Lacene

The TV show has departed a slight bit from comic canon.

The original Golden Age Starman - Ted Knight - was a brilliant scientist and inventor. He invented what he called at the time his "Gravity Rod", and deployed it in his crime-fighting adventures as Starman. Later on his changed the name of his weapon to "Cosmic Rod", but initially it contained most of the powers it ever had.

Knight had been gifted along with many of the other original JSA members with inhumanly long life, but had that revoked by Extant during the Zero Hour event, and Knight was aged into an old man. He quit the superhero business and returned to his first love: science. He thought either of his two sons David and Jack would take over the costume from him, but they both declined.

So the story goes, that Ted Knight's Starman disappeared from the JSA stories during the 1950s - which is strange considering that the Golden Age of comics moved from mysticism and mythology into science fiction, and a "Star Man" should fit in quite nicely there.

But in the 1970s the Star-Spangled Kid was found along with his fellow Seven Soldiers of Victory trapped in a time and space limbo by both the JSA and the Justice League, and after returning to Earth (now in the 70s instead of the 50s), Pemberton joined the Justice Society. And apparently the only reference that DC gave of Ted Knight's Starman at that time, was he suffered a broken leg, and let Pemberton "borrow" his Cosmic Rod. But from that point on, the Rod became the Star-Spangled Kids'.

The Kid then makes changes to the Rod, thinking it too clumsy, and re-fashions the technology into a "Cosmic Converter Belt", and he used this during his run with the young superhero group Infinity, Inc., and changed his name to Skyman. He was killed by Solomon Grundy, and his costume and cosmic belt came under the ownership of Pat Dugan, who was Pemberton's adult side-kick just as he is portrayed in Stargirl.

Meanwhile, an aged Ted Knight post-Zero Hour advises his son David, who finally agrees to become Starman v.02, and then Jack upon David's death. Jack didn't like the Cosmic Rod as his father and older brother used it, much like Pemberton: he fashions the technology into a spear/staff sort of thing. Ted Knight becomes contaminated from fighting Dr. Phosphorus, and with his body riddled with terminal cancer, sacrifices himself in one final act of heroism by sending an entire skyscraper building that the Mist had wired into a bomb - along with Mist and himself - into space to save his city from destruction.

Not long after his father's passing, Jack retires from the superhero business, and gives his Cosmic Staff to Courtney Whitmore, the Stargirl. Courtney had already became her superhero alter-ego by using Pemberton's Cosmic Converter Belt, which gave her levitation abilities, increased her strength, reflexes, and athleticsm (she became a better hand-to-hand fighter), and projected sparkly star bursts to disorient her foes.

So, in the comic books, Stargirl didn't just have the staff - she also had the belt, too. Obviously, the TV series is a little different - it takes out the storyline of Ted, David and Jack Knight, and makes it Pemberton's, which ties in easier with Courtney's Stargirl storyline since in the comics she actually IS Pat Dugan's step-daughter. But Pemberton was NEVER Starman in the comics, even if he actually used Ted Knight's cosmic rod tech....