Notice that this time, Hanks gives a reason why Stardust doesn't stop the carnage before it happens: even with his super-speed the villain and his hypnotized vultures have the jump on him. As opposed to the story I posted recently (and others like it) where Stardust discovers a bad guy's plot well before it's ready to launch, then sits on his ass and waits until thousands are dead.
The "potential love interest" angle is interesting, as is Stardust showing gentle kindness to someone for once (even if he first balks because he has "duties to attend to"). Related to this is a story in which he enlists a group of youths to be his "sixth column" against a villain. At the end of the story he thanks the boys and says "I'm proud of you." It's the closest to human he ever gets.
Now consider that by this time several other superhero comics were giving their protagonists romantic partners and/or kid sidekicks. Did the editor of Fantastic Comics instruct Hanks to follow this trend and make Stardust more sympathetic and relatable? Or did Hanks himself (who had abandoned his family ten years back, after years of drunken abuse) come to realize (if only temporarily) that the human condition isn't all dark and ugly? We'll never know.
We thought that by making your world more violent, we would make it more "realistic," more "adult." God help us if that's what it means. Maybe, for once, we could try to be kind. --Grant Morrison, Animal Man #26 (1990)