The Suicide Squad: Everything You Need To Know About Starro

The Justice League has fought some pretty weird supervillains over the years including an immortal caveman, an evil Sun, and a man dressed as a calculator.

But the League's most peculiar enemy has got to be Starro the Star Conqueror. In a nutshell, Starro is a giant purple alien cycloptic psychic starfish. He's so weird, he makes the Joker, Darkseid, or Crazy Quilt seem normal by comparison.

Despite his silly appearance though, the star-shaped extra-terrestrial is one of DC's heavy-hitters. As his ambition and powers grow, the enslaver of trillions has only become more dangerous over time.

Even though many people who have read a handful of Justice League comics are familiar with the oversized echinoderm, a lot of people don't know the first thing about him. Where did he come from? What does he want? How did he become so powerful? And most importantly, why does a tyrannical kaiju look like a fricking starfish?

With Starro making his live-action debut in The Suicide Squad this year, now seems like the perfect time to look at one of the strangest supervillains in the history of comics.

Starro is from an alien race called Mother Stars. After Starro absorbs enough protein, he can asexually reproduce millions of spores called mini-stars. Since these spores are basically clones, they have a hive-mind, meaning they share the same thoughts as Starro and think as one.

If a spore wraps itself around a host's face, they will be under the control of the corresponding Mother Star. Each mini-star's interior is lined with barbs, making it virtually impossible to remove without ripping off the host's face. (In REBELS Annual #2, we see some people have learned this valuable lesson the hard way.) The only way to remove these mini-stars from the host's face is if they're exposed to intense cold.

Mother Stars are considered dangerous on a planetary level since they can consume a world's dominant civilisation in a matter of hours.

However, there is no Mother Star considered as lethal as Starro. This billion-year-old extra-terrestrial has conquered ten thousand worlds in a hundred star systems, controlling the minds of trillions. He has proven so efficient at ending civilisations, he is known throughout the universe as The Star Conqueror (because "Starro" by itself doesn't sound particularly intimidating).