her name sounds like the spice coriander. That's how you pronounce it. While on Earth (and trying to pass as human), she Anglicized it to Kory Anders. I will be referring to her by all three names.
There are a few big physical differences between Starfire in the cartoon versus her source material.
The first thing you see is the hair. Cartoon Star lacks her signature curls. Blackfire does, too. But on this, I am forgiving because it occurs to me that curls might have been harder to animate. Cartoon Star also has skin that's less literal orange/golden, but that may depend on the shot.
Another difference is that while Cartoon Starfire's eyes are green on all parts like the original, she has pupils and an iris. Comics Starfire has neither. Her eyes are a single, solid color. Cartoon Star may also not be done growing, because as I've commented before, Comics Starfire is a very tall woman. Six feet, four inches by her original stats, and five foot nine by her post-2011 stats.
Yes, that is the height of a model. In fact, she was one. Got a job with Donna Troy's photo studio rather by accident. But that's a story for another time.
You can actually find the direction of Tamaran in the real world. No, really. Tamaran is stated to be the eighth planet of the Vega system. Vega is a real star, the brightest star of the constellation Lyra. So if you ever look up and find Vega, congrats, that's the way to Tamaran.
In the cartoon (Episode: Betrothed), it's barren and rocky. Starfire says it's beautiful, implying it's always been this way. But that's not the case in comics. Tamaran there is lush and green. It's shores are tropical, and well, allow Kory tell you in her own words.
From Tales of the New Teen Titans (1982) #4.
"The air almost seemed scented with perfume, the skies shimmered with a golden glow. Man and nature stood side-by-side together. And the only order on Tamaran was love. Ours is a planet ruled by passions and emotions. A planet where science served only to heighten our beings, not to feed our greed. With more than enough food and land for everyone, there was no need for wars, and our palaces were built not for protection, but for peace."
From that quote, you can get a sense for Tamaranian culture. In the introduction by Marv Wolfman (the one I mentioned before), he called them a "warrior culture," and I think the show took that to heart.
Looking at episodes like Betrothed or Go, you definitely see the warrior culture thing on display. In Go, Starfire says Tamaran doesn't have a word for "nice." The closet is "weak." She also says that only her guardian had ever shown her the sort of kindness Robin did.
Of course, the Tamaranians are still loving later on, and Starfire mentions friendship holidays, but in Betrothed there's also a sense of aggression (if used for a misdirect).
I don't think these things really capture the nuances of Tamaran's culture. Honestly, just by saying "warrior culture," it brings to mind various other comparisons in sci-fi which also don't fit. If anything, they're closer to the Amazons.
Although, given the above quote, you're probably still wondering "what warrior culture? That doesn't sound like a warrior culture." Once again, allow Kory of the comics to tell you:
"The Cidadel was the planet closest to our sun--and for more than one hundred years they had sent warships against us. They needed our food to sustain them. And our people to be their slaves. We believd in peace, but we accepted the necessities of war. Left alone, we cherished the joys of nature. Provoked, we lusted after the blood of battle. Such was our dual nature, and such was the way we lived."
If one were to select keywords to summarize Tamaran and its people, the first two would be emotional and passionate. They are beings of the heart. That same Tamaranian passion did not let them hold back in either love or war.
In an early issues of The New Teen Titans, Dick is shocked by Kory's "bloodlust." By that, I mean they were stopping a band of thieves. Said thieves were actually robots, but Kory was not holding back, blowing them to pieces...and also eliminating potential clues. Robin says she relishes in violence. She also wanted to kill Deathstroke when he first showed up.
And in issue 3, Kory explains it a bit more. She's only been on Earth a short time, but she's observed people showing compassion to those that hate them. She doesn't get that. And before you say "that potentially sounds like ruthlessness and might be a little uncomfortable," she says in the same sentence that she doesn't get being suspicious of one's friends, either. That, too, is foreign to Tamaran.
For Tamaranians, if you give love, you will get nothing but love. But if you provoke them, if you show them hate, then they will fight, and they will go for the throat with all of their passion. They are a warrior culture, but only reactionary. They don't go looking for a fight.
It's a fascinating little dynamic. And more than culture, Kory's life experiences have taught her things about showing compassion to those that hate you. I'll get to that.
Cartoon Kory is like that, too. She's very warm and loving, very trusting, and wants her friends to get along. But in battle, she's no slouch. It's toned down due to content restrictions, but it's there. And using her powers is directly related to her emotional state.
Another thing about Tamaran is that they worshipped a living goddess by the name of X'hal (Z-all). You can hear this very word in Betrothed, when both Kory and her caretaker swear by it. X'hal was real, but removed from all reality, and she dwelt in the caves of the planet Okaara. You could feel her presence there. So, in that sense, Kory might find the idea of worshipping a male deity as strange.
One other thing that's come up about Tamaran is that they may not have a nudity taboo. This has probably just become an excuse for skeevy drawings. Though there is something of a basis for it.
In The New Teen Titans #2, Starfire and Donna are getting ready to hang out by a pool and Star asks Donna why she has to wear a bathing suit. Donna has to explain it to her and Kory still doesn't understand why, but agrees nonetheless.
This is, of course, in contrast all the flashback scenes of Tamaran where the Tamaranians are shown all wearing clothes. And, you know, the fact that comics wouldn't have been able to get away with that sort of thing in general. And if you can't get away with it, then why the heck even make that a thing?
Personally, I say you can take or leave it.
Okaara is another planet in the system, an ancient world that according to Kory, died a million years before life emerged on any other Vegan world. On the outside, it was a rocky wasteland with tunnels and caves everywhere. These tunnels reflected light in different ways, creating every imaginable color. Starfire of the comics spoke of it's majesty and power.
Now, when Geoff Johns expanded the Green Lantern mythos in the 2000s, he had more to say about Okaara and the entire system. The Vega system is a den of criminals because for the Green Lanterns (the space cops), it is out of bounds. For millions of years, the Guardians of the Universe, the bosses of the Green Lanterns, have forbade entry.
The reason for this is a treaty they made with Larfleeze, the master of the Orange Lantern Corp, which harnesses the power of avarice. Or I should say, Larfleeze is the corp. The orange light doesn't like sharing.
This version of Okaara is post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, as opposed to Kory's descriptions in Tales of the Teen Titans, so one presumes the universal restart gave Okaara some more life. On Okaara, there is now a thick jungle. Buried in that is an ancient temple marked with the symbol for avarice. it is the home of Larfleeze, and the ancient burial place of the Central Orange Battery, inside of which was imprisoned Ophidian, the living orange entity.
Here's something to make you laugh. Remember how Kory met Robin in "Go"? Well, here's how it went in The New Teen Titans #2.
"Y-you had to kiss me to do that?"
"Not really, but it was certainly more enjoyable this way."
Starfire has one older sister, as you know. Blackfire. Her real name is Komand'r (pronounced like "commander"). Their dynamic is different from the source material, but her treatment of Starfire in the cartoon isn't too far off, if filtered through content restrictions.
In the comics, Komand'r was a horrible, awful, petty, envious, hateful little toad of a Tamaranian, and even Kory would tell you the same, though using different words. She hates Blackfire.
But wait, Kory being hateful to someone? That sounds out of character.
It's not. Kory tried. By X'hal, she tried. Her parents tried, too. Komand'r in the comics was not unloved, and no child was favored over the other. Not at first. But, as Kory said herself, eventually "it became impossible to love that traitress."
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Comics Blackfire is disabled by her people's standards. The comics don't actually use the word itself, but she is still a disabled person in her own unique way.
Tamaranians absorb and process solar energy to allow them the ability to fly. This is a standard feature of their biology. Komand'r was born a sickly child. This sickliness resulted into two very important things:
The leaders of Tamaran deemed her unfit to inherit the throne that would have otherwise been hers (Tamaran did not seem to care about gender for leadership).
Komand'r was completely incapable of flight. Presumably the disease that ravaged her in infancy left permanent physical damage. She seemed to retain the ability to process solar power, but could not use it to fly.
When Kory was born, Komand'r instantly despised her, and stewed in her hate for both Kory and Tamaran itself.
Kory wanted her big sister to like her. She really, really did. But if Komand'r wasn't making her hatred clear, or killing one of Kory's pets and lying about it, then Komand'r was simply avoiding her. As Kory would later recount to her friends, though they were sisters, total strangers would have had more in common.
I think you can tell who is who here. The tiniest baby on the left there is Star's little brother Ryand'r. In the cartoon's tie-in comics, he was named Wildfire, but in mainline comics he took the name Darkfire.
In the comics, the Citadel kept attacking. They started sending ships every month. Tamaran needed more warriors. Eventually, the queen decided that even the daughters of kings needed to learn to fight. The two daughters were bundled off to Okaara to learn from the warlords. Training under the warlords was a high honor.
They were not alone on the trip. With them were the children of chieftans from all around their system, all going for training. Komand'r looked at these children with distain, calling them "the dregs." She wanted this training to know how to kill, and only that.
But the Warlords of Okaara weren't just there to teach them to fight. Like Tamaran, they tempered the will to fight with lessons of understanding. Lessons of understanding oneself. Lessons of compassion. Lessons about how war is to be avoided, but if it must be, then there can only be one victor.
The graduation exam was a sort of tournament. Kory and Kom were both on mounts, and would use solar lances (they were more like axes) to knock each other off in a joust. They fought hard, but Kom's lance sliced the leg of Kory's mount, sending her down.
Komand'r wasn't done, though. She taunted her sister, throwing a lasso over her and dragging her across the ground. The Warlords waited to see how this would play out. Kory managed to cut herself free, and in the scuffle, Komand'r went over a cliff. And remember, she can't fly. At all.
In an act of sisterly love, Kory dove to save her. Telling the story later, Kory realizes how foolish a thing it was. Again, you'll understand soon enough. After being rescued, Komand'r hit her sister and tried to kill her with a sword before the warlords stopped her.
They told Komand'r that she was not one of them, that she was full of hate, that she was a disgrace, and that she was officially kicked her out and should go pack her bags. Komand'r fled in a ship, but did not go back to Tamaran.
No, she went to the Cidadel. This monster betrayed her home, told the Citadel all the secrets of Tamaran's defenses so the planet was conquered. Five million people died in the initial attack, and many more died in the weeks that followed.
Finally, a truce was a called. A sacrifice was demanded. A specific sacrifice. After much struggle, the terms were agreed to. Starfire was given to the Citadel, torn from her home and family and told that if she ever returned, her planet would be destroyed.
From The New Teen Titans (1980) #3.
And who arranged these terms? Who specifically demanded the princess of Tamaran in exchange for peace?
Blackfire. Blackfire, who had been given a rank in the Citadel, made it so Kory was given to the Gordanians, the Citadel's slavers. Blackfire sold her baby sister into slavery.
Now, the cartoon might not have been that bad, but when you look at it, Cartoon Blackfire's not really much better. Her first appearance has her deliberately blaming her baby sister for a crime she committed. She doesn't care if her sister goes to prison. Not an ounce.
In Betrothed, not only is she the tyrannical ruler of the planet, but Blackfire deliberately created an arranged marriage between her sister and a disgusting slime creature in exchange for power, and faked an invasion to further sell the whole thing.
To be fair, arranged marriages are a thing on this Tamaran. They seem like they wouldn't work on Comics Tamaran, but whatever. They are a thing. We also don't have any frame of reference for how these things usually go. But this one was done solely to acquire something.
To put it bluntly, Cartoon Blackfire sold her sister off, and once again didn't care. To Cartoon Blackfire, her baby sister--her happiness, her future, her life, and even her body--were a commodity to exchange for power. The fact that the groom is disgusting and would make Starfire especially unhappy for the rest of her life was icing on the cake. All this in revenge for what happened in Sisters.
Comic Starfire's time with the Gordanians was...awful isn't strong enough. I could show you the whole page, but the text isn't as clear as I'd like, and while the art really helps sell it, the words do it, too. If you want to see it, look up Tales of the New Teen Titans #4. It's not hard to find.
And now, I'll let Kory once again tell you her story, in her own words.
"Citadel slavery was unlike the slavery that existed on your world. We were sold for one year. As long as we were not killed, our masters could do anything to us. At each year's end, Komand'r would claim me again. And I always swore my vengeance.
"I...cannot tell you how terrible those six years were. I try not to think about it, but sometimes at night I...cannot help it. The tortures and the degradations...those are best forgotten. But there were moments, times where I exacted revenge...those I still remember so vividly. During those years I lost much of my innocence; I learned how to hate."
In the art, we see Kory suffering those long years. She's tied to a giant wheel, turning it with other slaves. She's inside a cave breaking rocks with a hammer while someone with a whip is in the distance. She is sitting on her knees, head bowed, in the snow, before some large creature.
She is also tortured by a gleeful Blackfire. Kory's hands are manacled to the ceiling, and she is topless (but censored) as Blackfire seems to torture her sister with an energy weapon while Kory is screaming in pain, sweat pouring down her forehead and tears streaming down her cheeks.
She is in a very fancy slave girl outfit, completely with jewels and a crown. Her hands and feet are shackled together, her face cupped tightly by a very pleased Gordanian. Beside that image is another, the very Gordanian is lying dead with a wooden spear through his chest.
Six years of this. Six years being torn from her home. The first two were spent at the Citadel, and the remaining four were spent being sold from world to world. All orchestrated by Komand'r. All while Komand'r lived in the lap of luxury. Is it any wonder that in the present, Kory hates her sister and wants her dead? Is it any wonder they would fight to the death, that the next time Kory met her sister, she'd look her in the eye and tell Komand'r "go to hell"?
Halfway into Kory's fifth (or sixth? Marv may have goofed here) year of this nightmare, she'd killed her master, and was brought to Komand'r. Kory would stand trial and die, something Kom was basking in. But then the ship was attacked by the Psions, the enemies of the Citadel.
The Psions were worse than the Citadel, and crueler..."if that were possible," as Kory said. Where the Citadel were barbarians, the Psions were scientists who would happily take off your flesh to see how long you survive.
The Psions captured both sisters. They were curious about the Tamaranian ability to convert solar energy into flight, and how much energy they could convert. The fact that they might explode was of no consequence.
The Gordanians attacked mid-experiment, knocking Starfire free. Once free, she found her ability to process solar energy greatly enhanced, giving Kory her starbolt power. Kom, however, was still in the machine, and in complete agony.
By all rights, Kory should have left her in there to suffer and die. She hated her, and had been taught to kill enemies. However, for the second time, Kory chose to love and rescued her sister, and again, this was met with hatred. Kom, too, had her capacity for processing solar energy enhanced, and could also throw starbolts, though hers were far more intense than her sister's.
Kory was recaptured and placed on a new prison ship, the Q'st'r. While not piloted directly by Commander Trogaar (remember Go?), he was still in charge. Komand'r quickly found herself climbing the ranks of the Citadel, and this higher rank caused the two sisters to be separated.
While confined on that ship, one of the Gordanian guards started to lust after her, so she seduced him into letting her out, then blasted a hole straight through his chest before finding a craft to take her to Earth with the Gordanians in pursuit. And that's how she joined the Titans.
The cartoon obviously couldn't get that intense, but there are traces of Starfire's miserable situation still there, and her being sold into slavery. Recall "Go."
Starfire: Not prisoner. I am...prize. The Gordanians deliver me to the Citadel where I am to live out my days being their servant.
Raven: And the Citadel are...?
Starfire: Not nice.
Of course, one is left with the question of how Starfire ended up in the hands of Gordanian slavers. How did she end up a prize?
The cartoon had a tie-in comic, and they actually answered that question in an exposition dump, adding in those missing elements of comics canon. Blackfire had helped the Gordanians to conquer Tamaran, and then arranged for her sister's slavery (and inadvertently caused the death of their parents).
This idea is interesting, but it might be a bit off base, since Cartoon Komand'r definitely wanted to rule Tamaran in Betrothed.
Cartoon Blackfire: Relationship Reversal
Both versions of Komand'r are very hateful, awful women. But I think why they hate is a different. In the comics, I'd say Komand'r's hate was fueled by soul-choking envy born out of her disability, how it disqualified her for the throne and left her grounded in a world of flight, and left her compared to a perfect, healthy, beautiful baby sister filled with love.
Then again, perhaps Comics Komand'r was just a bad person anyway, since her parents loved her as much as Starfire and by Kory's account, never held her disability against her. Rulership or not, there's no indication they thought her a lesser person because of her problem. Yet Komand'r grew to look down on her sister, other races, and did not care about causing the deaths of millions of her own people.
Cartoon Komand'r...I think her problem is just raw selfishness. In the cartoon, it is Kory who feels inadequate. She may have always felt inadequate to her sister. And Komand'r has a lot going for her. She's beautiful, healthy, powerful, a strong fighter, intelligent, well traveled, and well educated by the looks of it.
And yet, she's mean. She's mean and selfish and cruel. Was she a spoiled child? I don't know. But it's funny to look at the differences. Really, it might have been interesting to let Cartoon Blackfire keep her disability, have her reliant on some kind of flying device to travel. Oh, well.
Despite the hatred she feels for her sister, make no mistake, the Starfire of the comics is very similar to the cartoon, if lacking the "foreign girl" angle with all the jokes about strange names and so on so forth.
Comics Kory is warm, bright, passionate, and loving. Just look at her first interaction with Robin. Some people would be left totally broken by the awful treatment she suffered, be left hard and cynical and mean.
She did lose her innocence, and there are nights that the trauma haunts her. She refuses to be shackled ever again, even in simple handcuffs that she could break easily.
But despite it all, she did not lose her spirit. On Earth, she falls in love, she soars through the sky, she is embraced by friends, she cries in sorrow...and she fights like a champion, without hesitation. She adores the heat of Earth's sun and happily kisses a handsome boy not because she needs to, but wants to.
She is a bit blood thirsty in battle, but it is the dual nature of Tameranian passion, and despite it, she is not lacking in compassion. I doubt Dick would have fallen for her otherwise. Whether she would show more restraint further down the line in the comics, I can't remember clearly.
She is Starfire. She is Princess Koriand'r of the house of Tykayal. She is Kory Anders, fashion model. She is a Teen Titan. And she is beautiful.
If you have never read The New Teen Titans (1980) and only know the 2003 cartoon, I cannot recommend the original material enough. It's easy to get ahold of, available in many paperback trade collections, hardback, or electronically.
I'll even help you start. If you want to buy it, you can find the first volume here. Obviously the hardcover is ludicrously priced, but everything else is good. Or you can just search the dark corners of the internet. But I still say it's worth owning a copy.
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