Star Hawkins
Star Hawkins is a science‑fiction detective from DC Comics, best known for stories in Strange Adventures. He first appeared in Strange Adventures #114 (March 1960), created by writer John Broome and artist Mike Sekowsky. He is joined by his loyal robot assistant, Ilda.
Set in New City, Earth, in the 21st century, Hawkins is a hard‑luck private investigator who often struggles with money. Ilda, his robot partner, helps him solve cases with their combined skills. Hawkins is a capable detective and athlete, but Ilda frequently uses her own advanced abilities to crack cases and outsmart criminals. Their adventures mix mystery, humor, and sci‑fi elements, involving Martians, robots, and space criminals.
Star Hawkins appears in 21 stories in Strange Adventures and later shows up a few times in other DC titles before he is killed in Mystery in Space vol 2 #2 (December 2006). A later, non‑canonical mini‑series Twilight (1990) features a different version of Hawkins named Axel Starker, and DC’s Threshold (2013) includes Hawkins on the planet Tolerance with Ilda.
Important shared storylines show Hawkins and Ilda influencing robot rights. Ilda is saved from being scrapped, robots gain rights to life‑pairing, and hotels in the asteroid belt change their rules to admit robots. Star and Ilda later retire and establish the Hawkins‑Sterling Academy of Robot Detection, with Automan and Ilda as heads of the faculty. By later stories, Hawkins ends up on Hardcore Station as an old, down‑on‑his‑luck figure, with Captain Comet as his only friend. Ilda remains with him, though she is damaged and sometimes in peril; Hawkins is eventually murdered by a rogue telepath.
Powers and abilities:
- Star Hawkins: a normal human, very sharp and athletic, with a ray gun and occasional disguise abilities.
- Ilda: a highly capable robot with strength, speed, energy blasts, heat/overload powers, infrared and x‑ray vision, some telepathic ability, “Intuition tubes” to sense danger, and other technological tricks.
There are also later reimaginings of Star Hawkins in other DC titles and in reprints of his older stories.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:01 (CET).