Annie January is as down-to-earth and sincere as they come, the girl next door with superpowers. And as Starlight, "The Defender of Des Moines", all she's ever wanted to do is save the world — and while a lot of people say that as a corny catchphrase, she actually means it.
So, when she's selected to join The Seven , it's every dream she's ever had come true. However, that dream becomes her worst nightmare when this fresh-faced Midwesterner arrives in New York and learns that the old adage is true: never meet your heroes.
After noticing Vought 's corruption and Homelander's psychopathic ideas, Annie resigned from The Seven and became an ally, later a member, of The Boys. Annie January was born somewhere around as the only child of Donna January and an unnamed man. Desiring for their child to be special, Annie's parents decided to take Vought's offer to have her injected with Compound V and be turned into a supe.
Afterward, Annie would be groomed by her parents to become a superhero and would grow up in a hyper-religious home. When she would ask about the origins of her powers, her parents would lie and tell her that God gave them to her, further reinforcing her faith in Christianity. Despite Donna and her husband both agreeing to turn Annie into a supe, Annie's father would come to regret his decision due to the guilt of having to lie to his daughter.
The guilt would eventually make him leave his family. Despite losing her husband, Donna would continue to train her daughter so that she could become a famous superhero one day. To achieve that objective, she would force Annie to participate in dancing contests, such as a "little miss hero pageant" and other supe pageants to lay the groundwork for her hero career.
