A very personal creation from DC Comics’ Geoff Johns, Stargirl, is yet another character coming to the DC Universe streaming service in her own original series… and it seems that she’s not the only element from her comic book history that Johns will be bringing to the show as creator, writer, and Executive Producer.
“Much like, you know, Arrow reimagining Green Arrow or Smallville, I’m taking a brand new direction on Justice Society,” he revealed to CBR at Comic-Con earlier this year, in an interview that was recently posted on their website. “It’ll be, I think, more closer to the lore. I wanted to kind of do a brand new reimagining of it for Stargirl.”
The Justice Society has appeared on television before, of course: The team appeared in a two-hour episode during Smallville Season 9 that was written by Johns himself; a movie event titled “Absolute Justice.” That story also introduced Stargirl in her first television appearance, where she was played by Britt Irvin. Later, Stargirl was part of a 1940’s-set JSA in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. There, the actor playing Courtney was Sarah Grey.
The JSA aren’t the only heroes from Stargirl’s comic book history that are coming to the DC Universe original series: Her own iron giant, S.T.R.I.P.E., is also present.
“You can’t do Stargirl without S.T.R.I.P.E. Yeah, he’s in there,” he confirmed. “It’s cool because, I have to say, with Titans and with Doom Patrol, Warner Bros. has given us the ability to build Robotman and we’re doing Elasti-Woman and Crazy Jane and Negative Man and, in Titans, there’s great scenes with Dick Grayson in the Batcave.”
“Really, I think, with the budgets and the time and the creative has pushed this stuff to be closer to lore and celebrate the lore and I think that’s going to be a lot of fun. So making S.T.R.I.P.E. is hard, but, look at Gorilla Grodd, you know?” Johns continued. “Greg Berlanti and I were talking the other day and he was like, ‘You know, when we started doing Flash, in the pilot we put in the gorilla cage that was bent open and we had the Grodd thing there and was like, oh, gorilla was affected by the explosion and, at the time, people were like, how are we ever going to do Gorilla Grodd? How are we going to do Gorilla Grodd? And they were like, well, we want to try. We want to try.’ I think Grodd is kind of this great — he was like the first thing, and now you look at everything that’s happening like, ‘Yeah, we could pull off S.T.R.I.P.E.’”
Johns also addressed whether or not Stargirl will be connected to other series.
“Right now, for me, Stargirl is its own show, with the Justice Society,” Johns said. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t eventually do something like that. But, the goal is just to make a great Stargirl show right now, and if it happens to interconnect in the future with other things, great. I love that it’s such a different tone than Titans and Doom Patrol that we’re working on, because [DC Universe] should have different kinds of shows. I think it’s important to have a diversity of tones instead of everything fitting the same tone. I wanted to do Stargirl for a variety of reasons, but part of it was because I wanted to do something fun and young.
“It’s PG-13, but it really is for everybody,” Johns continued, which makes us think that trailer will have no “F— Batman” moments. It is for adult fans like us, and it’s for kids. I think everybody will be able to watch Stargirl, which is part of the appeal of it, because you will have generations of heroes.”
Stargirl is still a little while away from its DC Universe launch, but you can stay updated on the project by following @StargirlTV on Twitter and visiting our brand-spanking-new Stargirl TV Facebook page!
