Amid the many, many pieces of commentary on the superhero genre offered in The Boys, the story has a bit to say about the relationship on Nightwing and Starfire and their place among their usual Titans team.
Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's infamous comic series tells the story of the titular Boys, a government-backed crew of operatives assembled to keep tabs on the "Supe" community. The powerful individuals are portrayed as fraught with a number of personal issues and many of them are nowhere near being the sort of hero one would expect to find in the pages of a Marvel or DC comic. Most Supes in The Boys are transparent pastiches of popular heroes, allowing the creators to level some harsh critiques towards superheroes and the entire genre for that matter. Practically no trope or convention in comics was spared criticism and that includes the relationship between DC heroes Nightwing and Starfire.
The Boys #61 introduces the off-putting crew known as Team Titanic, a thinly-veiled parody of the Teen Titans. Among the imitations are Jimmy the One, an older, out-of-shape take on Nightwing, and the Starlike, a barely cognizant and skimpily dressed riff on Starfire. Though they're not the most prominently featured Supe characters in the story, they do play a particularly vital role when Frenchie and the Female come to confront them. A battle breaks out, but unlike the heroic Nightwing, Jimmy hides behind his version of Starfire who wantonly shoots energy bolts with no sense of direction. Jimmy gets fed up and is able to get control of the Starlike's beams, using her abilities to slice off a sizeable chunk of Frenchie's right arm.
Definitely not the most flattering commentary. The ersatz Nightwing is portrayed as a cruel, controlling coward while the "Starfire" has so little autonomy she has to be physically directed in a fight. Granted, the Teen Titans are far from the only superheroes mocked in The Boys, but this paints an unfair picture of both characters. Nightwing and Starfire had a much more functional and healthy dynamic than their counterparts would have anyone believe. Though Nightwing might have married Batgirl in recent DC Comics, his relationship to Starfire is still well-loved and far from deserving such mean-spirited mockery.
Dick Grayson may have been a good street-level hero, but Princess Koriand'r was from a powerful alien race and there was a clear disparity in power when the two were together. But what The Boys misses about Nightwing and Starfire is the two were capable heroes on their own and together. Dick was far from a coward, he was a strong and confident leader. And Starfire may have had trouble getting accustomed to Earth, but she had a powerful emotional intelligence and was nowhere near being the unaware bimbo The Boys clone of her is. And most importantly, when the two fought alongside one another they combined their strengths instead of one using the other to make up for their weaknesses. The Boys might have all been in the name of fun, but the potshots taken at how Nightwing and Starfire worked together woefully misconstrued how well a team they actually make.
Join Amazon Prime - Watch Thousands of Movies & TV Shows Anytime