I picked up 'I Am Not Starfire' mainly because it was written by Mariko Tamaki, one of the big WOC comic writers of today. And I finally wanted to see precisely what it is about it that seems to have caused a tizzy in the comic book fandom - and let's face it, that primarily involves the cishet white grown male demographic, who have still not truly grown up yet and accepted the fact that they are not the default setting in life, and not everything is about them and not everything is for them.
I enjoyed it. It's colourful, it's cute, it's cartoony, it's stylish, it's girly, it has superhero action to go with its coming-of-age high school girl story, and it's diverse as heck.
In this DC YA graphic novel, Starfire of the no-longer-Teen Titans has a teen daughter, Mandy, who is her opposite. Starfire is a gorgeous, tall, slim, larger-than-life, sunshiny alien superheroine and super-optimist, and Mandy is a small, fat, dour, negative and antisocial goth girl and seemingly ordinary human.
Mandy does not appreciate being in her superhero mother's shadow - her quite literal supernova eclipse - her whole life. Superhero fans her age have always invaded her personal space, and it's due to her super-famous, superhero alien mum. Overtime, she grew tired of being constantly compared to her.
Mandy grew resentful of the fact she's been made to feel like she is inferior to Starfire. She has not wanted the attention since she was a young child.
She does not want to care about anything anymore.
Therefore, any time she ever looked up to her bright, shining, beautiful, powerful beacon of a mother is now gone, snuffed out.
The, ahem, emo goth chick wants to rebel against everything Starfire is (though not to the point of becoming a supervillain), and against everything Starfire wants for her, including going to college.
Mandy - last name Anders, as a clever reference to Koriand'r, Starfire's Tamaranian name - has a list of anxiety and mental issues, and mood swings, for understandable reasons. She is also queer and has a blooming relationship with a popular girl in high school, Claire.
Being a teenage girl is hard enough without the obstacles of a queer crush and having a celebrity superhero for a parent. Not to mention an intergalactic threat... but I'll leave it at that in this review.
'I Am Not Starfire' contains themes of the struggles of being a child of celebrities; of not fitting in in school; cultural and generational divides between parents and their children; self-discovery; reaching your true potential; and of course, the growing, changing, and tumultuous relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter.
'I Am Not Starfire' has a lot of flaws:
It has pacing and storytelling issues. Starfire definitely could have been a more close, communicative and caring mother - anyone who knows anything about her knows she is capable of being a fantastic parent on earth, despite how she is as a space alien.
Mandy has a pet cockatoo named Joan, who she uses as her entire social media presence, but then she pretty much disappears by the end of the comic.
While on the surface 'I Am Not Starfire' is a cute and child-friendly YA graphic novel, it contains a surprising amount of strong language. It seems excessive and unnecessary. Let's not even get into Starfire's outfits, which hark back to her original comic book look; that is, of barely wearing anything. She looks like a Victoria's Secret magazine model most of the time! A type of nineties pulp fiction dominatrix attire appears to be the style of all female Tamaranians.
Finally, it is odd that the identity of Mandy's father is never disclosed. I get that it's to show it's unimportant, and for the focus to be on the mother-and-daughter relationship. But in context, if Mandy's father is Nightwing/Dick Grayson, which the comic slyly implies, why is it kept a secret, including from Mandy herself? Why not have Nightwing be in her life? Why would Nightwing be okay with not being in his daughter's life, and her not knowing who he is in relation to her?
Starfire has a date with some random guy, Doug, near the beginning of the comic, and then he sods off after two pages, never to be mentioned again. What was the point of him? It's not even said by Mandy or anyone else that Starfire is a serial dater.
However, 'I Am Not Starfire' is harmless, silly, OTT, lovely, diverse female empowerment.
What 'I Am Not Starfire' is not for everyone, and that's fine. It is obviously meant to be seen as its own story, separate from the main canon and timeline of the DC universe. It is not a part of any of it. And just because the graphic novel stars a unconventional, "unlikeable" teenage girl, and is something targeted towards teenage girls, it doesn't make it an inferior product. I thought we had gotten past this shitty, toxic discourse by now.
Teenage girls are cool. Teenage girls are awesome. Teenage girls are powerful, and they can change culture and the world.
So calm down, so-called fanboys. Sheesh.
'I Am Not Starfire' also clearly takes a lot of inspiration from the 2000s 'Teen Titans' animated series, which my nostalgic heart appreciates. Though would Beast Boy be called just Beast as an adult? What about the Beast from Marvel, from the X-Men, hmm?
I love this line by Mandy's best friend, Lincoln, who has Vietnamese immigrant parents:
'[...] we hold our parents' hope for a new future, but that future isn't necessarily going to be what our parents thought it would be. [...] We have to face the future they gave us.'
Well that's it. I freely, gleefully declare 'I Am Not Starfire' to be a Starfire comic I like, alongside 'Starfire, Volume 1: Welcome Home' (*cough* TeenTitans:StarfireIsOverratedAndIsBarelyEvenAboutStarfire *cough*). Part guilty pleasure, part F-U to misogynistic superhero comic book fans (homophobes will not escape mention here either), and all around mother-and-daughter, superheroine, and queer joy.
Final Score: 3.5/5
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