Starman (comics) - Prince Gavyn

Prince Gavyn

Prince Gavyn, a 1980s DC Comics superhero created by Paul Levitz and Steve Ditko, was the spoiled blond playboy prince of an alien empire. He discovered he was a mutant who could survive unaided in space when, by ancient royal custom, he was thrown out of a spaceship airlock to prevent him from challenging his more mature sister's claim to the leadership of the imperial planet Throneworld. Gavyn was given jeweled wristbands and a staff by the mysterious mystic M'ntorr, which allowed him to channel his cosmic powers into the ability to fly interstellar distances and shoot bolts of energy. For a time keeping his true identity a secret as a masked protector of the realm, after the assassination of his sister only one year into her reign, he became ruler of their people. He first appeared in Adventure Comics #467 (January 1980) and was believed to have died in the Crisis on Infinite Earths. His story was elaborated upon in Starman Annual #1, the tie-in to the comics event Legends of the Dead Earth.

The 1990s Starman series revealed that his fate was different than previously believed. It was revealed that Gavyn was converted into pure energy, which became the source of the beam of light that struck Will Payton, a later Starman, granting him his powers. It is then revealed by Gavyn's tutor that Will Payton died when struck by the energy and his essence was infused in Will Payton's body.

Gavyn reappeared during the Rann-Thanagar War, defending Throneworld from Thanagarians alongside the Omega Men, and later its sequel Rann-Thanagar Holy War.

During the events of the Strange Adventures mini-series that followed Rann-Thanagar Holy War, Gavyn was transformed by Synnar the Demiurge into a flame-haired being called Fusion.