Friday, June 7, 2019

Are Starfire's feats outliers?

There is a conception around the vs debating community that Starfire is street level or somewhere above that but below Herald Level based on some vague conception that she doesn't "seem" that strong. This blog is going to be my argument for why she is in fact Herald Level.

So what number of feats in the herald (Planetary or above range) is required to make someone herald level? I don't know what feat number it is, either as a set number or in proportional to number of appearances. That said I'm going to tally all of Starfire's Herald Level Feats. This is including everything on Earth-1 since Rebirth made all that canon though I will divide by age in case you just want a specific time period. I'm obviously not including recursive feats (IE I'm not saying Starfire fighting Blackfire is a Herald Level feat because Blackfire would only be Herald Level scaling to Starfire, nor am I saying Starfire surviving her own attacks is a Herald Level Feat) because doing so would be dumb. I'm not including things that seem questionable, though I will mention them in a separate section afterwards as possibly secondary support if wanted. I am not listing Starfire fighting the same person multiple times as seperate instances, though I will list her fighting different versions of the same person as different instances (IE Starfire fighting Donna Troy and then Donna Troy is counted as one, but Starfire fighting Donna Troy and then later Troia, the Titaness Form of Donna Troy will be counted as 2). These are just power feats as I think her speed is already well agreed on. Also she has less herald level speed feats and less speed anti-feats, only really having 1 which I'll get too.

Pre-Crisis:
1: Starfire's starbolt is effective against Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman
2: Starfire survives an attack from the Titan Hyperion
3: Starfire blasts and survives a blast from the Titan King Cronos
4: Starfire overpowers Pre-Crisis Donna Troy in strength
5: Starfire fights the Titaness Thia
6: Starfire slays a giant on the same level as the Titans
Count: 6

Post-Crisis:
1: Starfight battles the Manhunters who are roughly Green Lantern Level and were comparable to Harbinger, even being barely wounded from a surprise attack from one
2: Starfire is said to be the only one of the Titans, including Cyborg and Donna Troy, capable of defeating Demon Raven and her starbolt actually does work on her
3: Starfire takes an attack from the Mad Titaness version of Donna Troy, Troia
4: Starfire needed to pull her punch or kill a Darkstar which are Green Lantern Level
5: Starfire survives a blast from Orion
6: Starfire survives the sonic attack of Silver Swan which just one issue later knocked around Wonder Woman
7: Starfire was confident in her ability to restrain both Wonder Girl and Superboy
8: Starfire vs Post-Crisis Wonder Woman, notably WW doesn't even win that fight. It's broken off by the arrival of a third party.
9: Starfire fought and harmed Brainiac 8, who was sent back in time to kill Donna Troy
10: Destroys Brainiac's ship
11: Takes hits from Sabbac, the Demon Shazam
12: Throws and Harms Firestorm
13: Battles Enhanced Blackfire who had previously been mistaken for X'Hal in power.
14: Survives near a galactic sized black hole that was moving the universe off center and threatening the universe
15: Survives the massive energy of the above black hole being closed
16: Defeats the New God Devilance
17: Fights Envy with Wonder Woman's powers
18: Requires Donna Troy and Mon-El to hold back
19: One-Shot Black Lantern Terra
20: Starfire and Donna Troy's power working on Atlas who was said to be nearly as strong as Superman
21: Withstands the power of Peak Blackfire who was stronger then the previous form of Blackfire
22: Starbolt is effective against a Green Lantern
Count: 22

New 52:
1: Is said several times to be one of the strongest aliens on the New 52 Earth
2: Harms Lord Helspont
3: Describes herself as nearly as strong and fast as New 52 Superman
Count: 3

Convergence/Rebirth:
1: Starfire and Donna fight the Extremists who are several times said to be planet-destroyers who have fought the Justice League
2: Beast Boy calls Starfire the strongest of the Titans
3: Starfire blasts Sinestro
4: Survives Radiation that was threatening Green Lantern Jessica Cruz
Count: 4

Total: 35

Starfire has been around for 39 years meaning this is a herald level feat on an almost annual basis. And that's not even including how Starfire was originally weaker in the pre-flashpoint and post-flashpoint timelines and how she was briefly depowered in the 00s. AND it's not allowing for all the times Starfire fought Donna Troy.

The general idea that Starfire is generally depicted as a street level fighter I can't find myself agreeing with despite reading literally ALL of her Earth-1 appearenences. Caveat: Rebirth does make everyone seem somewhat closer in terms of power and recent issues had her struggling with people like Killer Shark or Black Manta. That said Rebirth has a lot of examples like that where characters far separated in power are treated as somewhat close.

Most of the time Starfire's power is not very clearly defined. For instance, in one early issue a Demon monster attacks Titan Tower. Robin and Beast Boy couldn't harm it but Cyborg and Starfire were able to and drove it back. What does that prove? Does it "prove" Starfire is barely above Robin in power because she didn't one-shot an enemy that didn't one-shot Robin? Or it could be that the creatures' speed and power didn't correlated to it's durability, or any other number of other reasons. All that fight showed was that Starfire and Cyborg at that time were an unknown amount stronger then Robin and Beast Boy at the time. It's not really a feat or anti-feat save for scaling the former to the latter.


Limitations:
I also kept track of every time Starfire showed a limit, any limit, or an anti-feat during the late Post-Crisis Era (near or after her fight with Brainiac 8 where it was revealed she had been holding back on Earth and she released her limit...some of the latter feats might be her holding back, but I listed all of them just to be clear). I will also give any possible reason for why this anti-feat is and or other relevant context (IE if instead of a low-end outlier for Starfire it's a high end outlier for her opponent, which can be told if the character also beats other characters that are independently herald tier like Donna Troy or Supergirl).

1: Superman tanks Starfire's attack and one-shots her. He also tanked the starbolt on a separate occasion
Response: It's Superman. He's regularly said to be the strongest person on the planet. This isn't much of a low-end feat.

2: New 52 Superman tanks Starfire's attack
Response: This is related to Starfire's statement in the New 52 that she's nearly as strong and fast as Superman (New 52) and seems to contradict it. However the first scan comes from Red Hood and the Outlaws, and early issue taking place near the start of the New 52 timeline. Conversely the second statement comes from Starfire's solo series near the end of the New 52. In between these 2 at the end of Red Hood and the Outlaws New 52 Starfire fought the Superman Villain Lord Helspont. The implication seems to be she grew in strength until she was nearing Superman's level.

3: Starfire supposedly can't fly at translight speeds
Response: Outside generic "this character should just be able to search everywhere in a city" standard dramatic convenience which applies to pretty much every mftl character in fiction, this is the only speed "Anti-feat". Not only is it heavily contradicted as Starfire was able to fly lightyears even in her origin story, but it's contradicted in the same series as Starfire tells Animal Man that she can fly lightyears and just after the series she flies lightyears just to retrieve Animal Man's jacket. It's far more likely Adam Strange didn't know her capacities. And he doesn't even say that she can't fly faster then light, just that she can't fly them the translight speeds to get from the world they're on to Home. BTW apparently people are finding it hard to find the source for the scan where she tells Adam Strange that she can fly lightyears. It's from 52, Issue 17, listed as page 12 on readcomiconline.to

4: Bizarro overpowers Starfire and Donna Troy
Response: This is Bizarro, an alternate universe counterpart to Superman, and this is supposed to be early Starfire and Donna Troy (Donna has her red costume instead of her black one). Also Starfire beats him by using her solar power to depower him.

5: Starfire is stopped cold by the gravitational pull of a sun
Response: This doesn't seem to be a particular anti-feat for Starfire as it also clearly affected Miss Martian and Donna Troy about equally to Starfire and both of them are generally accepted at Herald Class. Also that issue was generally inconsistent as it claimed Supergirl could "only" stagger a mountain and could do nothing to a star despite her having far higher feats. 

6: Starfire's starbolt does nothing to Synnar
Response: ...It's Synnar. Synnar at his weakest was able to take on the Justice League by himself. Also if you wanna go down that route, Starfire survived a casual blast from Synnar.

7: Demon Raven solos the Teen Titans including Starfire (1) (2) (3)
Response: Demon Raven is very powerful, as can be seen also fodderizing Donna Troy and Wally West in said issues. It's also possibly inconsistent as Starfire was much earlier said to be able to drive off Demon Raven. Or Demon Raven got stronger, which would make this "limitation" unquantifiable.

8: Starfire gets fodderized by a particular version of Joseph (1) (2)
Response: Same version also fodderized Donna Troy (1) (2)

9: Deathstroke defeats The Titans, including Starfire and Donna Troy
Response: These were early versions (time travel story), and also it's more of a high-end outlier for Deathstroke as he also defeats Donna here.

10: Starfire gets blasted back by an Animal Man Villainess
Response: She just reflected Starfire's power back at her

11: Starfire gets defeated by Prometheus, low level villain
Response: This is part of Cry for Justice and one of the most famously PIS scenes in comics where Prometheus defeats basically the entire JLA at the time including Zatanna, Supergirl, Green Lantern, Flash, and Red Tornado. This is clearly not good evidence.

12: Black Lantern Superboy Prime tanks Starfire's attack
Response: Superboy Prime can survive universe busting attacks in his base form. Him tanking Starfire's attacks is not a very low-end feat.

13: Starfire is blasted by one of Starro's minions
Response: Starfire is shown again 2 pages later, it didn't actually affect her much, just briefly stunned her. 


Potential Feats:
Oh and just in case it helps, here are some potential Herald Level Feats I found but weren't sure about or thought were too ambigious.

1: Starfire could have killed Cyborg (disguised as Wildabeast)
Wasn't sure how strong Post-Crisis Cyborg was. I do know LATER he was stated to be able to potentially defeat Troia but at this point wasn't sure what his durability was.

2: Starfire crashes through Trigon's skeleton
Again wasn't sure how durable Trigon's skeleton was. Obviously for humans bone is much harder then flesh but I didn't know if there was any way to assume how tough Trigon's bones were compared to his flesh.

3: Starfire absorbs the solar energy of Hyperion
While she wasn't overwhelmed by his sheer power, this seems like just an energy absorption feat rather then any kind of real power feat.

4: Starfire energy-drains and beats a Kryptonian
Wasn't sure how much of this was Starfire's energy-draining and how much of it was her strength

5: Starfire is able to conjure the living flame of a star 
The New 52 has several statements that sound really strong like this but are ambigious if they are literal

6: Starfire has the power of the sun raging within her 24/7
Another ambiguous New 52 statement

7: Starfire is called "essentially a walking solar flare"
Another ambiguous New 52 statement

8: Starfire makes a comparison to flying into a black hole as if she had done so 
Might just be a figure of speech

9: Starfire matches Jon Kent's Heat Vision with her Starbolt
Jon Kent's powers are inconsistent



TLDR: Are Starfire's Herald Level Feats outliers? She has 2 direct herald level durability feats, a few dozen feats from scaling (33 scaling feats), some hype of her being that strong, and the only limits shown for her since she started to not hold back were about a half dozen anti-feats against high herald level+ entities and about a half-dozen PIS showings that also apply to other characters who also have Herald Level direct feats. No, they're probably not outliers.

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