Unwilling to leave any potential heroic legacy unplumbed, Geoff (spelled it as "Geoof" on the first attempt again) Johns created a successor to the Star-Spangled Kid in the form of the step-daughter of the original Star-Spangled Kid's sidekick. Who was a grown man who dressed like a barber pole when he was that sidekick in the '40s, then got lost in time, which explains why he's not a geezer in the '90s.
Johns uses the "new kid in town" approach of Courtney trying to make friends, crushing on a boy, fending off the local queen bee (who turns out to have been trained from birth as an assassin by her father who is also a dragon?) and trying to maintain a secret identity from her mom. There's also the antagonistic relationship with her stepdad, and Courtney leverages the fact he hasn't told her mother about his vigilante past (or his vigilante present) as blackmail to get to keep the cosmic converter belt.
Eventually Courtney's mother takes a job at the school, but the book ended too quickly for anything much to come of that, or of Courtney's mother being in the dark about all of this. There's also a subplot about Pat's son from his first marriage, booted from military school, showing up and demanding the converter belt as his birthright. Again, the book ends too soon to play that tension out for long, either.
There's some monster-of-the-week stuff revolving around the school. The mysterious cult the queen bee character is part of that provides a steady stream of cannon fodder for Courtney to skirmish with over her stepdad's objections, aliens looking to take over Earthling bodies, disgruntled teachers with superpowers. Given the time the book was released, it feels influenced by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it's also not an uncommon hook for a book focused on a teen hero, so maybe just coincidence.
Lee Moder is the artist for most of the series, and he avoids making Courtney look too perfect. A bit gawky, long limbs like not everything is growing at the same rate. For all that Courtney tries to play being cool, she's drawn as being open with her emotions. I mean emotions besides sarcasm and disdain. She wears huge smiles when she triumphs, she glares when someone she cares about gets hurt. She's no hardened, experienced hero, the whole thing is still alternately fascinating and terrifying, and it shows.
The book ended after 15 issues, but by that point, JSA had been revived, and Courtney became a steadfast member of the team, gradually growing into the role. And she got another toy to play with, courtesy of Jack Knight, but we'll get to him in a few weeks.
2 comments:
This kid/teen + robot thing seemed to become a trend around this time. You also has Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, and Marvel did two versions of A Boy and His Pet Sentinel.
I was going to suggest maybe everyone took notice of The Iron Giant. Definitely those two Sentinel books you mentioned did. But that movie and this book both came out in '99, so I don't know if it had any influence on Johns' thinking.
I guess everyone wanted a big robot pal, just in time for it to go berserk when Y2K hit.
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