Timeline: The Many Loves of Starfire (1st Draft)

[Lorendiac]

Been meaning to do this for a long time. Probably ever since I did something similar in an effort to straighten out the sequence of events in various Batman/Catwoman romances that have been presented to us over the years. In this case, I thought of trying to hit the highlights of the Koriand'r/Dick Grayson romance, but then decided it would make more sense to widen my focus and try to hit the highlights of all of Kory's romances that I can think of. After all, she's already been widowed twice that I know of!

Note: Most of the stories listed on this Timeline originally named Marv Wolfman as the writer in the credits box. However, it is well-known that George Perez played a substantial role as Co-Plotter during the periods when he was Wolfman's penciler and creative partner. I don’t know just how much input other artists had into the details of the stories they were illustrating when they worked with Wolfman on one Titans title or another at different times. For the sake of simplicity, I am generally just saying “Written by Marv Wolfman” if that was what the credits box led us to believe.

The Timeline

1980. DC Comics Presents #26. (A 16-page insert in the middle, totally separate from the lead story about Superman teaming up with (Superman teams up with Whoever). Written by Marv Wolfman.

Robin (by which I mean the original Robin, Dick Grayson, for those of you who don’t remember that far back ) has a series of incredibly vivid visions in which he finds himself leading a band of Titans, including three people he actually knows well: Donna Troy (Wonder Girl), Wally West (Kid Flash), and Garfield Logan (previously known to Robin as Beast Boy, but – in this dream – insisting upon the new alias of Changeling). However, and much more surprisingly from his perspective, he also encounters three people he has never seen or heard of before: Victor Stone (Cyborg), Koriand’r (Starfire), and the enigmatic Raven. Within the context of his visions, they all seem to know him well and to have been working alongside him for quite some time.

In a sense, this was his first glimpse of Starfire, although it was only a dream and it didn’t work both ways: She didn’t recognize him when they later met face-to-face.

In case you’re interested, here are the “first words” they ever spoke to one another (even if it only happened in a dream sequence induced by Raven).

STARFIRE (from offstage): Don’t let them bother you, Robin. I still love you!

STARFIRE (flying into view in the next panel): This planet would still seem strange to me if it weren’t for you!

ROBIN: A golden girl? Who--?

CYBORG: You don’t remember Starfire? Man, you definitely got a loose screw!

1980. The New Teen Titans #1 (volume 1). Written by Marv Wolfman.

Their first real meeting, as Raven gathers together those she has selected to be members of the new Titans and they rescue Koriand'r from evil Gordanian slavers. At this time, the language barrier prevents any meaningful dialogue between Dick and Kory, although he gallantly carries her away as they evacuate the alien spaceship that is about to blow up thanks to Changeling's sabotage at Cyborg's instructions.

1980. The New Teen Titans #2. Written by Marv Wolfman.

Robin and Starfire share their first kiss -- completely her idea, by the way -- and she promptly starts speaking fluent English on the next page. Here's their first "real" conversation in a common language.

STARFIRE: Hi, Robin. You know, you’re really cute?

KID FLASH: Huh? She talks? But – how--?

STARFIRE: Physical contact, Kid Flash. I simply absorbed your language!

ROBIN: Y-You had to kiss me to do that?

STARFIRE: Not really. But it was certainly more enjoyable this way.

Changeling (Gar Logan), always ready to seize an opportunity, says to her a few panels later, “Listen, I know French. How about German? Chinese?” Starfire just says politely, “No. English will do for now. Maybe some other time.”

As far as I know, that hypothetical "some other time" never actually happened.

This story seems to begin at least a few days after the first issue ended. Why Starfire had not bothered to learn English considerably earlier by touching one of her new friends and concentrating on whatever she has to do to trigger the language download process (it obviously doesn’t happen automatically, or else she would have already been speaking fluent English in the later pages of the first issue) is not explained in the text, but I can speculate! I don’t actually have any solid evidence for the theory I’m about to offer, but you might find it interesting anyway!

The fact that Kory was in a very weakened condition (injured and sometimes unconscious) when the Titans rescued her from Gordanians at the end of the previous issue may have a lot to do with it. Although the process looks quick and simple from an outsider’s perspective, perhaps it actually takes a considerable exertion for a Tamaranean metabolism to do the language-through-skin-contact thing, so that Koriand’r considered it wise to wait until her body had completely recuperated from recent trauma before subjecting it to any extra stress? If the process actually fatigues her to a significant and troublesome degree in each instance, that could also provide another reason (in addition to her obvious personal preference for Robin as “cute” and thus eminently kissable) for her rejection of the idea of learning additional languages from Changeling immediately after she learned English from Robin. Afraid it would give her the equivalent of a killer migraine from the cumulative effect of using that power several times in quick succession, perhaps? (“Not tonight, dear, I have a headache. You can teach me German some other time.”)

1981. The New Teen Titans #16. Written by Marv Wolfman.

Starfire thinks she has fallen in love with a civilian.

In a quick flashback, we see that Dick has previously told Kory that he thinks they should stop seeing each other. He says nobly, “It’s bad for our teamwork.”

In context, it is clear that he is very annoyed that she is now dating someone else, a guy named Franklin Crandall. Dick doesn’t actually say that he may have made a terrible mistake by breaking up whatever they had together over a matter of principle, but Cyborg obviously thinks that’s approximately what is going through his mind.

Franklin and Kory start saying they love each other. Although the word “engagement” is never used in the text of this story for some reason, it is very heavily hinted that the two of them are now talking about setting a date for marriage. Kory is ecstatically happy.

Eventually we learn that Franklin has been working as a stooge for a member of the H.I.V.E. It appears that he has been a professional gigolo and blackmailer for years, seducing rich wives and then getting money from them by threatening to reveal all the sordid details. His well-honed skills in charming women are the reason he was hired for this job in the first place. But in Kory’s case, his conscience is actually bothering him. She’s a nice sweet kid who isn’t cheating on anyone, unlike his usual targets. He is foolish enough to tell his employer that he’s planning to make a full confession to the Titans and pray for Kory’s forgiveness. Then he turns his back, and his employer shoots him.

A bit later Kory brings her friends to Franklin’s place to meet him by appointment, and finds him bleeding to death on the floor. He manages to gasp out a few last words about how he was killed by a H.I.V.E. guy at a certain address, and (of course) that he loves her. Then he dies. Kory goes berserk, but Wonder Girl follows her and manages to keep her from killing the H.I.V.E. guy. (However, because it turns out he had been running a rogue operation without approval from the other members of the ruling council of the organization, he is executed by them anyway.)

At least two of the other Titans (Dick and Donna) make it clear toward the end of the story that they have somehow learned what was really going on with Franklin, but since he’s dead and buried now, they see no need to make Kory feel even worse by telling her he probably had a secret agenda when he first struck up an acquaintance with her. As far as I know, to this day Starfire still thinks Franklin Crandall was a sincere suitor and a good man who just happened to get murdered by a member of the H.I.V.E.

1984. The New Teen Titans #1. Written by Marv Wolfman.

(Note: This issue launched the second series to use that same title. Unlike the first, this was supposed to be direct-market only. All subsequent listings on this Timeline for any issues of “The New Teen Titans” will refer to issues of this series instead of the previous one, which – around the same time – changed its name to “Tales of the Teen Titans” while continuing to publish original material for awhile, and later switched over to doing reprints of the stories from this new series, and even later just faded away completely! Meanwhile, this new series eventually (years later) eliminated the “Teen” and started calling itself “The New Titans.” All this makes it a bit tricky when I try to file issues of both series in the same long box in terms of “internal chronology,” but I struggle along somehow.)

Toward the end of this issue, a scream rings through Titans Tower in the middle of the night. Dick and Kory sit up in the same bed. Dick is stripped to the waist (and probably stripped all the way, if the truth be known) and although Kory’s torso is partially obscured so that we don’t actually get any R-rated sights in this panel, we get the distinct impression that she’s naked in the same bed with him.

In other words: For the first time, it is made unmistakeably clear to us that sometimes Dick and Kory occupy a single bed at night and presumably have mad passionate sex when they do. There have certainly been previous hints in the old title that their relationship had probably moved in that general direction, somewhere along the line, but this is the first time it’s made perfectly plain that they share sleeping quarters (maybe just sometimes, maybe all the time these days, nobody gives us all the nitpicking details).

I haven’t tried to dig out all of those “hints” from previous comics; I don’t know exactly when a suspicious-minded fans of the early 1980s first had reasonable cause for suspicion that Kory and Dick had already slept together.

1985. The New Teen Titans # 15. Written by Marv Wolfman.

On the last page of the lead story, Myand’r, Kory’s father and King of Tamarus (apparently one of the more powerful nations of the planet Tamaran), announces that she must marry Karras, son of King Tharrus of Kalapatt, to cinch a treaty that will end a local war that has already killed a hundred thousand Tamaraneans. Both Dick and Kory initially respond with loud denials.

1985. The New Teen Titans # 16. Written by Marv Wolfman.

Nightwing's position on the "arranged marriage" subject has not changed from the previous issue, but Starfire's has. Dick Grayson, raised in the more democratic and “civil rights” oriented traditions of a representative democracy, takes the position (to boil it down to the bare essentials) that there is something fundamentally wrong with the spectacle of a man “selling” his daughter for the sake of a political deal. Even if (as Kory suggests) it will essentially be a legal fiction; “a marriage in name only” to quote some of her exact words. Her preferred outcome is that she goes through with the public wedding ceremony for diplomatic reasons, then she wants to turn around and go right back to Earth with Dick and Jericho, rejoin the other Titans, and carry on same as before!

Dick (cultural differences again) expresses his feelings in plain English: He has no intention of fooling around with another man's wife even if she never claimed to love her legal husband. “It’s against everything I believe. Marry him and it’s over with us.”

(I might add that both of them are in tears by this point.)

Later in this issue, Kory discovers that Karras is in a very similar situation – he already has a lover named Taryia, who, although extremely unhappy, is more willing to accept the fact that she can’t marry the man she loves, but will continue having a relationship with him.

On Page 19, Kory’s mother (Queen Luand’r) is trying to buck up her daughter’s spirits with a pep talk right before the wedding. At the bottom of the page, Kory is thinking, “Why isn’t Dick here? Why didn’t he say anything to stop this? Why? Why? Why?”

(Funny, I would have sworn that as recently as nine pages earlier he tried very hard to persuade her to stop this nonsense and let those warring nations find some other way to resolve their stupid differences, and she refused. So he respected her decision and withdrew rather than continue to argue with her, using the same words over and over again and making no headway. Now she already seems to have forgotten that little detail! Is she saying, “He doesn’t really love me unless he tries to talk me out of it, and then tries to talk me out of it again, and then tries to talk me out of it yet again, and then tries some more, no matter how many times I make it clear that it’s a lost cause to try to talk me out of it?”)

1985. The New Teen Titans # 17. Written by Marv Wolfman.

Dick Grayson, after being captured for awhile by Kory’s evil sister Komand’r, has escaped and makes it back to Tamarus just in time to witness the end of the wedding ceremony. Kory sees him at the back of the large room and wonders frantically why he doesn’t speak up and say something to try to stop it.

Dick, however, seems to feel it would be rude and pointless to interrupt such a solemn moment now that the ceremony has already begun. (I tend to agree with him about the etiquette involved.) Kory seems to have made up her own mind; she’s obviously going through with the ceremony of her own free will, for better or for worse; why should he make a pointless fuss at this late date. (After all, he already expressed his objections quite clearly and forcefully in the previous issue. I can certainly see why he’d reject the idea of beating his head against a brick wall by yelling out those same angry sentiments in front of a huge crowd all over again when there was no reason to think it would work any better than it did in private conversation before.)

Then Komand’r gatecrashes. She basically stages a coup and becomes the new ruler of Tamarus, unseating her own parents in the process. She has a remarkable degree of popular support in this maneuver, and succeeds brilliantly in getting what she wants. At which point (as Komand’r maliciously points out!) the original reason for the Kory/Karras marriage has ironically just become obsolete, about five minutes after they tied the knot! If Myand’r is no longer King of Tamarus, and if everyone knows that the new ruler, Komand’r, doesn’t get along well with her sister Kory, then that means that a Karras/Koriand’r union no longer constitutes a brilliant diplomatic breakthrough to seal a lasting treaty with the other realm.

Rereading this story just now, I get the strong feeling that the Tamaranean culture doesn’t include the concepts of “divorce” or “annulment,” however, because no one even mentions these as theoretical possibilities. The marriage definitely hasn’t been consummated yet, at the moment Komand'r seizes the reins of power. (Evidently that happened later.)

(Note: 17 issues later, Koriand’r explicitly confirms that Tamaran's legal codes make no mention of “divorce.” I get the impression that they don’t really recognize “adultery” as automatically being a sin either, however. I guess they figure it all balances out.)

1985. The New Teen Titans # 18. Written by Marv Wolfman.

Just before their “final parting,” Kory says, “I don’t want you to go. Stay here with me,” and Dick says, “And be your lover behind Karras’ back? I can’t do that, not even if you people can.” He goes on from there, yelling at her to please forget she ever knew him , and he’ll try to do the same. (A lost cause, of course, and he must know it, but he figures it's time to make a clean break.) They part on a tearful, angry note, with Kory yelling repeatedly, “I love you!” while Nightwing walks away.

1986. The New Teen Titans #23. Written by Marv Wolfman.

At the end of this story, Kory decides she can’t stay on Tamaran any longer. She’s heading back to Earth to try to patch things up with Dick. She tells Karras she never really loved him. (She did seem to like him and respect him, though. He had been as decent as one could reasonably expect from a husband who had been forced into the marriage the same way she had been.)

1986. Teen Titans Spotlight #1. Written by Marv Wolfman. Kory returns to Earth, hoping to rekindle her romance with Nightwing. However, in this issue and the subsequent one, she gets involved in the problems of apartheid in South Africa and doesn’t actually see Dick again until much later.

1986. The New Teen Titans #25. Written by Marv Wolfman.

For some odd reason, Starfire is featured on the cover as one of several Titans fighting a group of villains collectively called the Hybrid. However, she makes no appearance in the actual story. (Probably still busy over in South Africa.)

 

[Lorendiac]

1986. The New Teen Titans #26. Written by Marv Wolfman.

Starfire is on the cover again. This time she actually catches up with the current Titans team within the story as well! However, Dick is not currently serving with that team, so her reunion with him will have to wait. As she tries to tell her side of the story to some of her other friends, we have the following dialogue.

WONDER GIRL: What about your husband?

STARFIRE: That marriage was in name only. A matter of state, not of the heart. It’s done on Tamaran – yet we still love our lovers. Dick couldn’t understand it.

I think Starfire is doing Dick a considerable injustice in her skewed summary of the stormy conversations they had on this volatile subject on previous occasions. She explained clearly enough the type of relationship she hoped to continue to have with him after the politically-motivated wedding. He heard every word she said, but he then made it plain that he wanted no part of a romantic relationship on the basis she had just described, because of his own personal beliefs about proper behavior. Notice that in their last conversation, he said, “I can’t do that, not even if you people can.” Clearly he had already assimilated the idea that Tamaranean concepts of moral behavior were very different from his own values regarding the subject of a “married” person carrying on shamelessly with a lover on the side. He simply didn’t share those values, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been listening carefully when Kory described the idea as perfectly tolerable (from her own point of view as a native Tamaranean).

So Kory seems to be the one with the real problem when it comes to “understanding” the other side’s point of view. Dick said, in effect, “I understand perfectly that your people think this is proper behavior, but that’s totally irrelevant in my case. I don’t share that opinion at all!”

Kory seems to be saying, in her summary long after the fact, “He didn’t accept my suggestion that we could easily continue as lovers after my wedding, therefore – gosh darn it – he must have totally failed to listen to me carefully enough to really understand what I tried to tell him about Tamaranean morals!” At this moment, she has still failed to grasp the complex idea that Dick could simultaneously A) listen intently and understand perfectly every word she said, but B) continue to vehemently disagree with her interpretation of the “morality” of the proposed situation. "Understanding" and "Agreeing" are entirely different things in this case!

(Note: I don’t mean to suggest that this psychological blind spot is unique to Kory, or makes her any dumber than the average human being. I know plenty of people in the real world who very fervently believe in one thing or another – in terms of theology, political doctrine, aesthetic values, or whatever – and seem to honestly believe that if they can just explain their sincere point of view clearly enough, then any “reasonable” listener will instantly change his own opinions – no matter what they might have been before – and start agreeing with the speaker’s point of view 100% because it is so “obviously” the “right way” to think on this controversial subject! It usually doesn’t work out so neatly as all that, but people keep expecting it to!)

1987. The New Teen Titans #31. According to the credit box, Marv Wolfman is the “Writer/Editor,” but Paul Levitz is the “Guest Writer.” I take this to mean that Wolfman outlined the plot the way he wanted it to develop, and Levitz wrote the actual dialogue.

This issue is the conclusion of a big story arc about Brother Blood. He is finally defeated. Nightwing is freed from his mental domination (which was the main reason he hasn’t been available for a talk with Kory lately), and toward the very end of the story, Kory picks him up and they fly off to talk in private. Part of the conversation goes like this:

STARFIRE: We love each other, Dick. Why can’t we pick up where we left off?

NIGHTWING: It’s not that easy, Kory. For one thing, I need some time to straighten out. For another, you’re married to Ryand’r.

STARFIRE: That was only a marriage of state – a formality. It doesn’t matter to us.

NIGHTWING: It matters to me, Kory.

In other words, neither person’s position has budged an inch from where they were the last time they talked about this (see entry for “New Teen Titans #18,” above) or the time before that (See entry for “New Teen Titans #16,” above.) Something Kory evidently completely failed to anticipate, despite Dick’s repeated attempts to explain it to her. It seems like every time he tries to tell Kory that he doesn't want to be part of an adulterous relationship, it ends up going in one ear and out the other without making any lasting impact on any of her brain cells along the way. (Things like this explain why some fans have been known to view her as an airhead.)

Of course, you could make a case that perhaps Wolfman simply wanted Levitz to insert this scene in order to bring relatively new readers “up to speed” on the nature of the moral dilemma involved, in case they hadn’t actually been reading this title over a year earlier, back in 1985.

Incidentally, you may have been scratching your head and muttering, “Ryand’r? I thought Kory was married to Karras! Is Dick so confused after Brother Blood’s mind games that he’s suddenly accusing her of an incestuous marriage to her own brother?” Don’t sweat it; I’m sure it was just a typo. I think Levitz, who was only filling in for Wolfman for this story arc, lost track of all the weird Tamaranean characters who were running around in Titans continuity at this point, and accidentally typed the wrong name.

1987. The New Teen Titans #34. Written by Marv Wolfman (returning to his duties as the regular scripter of the Titans after a long absence).

In the last two pages of this story, Kory confirms in passing that there is no legal concept of “divorce” on Tamaran. This had never been made explicit before, although the total failure of any Tamaranean to suggest such a thing after Komand'r's coup changed the political equation certainly could be taken to imply as much. From there, the conversation goes as follows:

STARFIRE: But love and marriage on Tamaran aren’t the same as they are here. Karras is with the woman he loves . . . I’m with the man I love. The state recognizes that.

NIGHTWING: I don’t know if I can. But I do know I’d rather deal with that later because I want to be with you more than anything else. I know that when I’m with you I feel more alive than I ever have before. I know when we’re together I feel right.

[Meanwhile, Kory has an arm around him and is flying both up them high up into the air, away from Titans Tower.]

STARFIRE Dick.

NIGHTWING: Yeah?

STARFIRE: Shhhhhhhh. No more talking.

[On the final page of the story, a full-page splash, they are kissing passionately in midair without any words.]

1990. The New Titans Annual #6. Written by Marv Wolfman.

Karras conveniently gets himself killed, making Kory a widow. Karras’s longtime lover, Taryia, is revealed to be pregnant with his child, so his father’s royal dynasty will in fact continue, but not as a result of a merger of its genes with the royal family of Tamarus.

1993. The New Titans #100. Written by Marv Wolfman.

Dick and Kory either do or don’t get married. It's tricky. (Somewhere I heard a rumor that for months after this issue, half the editorial staff at DC thought Dick and Kory were already married and the other half thought they weren't!)

They are dressed as bride and groom at a ceremony, with lots of other Titans and various friends present, but the preacher gets killed by Raven (who had once again lapsed into one of her "look at me, I'm such a bad girl!" phases) just before he could speak the final words of the ceremony. There are persuasive rumors that Marv Wolfman felt, at the time he wrote this, that the timing meant that Dick and Kory had not actually gotten married because of the last-minute interruption.

On the other hand: In an earlier scene in this issue, we distinctly saw them go down to City Hall and get a marriage license. Somewhere (I haven’t been able to track it down again yet) I later read a commentary by a fan who said he was, at the time he wrote his analysis, a student at a law school in the state of New York. As near as I can recall, paraphrasing from an old memory, he said something along these general lines: New York State has achieved total separation of church and state where marriage is concerned. The one and only legal requirement to be properly married is to receive a valid marriage license from the appropriate government authorities. If you also want to have a religious ceremony before you feel "really married” (perhaps conducted by a priest, pastor, rabbi, or whatever) then that is your personal business and has no legal significance! You could have such a ceremony the same day you got the license, or the following day, or a month later, or a year later, or a decade later, or never get around to it at all – the State couldn’t care less! Once the license has been issued, you can be legally regarded as “married” for purposes of inheritance law, tax status, etc., regardless of any religious ceremonies.

If this law student had his facts straight, then the messy little detail of the preacher getting killed by Raven just before he could complete the ceremony had no legal significance at all (except in the sense that it made Raven guilty of homicide, which isn’t really the point for our purposes!).

So here is what seems to have happened: When Marv Wolfman became aware of the legal implications of the story he had written of his own free will, he later inserted a retcon to create an escape clause, i.e. "Yes, the legal significance of what showed in this story was that Dick and Kory were already 'married' before they ever started that ceremony with the preacher, but that wasn't what I meant, so I'm retracting it! Don't believe everything you read, folks!"

1994. The New Titans #112. Written by Marv Wolfman.

Kory has been having some memory problems, but she recovers. Then, understandably enough, she wants to catch up on her own legal situation. Is she married or isn't she?

STARFIRE: X’Hal! That was Dick I saw in South America. A-Are we . . . married? My memories end just as the ceremony was closing.

CHANGELING: Married? Kory, we’re just not sure. No paperwork was signed or filed with the county clerk’s office. In a religious wedding, your vows would be considered a marriage. But yours wasn’t a religious ceremony.

STARFIRE: Dick and I should not be married. We are too young. Neither of us is ready for that kind of commitment.

Dick, of course, is nowhere around in this conversation. So the reader is getting advance notice of Kory’s current take on the subject of marriage, well before he does! Gar’s comment that no paperwork was ever filed with the government seems to be a blatant retcon of a scene we saw in #100 wherein Dick and Kory got a valid marriage license.

1994. The New Titans #113. Written by Marv Wolfman.

I couldn't find a copy in my collection, but I think the following happens in this one (among other things): Dick and Kory catch up on what's changed lately. Their romance fizzles out; they won't be trying to get married "again." They both end up leaving the Titans. It appears, at the time, to finally be the end of their long off-and-on romantic entanglements.

1995. The New Titans #129. Written by Marv Wolfman.

In the final panel of this story, General Ph’yzzon tells the other Titans that he and Koriand’r fell in love and have been married for the last three months. (Something neither he nor she had bothered to tell the Titans in the last few issues they had been working together as part of the “Meltdown” story arc.)

1995. The New Titans #130. Written by Marv Wolfman.

As the series draws to a close, a bunch of the Titans are on the planet of “New Tamaran.” Ph’yzzon and Koriand’r are talking about building a new world and also raising a nice big family, and a rehabilitated Raven states helpfully that she can sense Koriand’r is already pregnant with her first child. She seems about to reveal the gender as a bonus, but Kory cuts her off at that point, saying she wants it to be “a good surprise.” (Implicitly, this would make a nice contrast to all the bad surprises her life has been so full of lately. Logical enough!)

Note: However, the baby has never even been referred to again in any subsequent appearance of Koriand’r. This could have something to do with the fact that this issue marked the ending of Marv Wolfman’s very long run as the primary writer of Titans material (including just about anything of significance that had ever happened to Starfire in her entire career, up through this point, of course). Up until this point, her fate had always been largely in his hands (allowing for some degree of Editorial Interference on various occasions, but I have no good way to measure that). After this issue, her fate was entirely out of Marv’s hands, so it stands to reason that there would be some drastic changes of emphasis when other writers got to do whatever they wanted to with her, for various lengths of time in one title or another. Apparently no subsequent writer to work with Koriand'r even wanted to touch the subject of what might have happened to her unborn child. (Or some of those writers may have completely forgotten Raven's comment that there was a baby gestating in Kory's womb in the first place?)

Dick was not part of this adventure at all, having long since left the Titans, but we get a good look at him on the last couple of pages of the story. He’s standing on a rooftop thinking about all the ups and downs he’s had over the years (in context: he’s probably thinking about the good and bad times with the Titans in particular, although he doesn’t phrase it that way), and telling himself he wouldn’t go back and change any of it now. He looks up in the sky, “sees” ghostly images (obviously just in his imagination) of the faces of several of his old and dear friends from earlier “eras” of the group (including Kory), and says aloud, “Take care, guys! You’re the best!”

Those were the last words ever spoken by any Titan as part of Marv Wolfman’s very long run.

1996. The Final Night: Preview. Written by Karl Kesel.

The Sun-Eater destroys New Tamaran, including Ph’yzzon, Kory’s second husband.

Oddly enough, Kory says in reaction to his death, "While ours was a marriage more of politics than passion, I was never more proud of my husband."

This completely contradicts the version of their relationship that Wolfman was previously selling us when he introduced their marriage as a fait accompli.

There are a few possible explanations, but the one I favor is that Kesel (and/or someone else in an editorial position at the time) either didn't clearly remember or didn't care what Wolfman's take on Starfire's second marriage had been, and wanted to get her "inconvenient spouse" cleared out of the way as quickly as possible to leave her the opportunity for other romantic entanglements in the future.

2004. Teen Titans #19. Written by Geoff Johns.

Batwoman (meaning Bette Kane, ten years in the future) talks to Starfire.

BATWOMAN: You have a future, Kory. And it’s a wonderful one.

STARFIRE: Where--?

BATWOMAN: Far away from all of this. With Nightwing. When you get back, you need to seek him out. You need to be there for him. Don’t forget that.

However, given that the Titans returned to their native era from the alternate future of "Titans Tomorrow" with a firm determination to not let that future become their reality, it's hard to say that Batwoman's observations on the Kory/Dick relationship's future bear any validity in the different path which the Titans hope they are now following.

***** TIMELINE ENDS *****

As I warned in the title, this is only a First Draft. I humbly take it for granted that people are going to point out things that I overlooked.

 

[Harlekin]

Well, they did have sex after that Titans Tomorrow arc in an issue of Outsiders (can't remember which one). Great analysis again though Lorendiac.

 

[Stealth_Prime]

Dude, Kory was married to Karras...not Ryand’r...who was her brother and also former member of the Omega Men.

 

[Purple Man]

Dude, were you even paying attention? Right after that he mentions that it was a mistake on the writers part. Mixing up her brothers name with that of her husband.

Idiot.

 

[jaydawg]

Sorry to sound rude, but I have to ask..... whats the point of making a list of Starfire's relationships?

 

[Stealth_Prime]

Sorry to sound rude, but I have to ask..... whats the point of making a list of Starfire's relationships?

everyone has the right to express how much they like a character in their own ways. Some do it by posting up sexy pictures of her...others make threads about her current status and others run down a list of how many men has been in her life.
To each their own.

 

[Lorendiac]

Sorry to sound rude, but I have to ask..... whats the point of making a list of Starfire's relationships?

What's the point of making a list of anything? But people keep making lists and posting them on the Internet . . . I guess it's just a compulsion programmed into human nature, to try to organize things and ideas and share the lists with other people who may or may not care.

Sir Edmund Hillary was once asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. He said: "Because it is there."

Thomas Berger once did a twist on that. He said: "Why do writers write? Because it isn't there." I know exactly what he meant!