It's no Patrick Star.
So, if you’ve seen The Suicide
Squad, you know the McGuffin and final antagonist of the film is Starro the
Conqueror. If you think that a giant monster mind controlling starfish is
weird, you’re right, and the only rational I can give is that he was made in
the 60s. Superman once destroyed a galaxy with a sneeze in that era, so Starro
is hardly that strange by comparison. That said, I’ve seen a lot of world
conquering aliens in my day, but few as bizarre as this monster. I should note,
that while I’ve done my best to switch to gender neutral terminology for
dealing with asexual creatures, I’ll be sticking to calling Starro it. What? It
is Starro’s preferred pronoun. Enough
preamble, let’s get to it, shall we?
The early life of the being dubbed
Starro the Conqueror is shrouded in mystery. What is known is that it is a
spacefaring alien that floats across the cosmos, it will subjugate whole
planets as part of its lifecycle. The colossal main Starro releases millions of
smaller clones of itself dubbed Spores that latch onto the faces of its
victims, ala a Facehugger from Alien, and control its victim’s body. The main
Starro feeds on their psychic essence, growing to colossal size as it feeds on
Billions. After feasting, Starro would return to space and begin the whole
process anew. This life cycle went on for countless eons, until a Starro set
its eyes (collective singular eyes) on Earth.
Giant Alien Starfish is about
as bonkers as it gets.
As the great Asteroidea approached
Earth, it used its immense psychic powers to contact and empower three lesser
starfish to make way for it’s coming. The enhanced starfish wreaked havoc
across the world, setting off nukes and absorbing their energy, kidnapping
scientists to absorb their intelligence, and holding the town of Happy Harbor,
Rhode Island, under their thrall. Aquaman caught wind of their plan as, you
know, fish are kind of his thing, and he got the aide of the Flash, Green
Lantern, Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter to stop them and their master when
it finally arrived. They coated the lesser starfish and Starro itself in
quicklime, which was able to restrict Starro’s psychic powers and destroys its
body. A piece of Starro survived, though, and that was enough for it to
regenerate. Aquaman tracked down thee regenerated Starro, though, and was able
to destroy it again before it could restart its plan.
Another piece of Starro must have
survived, though, as the creature regenerated once again, though this time it
was greatly diminished in size. It took over this little, inconsequential city
of the DC Universe, New York City. This was the first time it utilized its
spores to do so. The Justice League was called in, and were finally able to
defeat Starro using extreme cold to defeat it. … Uh, much like with Megatron
freezing in the arctic, I feel the need to point out the near absolute zero of
space makes terrestrial temperatures damn near tropical. All I’m saying.
Starro has reared its ugly…
cycloptic madreporite to battle the Justice League on a few more occasions, but
is always put down by the Justice League. Its colossal size and ability to
control millions, if not billions, makes it one of the most dangerous beings
the Justice League has faced.
I think it's him walking around that is the weirdest.
Starro the Conqueror is an alien
Starfish with immense psychic power along with its colossal size. It generates
countless cloned spores of itself that will latch onto the face or occasionally
chest of its victims to control their minds. It could also impower lesser
Starfish into near perfect clones of itself. They can also fly, fire off energy
blasts, is telepathic, and can regenerate from only a few fragments of tissue.
Its body is also incredibly sturdy, able to take blows from Superman without
being destroyed. Its power seems to be based at least in part on its size. When
Starro is reduced in size, it’s power is reduced proportionally. While small,
it could probably control only a handful of people, it needs to be the size of
a building to control large populations.
Starro has been used a few times
outside of the comics. As I stated above, it is one of the most visually
distinctive and powerful beings of the DC universe, so when it does show up
it’s often very, very bad.
One of Starro’s earliest roles was
as a cameo in Superman: The Animated Series. It’s only shown briefly at the end
of the “The Main Man” two parter, one of several functionally extinct species
kept in the menagerie of the Galactic Preserver. Terminology fact, a
functionally extinct species is one that still has living members but
reproduction isn’t possible, either from lack of reproductively viable members,
or only a single specimen remains. Superman was the last Kryptonian, and Lobo,
the last Czarnian, were of course perfect candidates. They defeated the
Preserver and Superman took all of his collection to watch over on earth.
Yes, it's basically a brain
slug from Futurama.
The same Starro returns years later
in Batman: Beyond in the two parter The Call. Future Batman Terry McGinnis got
a recruitment call from Superman to join the current incarnation of the Justice
League, in the hopes he can help Superman flush out a traitor within the current
Justice League. The investigation doesn’t turn up much until the apparent death
of one of his teammates, Warhawk. Investigation led to the traitor being
Superman himself. It turns out, Starro, escaped its enclosure and took over
Superman’s mind, wrapping around his chest and hiding beneath his clothes.
Starro starts actively controlling the rest of the Justice League, but are
ultimately defeated by Terry. The heroes return Starro to its homeworld and
left it to live out its life. Terry is offered fulltime membership into the
league, but he elects to follow his mentor with only parttime membership.
An unnamed Starro appeared in Young
Justice. In the episode “Downtime” while the Young Justice team were taking a
day off to recenter, a froze Starro is found by Atlantean scientists and put on
display. Black Manta and his crew attempt to steal it, but are thwarted by
Aqualad and his Atlantean allies. Manta, being a sore loser, detonated the
Starro-cicle, destroying it. He is able to get a few pieces of it for his
group, the Light. Over the course of the season, the Light gather other pieces
of technology and mysticism to make its master stroke. In the season one
episode Usual Suspect they use it, and in the finale Auld Acquaintance it’
explained, the Light used fragments of Starro and their other technology and
magic to turn it into a biotech mind control. The Starro Chips, which go
unnamed, blend into the skin and are able to control the human, alien, and even
robotic members of the Justice League. The Team are able to free the Justice
League, but not before the Light uses the mind-controlled League to wreak havoc
on an alien world. While they were able to free the League, it is undeniable
that the finale was the single greatest success of the Light that season and
lead to greater successes down the line. I’ve read that more Starro appear in
later seasons, but haven’t gotten to those episodes myself.
As I said at the start, Starro is
the central McGuffin and final boss of The Suicide Squad. Through the course of
the film we learn that a NASA team discovered Starro in the late 80s or early
90s. They brought the creature on board their ship and were the first beings to
be enthralled by it. Starro was taken to Earth and sent to the Jotunheim
facility in the island nation of Corto Maltese for research, headed by the Mad
Thinker. After the military coup lead by the Corto Maltese military, Amanda
Waller worried the new power might use the creature or release the US
government’s involvement and sent two Task Force X aka Suicide Squad teams to
the Island to destroy the evidence. The second team, lead by Bloodsport and
consisting of Ratcatcher 2, King Shark, Peacemaker, Polka-Dot Man, and later,
Rick Flag and Harley Quinn, go to Jotunheim. Starro escapes containment during
their attempt at destroying the lab and the Squad is forced to stop the
creature or risk it consuming Corto Maltese and perhaps the world. This version
of the character is the only one, to my knowledge, where getting one of its
spores on you is an automatic death sentence. All other versions can have the
spores with no adverse side effects, if it happens soon enough.
Starro the Conqueror is one of the
most unique villain concepts I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen alien conquerors like
Thanos, The Kree and Skrull empires, the Shiar, Mongul, or Darkseid, beings
hellbent on galactic conquest and the destruction of the human race. I’ve seen
alien horrors like Doomsday, the Phoenix Force, or Galactus, horrors that are
beyond humanity’s understanding. Few characters mix the concepts as well as
Starro. It is an utterly alien creature, despite largely being based on a
terrestrial creature. It being a colossal monster, capable of smashing most
buildings just by walking into them, would be scary. A powerful psychic mind
that can subjugate worlds is scary. Putting them together is down right
terrifying. Yes, is a giant starfish also inherently a bit silly, but the
combination of that silliness with the other qualities just makes it scarier to
me. Doomsday is scary because of his muscles, bony plates, inability to die a
natural death, but having those qualities make being scary easy. It’s much
harder to make something goofy like a monster starfish scary. But Starro does.
It was kind of an odd choice to be the villains for the Suicide Squad, but it
worked out really well in my opinion. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Have a goodnight everyone!
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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