| Star City | |
|---|---|
Star City International Airport, shown in DC Showcase: Green Arrow. |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| In story information | |
| Type | City |
| Notable people | Oliver Queen |
Star City is a fictional city that appears in stories published by DC Comics, best known as the traditional home of the superheroes known by, or affiliated with, the shared alias of the Green Arrow. Beyond that, it is also known to other characters of the DC Universe as both a port city and a haven for artists in many of the media, from print to audio/visual to music.
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According to several published accounts, Star City was incorporated as a city under its current name over 200 years ago.
Before moving on to service in first Metropolis and later Gotham City, Maggie Sawyer began her career as a police officer in Star City.
The first costumed vigilante to serve as mayor was Thomas "Steelclaw" Bolt, who adopted an undercover persona as a costumed criminal as part of his efforts to bring local crime under control. He died in office of that attempt.
During the years that Green Arrow spent outside of Star City, at least one other costumed crime-fighter operated there: Chase Lawler, one of the several known Manhunters.[1]
The final Green Arrow storyline before One Year Later featured Doctor Light and Merlyn detonating explosives, leaving nearly a third of Star City in shambles in what becomes known as the "Amsterdam Avenue Disaster".
In the One Year Later storyline, Green Arrow becomes the mayor of Star City. However, the subsequent scandal upon learning that he had been secretly funding the Outsiders- essentially a bounty hunter team at this point in their history-, coupled with his uncertain position with the voting public- having never had much more than 50% of the city on his side at a time-, prompted Queen to resign his position in exchange for his successor leaving the various social aid organisations and resources he had established alone (Although Ollie was able to beat his opponent by resigning prior to the election and putting someone he trusted in charge of the city).
In Justice League: Cry for Justice mini-series, Star City is the scene of a devastating tremor set by Prometheus.[2] Prometheus' plan is to teleport Star City -- which he has targeted solely because it is the home city of a member of the Justice League -- to an alternate universe. As the plan fails, Star City's outskirts are left mostly intact but there is a vast, star-shaped ruin in the centre of the city, and a death toll of ninety-thousand people and rising [3]
During the events of Brightest Day, Deadman's white power ring teleports him to the site of the tremor, where his newly acquired White Lantern's powers turn the ruin into a lush forest.[4] Shortly after this event, Martian Manhunter is informed by the Entity that he has been resurrected in order to burn the forest to the ground.[5] Martian Manhunter arrives in the Star City forest and attempts to complete his task, however he is stopped from doing that by the Entity who revealed to him that the forest he is to burn down is on Mars.[6] Green Arrow discovers that the forest appears to have some sentient intelligence or some kind of powers of illusion which instructs to protect or kill someone.[7] The Entity later reveals that Nekron's attack at the Entity not only was mortally to it but also heightened the contamination of the planet, and the corruption will rise up in the form of another "dark avatar" of the darkness who will try to destroy the Star City forest, in which is the key to save Earth's soul and the new champion of life, causing the Earth to die.[8]
Green Arrow later discovers that the forest is not what appeared to be and that the heart of the forest is evil.[9] This evil eventually became the "Dark Avatar" which the Entity mentioned would come to destroy the forest. This Dark Avatar resembles the Swamp Thing in his Black Lantern version. Also as the entire Earth falls victim of its poisoning and corruption it is revealed that the only place that is not yet touched is the forest where the sky is still blue, however as the population began take shelter they are stopped by a white barrier. To defend the forest from the Dark Avatar, the Entity summoned the Elementals, which are revealed to be the heroes whose life force had been collected by the Entity and which reflect the simplest essential parts and principles of nature, each one representing one of the four elements, the Entity also reveals that the central tree in the Star City forest is the foundation for the Parliament of Trees.[10] The Elementals are fused with the body of Alec Holland to resurrect him and then the forest fused Alec Holland to transform into the new Swamp Thing. After the Dark Avatar is defeated, Swamp Thing is restored to life in Star City's areas.[11]
Star City's location, like those of Metropolis, Gotham City, and other cities in the DC Universe, was uncertain for many years, with varying depictions over the decades. Several golden age stories depicted Green Arrow and Speedy fighting seafaring villains -- the Angler, the Harbor Thief, and the Turtle, among others -- implying the city was on a sea coast. Star City's location was given as near the Great Lakes in the 1960s and near Massachusetts Bay from the 1970s until the late 1980s. In one 1970s reference, it was stated that Star City was in Connecticut. Currently, northern California has been settled upon as its location, specifically in the coastal regions north of San Francisco Bay.
At least one map has been published in 1985 and was occasionally modified by Mayfair Games during the years that the company held the license for role-playing game adaptation rights for the DC Comics universe, detailing Star City's geographical layout. Though the Atlas placed Star City on California's Pacific Coast, north of San Francisco, the layout used for the city map resembled the geography of metropolitan Chicago, but reversed, so that it would be on the Michigan side of Lake Michigan: So the neighborhood of "East Gary" was approximately where the real Gary, Indiana, is, but it was on the Pacific Ocean instead of Lake Michigan.
In Birds of Prey # 119, Star City is depicted as being in the San Francisco Bay region, although the published map erroneously substitutes Star City for San Francisco. Also, the city of Platinum Flats, the home of the Birds at the time of publication, is described as "half an hour" away.
Among the more notable landmarks established by various Green Arrow creative teams include the following:
Known neighborhoods include:
Star City's population was given in Green Arrow (City Walls Pt.3) as being 5 million.
Star City Rockets: Baseball, they play in Papp Stadium.
Star City Thunder: Basketball, they play in Tinder-Smith Garden.
Star City was briefly mentioned by Lex Luthor in the Smallville sixth season episode "Reunion". In "Freak", Tobias Rice- a meteor freak whose exposure to kryptonite rendered him blind while allowing him to 'see' other people infected by meteor rocks- is sent to Star City because Oliver Queen said he would be given a cornea transplant. A computer generated panorama of Star City can also be seen in the first episode in the online Smallville spinoff short "The Oliver Queen Chronicles".
In the Smallville eighth season episode "Bride," Jimmy Olsen was sent to Star City for medical attention after being critically injured by Doomsday. In season 10 episode "Fortune" Chloe tells Clark that she is moving to Star City, where she will work by day as a reporter for the Star City Register and nurture new superheroes by night.
Star City has also been the setting of several Green Arrow-centered stories in animation, such as The Batman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, DC Showcase: Green Arrow, and Young Justice.
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