Pulsar Stargrave has always been, to me, one of the criminally underused ideas in Legion history, for a few reasons. He has an awesome name, for starters. He’s got a great look, too: a neo-Roman togacape, dressed in imperial white, give the impression of someone who knows he’s in charge but it’s stripped down enough that you know he can rumble if he wants to do so. And, of course, he’s green, which lets you have an ambiguous tie to Colu and/or Brainiac Five if you want (and you should).
Of course the net result of all this is that Pulsar Stargrave has barely been touched. He’s been used barely at all – and one of those times was in the Legion of Substitute Heroes one-shot where he was more or less just played for laughs by Keith Giffen as a generic Big Bad suitable for antagonizing against Matter-Eater Lad.1 On top of that, his powers are vague in all the wrong ways. He’s Generic 70s Cosmic Baddie and he doesn’t have to be.
I think there’s a lot of potential here that hasn’t been tapped. You can make Pulsar Stargrave Brainiac 7, for example, a Brainiac from the future come to conquer easier temporal targets. Or make him the Anti-Matter Universe’s equivalent of Brainiac 5 – the logical endpoint of what would happen if the smartest person in the universe was completely amoral, self-interested, and power-hungry. (You could also give him an evil goatee that way, and don’t think for a second that this wouldn’t be completely awesome.) The point is that right now Pulsar Stargrave is just waiting for a good idea to show up and use him as its vehicle, and he would make an awesome vehicle in that respect.
- Did he show up in R.E.B.E.L.S. recently? Did I imagine that? I’m not sure. [↩]
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In L.E.G.I.O.N. ’89 (or ’90 or ’91, I don’t remember) his secret origin was revealed; he was the bioroid the computer tyrants of Colu escaped into when Dox destroyed their civilization.
Unless I’m misremembering.
Proposed idea for an indie comic: “Going Cosmic”, protracted origin story about a researcher/inventor trying to build the requisite genetic engineering/technology/training to be able to effectively compete on a cosmic scale. Essentially just building up to “Generic ’70s Cosmic” level of power.
Although I certainly agree he had potential for mre, I think he worked well in the LoSubH story largely because he was so cryptic, ill-defined and pompous as a villian. And that issue contains one of the great fight scenes:
http://yetanothercomicsblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/friday-night-fights-matter-eater-lad-vs.html
With that name I always mistake him for that guy from the Invisibles. The baldness is usually an important hint for finding Morrisonian author-inserts.
The version of Pulsar Stargrave that recently showed up in R.E.B.E.L.S. wasn’t this one, but rather a sentient weapon created by Lyrl Dox as part of his assault on Colu. There was no connection to this Pulsar Stargrave though, it was just coincidence.
Aww, he gets a good rating just for having potential. That’s adorable! And actually kind of insulting, for a guy who lists his occupation as Conqueror.
Basically, he’s another Byrne reboot casualty. By the time of the Crisis, there had been enough hints dropped to cement the idea that he had some connection to Brainiac. But Byrne didn’t actually give us a proper, rebooted Brainiac for years and years, which pretty much kept Pulsar off limits during the best years of the Legion. Then we got “Mr. Starr” in L.E.G.I.O.N., the bioroid mentioned above, who was never explicitly stated to be Pulsar, but that doesn’t matter because we were already on the second Legion continuity and that continuity didn’t have a Pulsar Stargrave in it at all. And I’m not sure that Mr. Starr fits properly in post-Johns Colu Canon, for that matter…
A temporal conqueror? Don’t make him Kang. Kang sucks.
I agree entirely.
I must confess to a soft spot for him as he was the villain in the first ever issue of the LOS that I picked up as a wee bairn.I have vague recollections of something to do with him framing Ultra Boy for a murder and then a confrontation with B5 where he, apparently, destroyed himself. Awesome stuff, that I AM SURE will be just as epic amd moving if I was to hunt that down today.Honest.
Never forget your first issue of a comic eh 😉
Couldn’t agree more. He at least had the surface ingredients to be a major league Legion villain. A great name, a great look (if you took away the bell bottoms), a personal connection to Brainiac 5 (even if they couldn’t settle on a proper origin for him), even a defining moment (when he punches Superboy off a planet in his second appearance).
He never got off the ground because he was a Jim Shooter creation just as Shooter was leaving to become an assistant editor at Marvel. Either Levitz/Conway weren’t interested in picking up the thread or editorial directed them to make it go away. Levitz undid Shooter’s origin of Stargrave two issues after it was established and Conway tossed him into a sun an issue later.
Conway brought him back in issue #273 to clear up another creator-muddled plot (Jim Starlin’s “Brainiac 5 has gone insane” story) in hand-wavey fashion, only to have him destroyed (again) by the end of it. I remember that story vividly because it was the first Legion comic I ever bought, and Stargrave comes off as suitably dangerous in it, blinding Chameleon Boy seemingly for the hell of it and even blowing away Ultra Boy in dramatic fashion (temporarily, of course).
Given a solid origin and proper motivation, he could have taken his place among the most feared Legion villains. A step below the Time Trapper/Mordru level, but someone who sends a chill down the spine of Brainiac 5 and gives the other Legionnaires pause when they hear his name. Too bad it never panned out.
And wow, Reds8n, jinx. You truly don’t forget your first issue of a comic.
I dind’t see him until the Substitute Heroes special so he still brings a smile to my face.
The LEGION 89 run was just odd after the first year or so. They had him and the Emerald Eye in play and then just sort of dropped them. I should reread that book sometime.
I’m just happy to see Who’s Who make a comeback.
Marital Status: Uncertain.
Sounds kind of sketchy to me. What does that mean, he has a common-law wife in Daxam, but never filled out the divorce papers for his Tamaranian group marriage?
@ Mr. Snap Wilson : wow, that is spooky.. you got any idea about the lottery numbers this weekend by any chance ? 😉
I am now going to have to hunt down these issues and reread them.
I also am very happy to see the whos who make a return.
I hate to hijack the thread, MGK, but I think you’d better take a look at this.
I like that Danny Dennis was an old man in the 90s and now he’s bumped back to middle age.
All the bad writing and art in that issue was done away with that toothbrush.
…and I wish someone would draw him wearing his army dogtags.
In issue 18 of the most recent REBELS run a Pulsar Stargrave has been introduced as a Polaris the Tyrant Sun-style space computer built by Brainiac 3.