I'm always amused by how comics retellings handle plot points that didn't age well. For instance...
Jay Garrick's origin story, 1940: He takes a smoke break in the lab, regardless of being in training for football, which leads to the accident that gives him his powers.
Same story, 1986: Okay, he did take a smoke break, but he says he knows he shouldn't do it, and when he comes out of the coma, he makes a big deal about vowing to quit. Don't smoke, kids.
Same story, 1997: What cigarette, he fell asleep and dropped a test tube, obviously.
Same story, 2024: LOL look at this idiot smoking in a lab
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No matter what you may have heard, Young Justice did not in fact kill Santa. He collided with a villain that they were trying to fight, and the collision resulted in an explosion that obliterated both Santa and the villain. Young Justice witnessed this happening and even tried to prevent it but were not actively involved in this disaster.
They did, however, choose to fill in for Santa and proceed to take two months, three weeks, and five days (until about March 23, nearly Easter!) to finish the job. That was totally voluntary on their part.
So if they deserve to be given any grief, it's not for killing Santa but for taking so. darn. long. to deliver Christmas presents. They have a speedster and two others with lesser but still enhanced speed powers on the team, for crying out loud; there's no excuse for this. For shame, guys.
(please note the joking tone of this post. and read Young Justice 1998 #40 for yourself for the whole story.)
All due respect to Edna Mode, but there are in fact certain circumstances that do justify a hero's wearing a cape, and they are as follows:
1. Do you fly? (The cape might be helpful for that or at least provide an impressive effect.)
2. Were you created in the Golden Age or are you a legacy of someone who was? (The 1930s and 40s were all about those capes; most of the OG JSA had them. It's an era-appropriate fashion statement.)
3. Are you DRAMATIC? (You don't look as cool brooding on rooftops without a cape.)
If the answer to any or all of these is yes, then the cape is indeed a suitable design choice, and you may proceed without having to rethink your costume.
Unless you're one of those 1990s guys who is Too Cool for capes and prefers a Totally Radical leather jacket, in which case more power to you, I guess!
I get that a lot of these comics writers are just working on team books without giving every individual character much particular thought, that's how it works, but sometimes their seemingly inadvertent choices add up to characterization that's surprisingly consistent with the lore.
I'm in the middle of note-taking on all of Rick Tyler's appearances (for reference/fic writing purposes, I do this for a lot of characters because how else am I supposed to remember all that), and what's staying fairly consistent across these is that he tends to be the one making sure everyone around him is okay. Checking up on everyone. Making sure the injured get cared for. Easily stepping into the role of Team Dad for the younger JSA members. Keeping everyone safe, even if it means directly endangering himself. Basic hero stuff, sure, but with him it has a specific flavor of caretaking.
And along with this comes a habit of downplaying whatever's going on with him. Never mind about his personal woes--let's talk about a teammate's love life! Just been stabbed? Time to get quippy. His team's medic wants to have a serious talk with him about substance abuse? Distract her with awkward flirting! When he's terminally ill, he's more worried about his dad not getting rest by sitting up with him all night, or how upset his mom is when their house gets vandalized.
Which makes a lot of sense as behavior for someone who grew up in a chaotic household, the only child of parents who were both emotionally volatile, struggling with their fractured relationship and their addictions, not having much time for him. Of course he'd learn to look after everyone else constantly. Of course he'd learn to keep up a light-hearted front. He still rebels against his dad, but he doesn't take up the mantle out of spite--he's drawn to the sense of purpose that helping others gives him (and...other aspects of the role, but that's another discussion).
And I'll guarantee you that most writers were not taking that into consideration, but...somehow they tend to end up there.
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It's a trope as old as superheroes: the pretense of being weak or ineffectual in one's civilian identity to deflect suspicion that one is really The Local Hero. Clark Kent does it. Bruce Wayne does it. It's pretty common, especially in the Golden Age.
So it's not surprising that the Golden Age Starman in his identity as Ted Knight would be a wealthy socialite whose exaggerated illnesses give him a convenient excuse to get away at certain moments.
...except, in his case, it's not completely an act. He does feign headaches and dizzy spells and fainting whenever he needs to run off and save the day, but the only reason that this is convincing to people who know him is because this is behavior that seems to predate his activity as Starman. He is a legit hypochondriac who is utilizing this aspect of himself in order to escape into his other persona.
He's known as "the sick boy of society." The first words he utters on-panel are “I trust you’ve made sure it’s not in a draft!” (regarding his table reservation). He's been to every doctor in town, and they all say he's "fit as a fiddle." He talks about going to sanitariums to rest with a readiness that suggests he does that fairly often. His fiancee Doris has known him for years and is exasperated but not surprised by his nearly constant worry about his blood pressure, his heart, his nerves. Often she dismisses it as his imagination, but she's also been concerned enough to take him to a research clinic for examination.
Usually the scenario of these stories will involve his playing up ill health only for it to be revealed once he's alone that he's gotten a summons from the FBI again. But this isn't always the case.
Here, a combination of an earthquake tremor and tomato soup getting spilled on him sends him into a spiral of panic comedically disproportionate to the situation, and Doris says some harsh standard-Golden-Age-love-interest things and leaves. Normally this is when the costume would go on--but not this time. He presumably...just goes to bed after this? And doesn't get involved as Starman until a day later. There is no summons to cover for. No ulterior motive for his reactions. This is just how he is--when he's not in his empowered alter ego.
(Adventure Comics #63)
This guy genuinely has some kind of anxiety problem, definitely regarding his health but perhaps in other ways also. He complains to Doris that "Going to parties is too strenuous for me," and although he'll host large groups of people to party on his yacht for days as would be expected of someone of his class, he's not seen joining them--he's out on deck with only Doris, insisting that "the very thought of work makes me ill."
She drags him around from activity to activity like she's hoping he'll take an interest in something, anything. Maybe he'll like going to the movies. Or dancing. Or swimming. Or golf--that's not too strenuous for him, is it? (He thinks it is.) Yet as Starman, he claims to have thrown the hammer and played football in college, and he seems to have a background as an equestrian too (Doris is thrilled when it looks like he's taking this up again). The suggestion is that he used to be an athlete, but evidently something happened to trigger this debilitating anxiety that's so prevalent in his personal life but absent when he's Starman.
...well, mostly absent. Sometimes it bleeds over. During an adventure in which the JSA are unexpectedly rocketed separately to all the planets (I don't know, just go with it), Ted's immediate assumption upon landing on Jupiter is that he must have keeled over, he's sick, he's delirious, the guys must have taken him to the hospital, he's having fever dreams...and it takes him a little while to get past this.
There's a shift in the stories starting when Doris in one of her efforts to get him a hobby takes him to a planetarium. This proves effective (probably because it's a preexisting interest that has been implied but not seen--he has, after all, created his stellar-powered gravity rod, and there's a reference to a laboratory that's never depicted), and as his interest in astronomy becomes more prominent in the stories, his hypochondriac tendencies start to dwindle.
This is also around the time that he enlists in the Air Force and is considered fit for service, with a doctor proclaiming him (and his JSA teammates) "fine physical specimens."
Later stories would lean heavily into the astronomer/scientist/inventor angle only, and while the 1994 series would address his having been in poor mental health after the war and Doris's murder, his original characterization of Hypochondriac Who Moonlights As A Superhero As A Form Of Escapism doesn't really get explored in any depth. It's an odd, contradictory take on the more common hero-fakes-weakness trope, and it would have been interesting to see how this aspect of him would affect, say, his relationships with his children--an additional complication to an already complicated family dynamic.
The nature of being a former home schooler is that sometimes people will ask you things like whether you were a band kid or a theater kid, and you have to admit that you did neither and didn't have the opportunity to and in that moment you feel like you probably also must have spent eighteen years shut up in a dark house with no friends and don't have a refrigerator.
This is Snapper Carr's first appearance, in February 1960. These are the first lines that he utters. This is how this narrative chose to introduce us to this child.
Pretty sure they were going for "relatable to The Youth," but instead here we have an ordinary kid with a completely bonkers vocabulary and turn of phrase. Like Bertie W ooster if he were a 1960s teenager. Weird and ridiculous and kind of endearing.
