Stupid Cupid.

By Regie Rigby

As I write this, Valentine’s day is but a few hours away, and like so many other people, my thoughts are turning towards luuuuuuuuuuuurve.

What? Wait, come back! I wasn’t looking at you or nuffin. I was thinking more about love in general, and the fact that there’s not a lot of it about in comics. Not the romantic kind, anyway – and any comics characters that do manage to find love tend not to get to keep it.

Look at Peter Parker.

Poor sap. I mean, around about this time last year I mused a little on his extraordinary poor luck with women in his pre-Mary Jane life. There was the whole “couldn’t get a date if he bought a calendar” phase of his early teens, and then the chance of happiness snatched away when he accidentally broke Gwen Stacey’s neck trying to save her from the Green Goblin. And then the shock of discovering that before he did that, the saintly Gwen had apparently shagged Norman Osbourne and had his kids.

Who tried to kill him.

And then died.

But at least, back at this time last year, poor old Peter had the consolation that he was married to one of the most beautiful women in the world, who loved him as much as he loved her. For what? Twenty years or so, Peter has been largely defined by his love for and relationship with Mary Jane Watson-Parker. She has been his rock, his strength and his solace in times of need. She has been his reason for getting up in the morning, and for coming home at night. And now he’s single again and he can’t remember any of that, because in an attempt to save Aunt May from certain death, MJ made a deal with the Devil (well, with Mephisto, which in the Marvel U amounts to the same thing) and sacrificed their relationship in return for May’s life.

So basically I’m thinking that this is the reason why Superhero comics are popular with adolescent geeks. As a former adolescent geek myself (I’m now the full grown variety of geek, obviously) I remember the troubles I had with girls back in the day*. At the time I thought they were pretty bad but however ugly my love life** ever got it was nothing when compared to the shit that poor old Peter has had to go through over the years. Peter’s predicament would’ve put it all into a little perspective.***

He’s not the only one. About the only uncomplicated romantic relationship I can think of in comics is Apollo and the Midnighter. When they’re not making people’s heads explode they can actually be quite touching. I suppose you could argue that Thomas and Martha Wayne, or May and Ben Parker could be said to have had perfect relationships, but they go and spoil it by having at least 50% of the partnership being dead****.

But can you name any others? Jesse and Tulip, from Garth Ennis’ wonderful Preacher got a happy ending, but they went through enough to get there – up to and including Jesse having to watch his cousins shoot Tulip through the head. That’s going to put a crimp in anyone’s relationship – and it certainly contributed to Jesse’s over protective attitude towards his girlfriend that was to cause a bit of a rift later on.

Several of you are probably pointing to your Strangers in Paradise collections, and I freely acknowledge that there was a happy ending there too, of sorts. But for most of the series that triangle (which now I think of it was probably more of a hexagon by the end) involved at least one of its number being utterly miserable.

And then one of them died. Really, how much more complicated do you want to get? Because that was the simple version…

Not so long ago, I’d probably be suggesting that there was always the perfect marriage of Reed and Sue Richards. Their relationship was the beating heart of the Fantastic Four for as long as I avoided reading it*****. But then came the Civil War, and Reed’s decision to have people imprisoned indefinitely in a parallel universe for the heinous crime of disagreeing with the government.

Sue felt that this was somehow unreasonable behaviour…

Who else is there?

Let’s just not go anywhere near Batman and all of the dysfunctional relationships he’s ever had. The ones who left him, the one he was accused of murdering, and of course Catwoman, with whom he has shared a hideously self destructive relationship for pretty much all of their existence. Let’s not dwell too deeply on Selina’s love life either – it’s even more badly messed up than Bruce’s.

British characters do little better. Dan Dare? If he were any more repressed he’d probably burst. And then there’s the stoically celibate Judge Dredd, and the rest of the Judge corps. True, some of them do get into romantic liaisons, but they never ever end well.

Is there no hope for relationships in comics at all?

Well, yes.

There’s always the ever reliable married couple that is the aforementioned Apollo and The Midnighter. Oh, and Oliver Queen and Diana Lance (or is she Diana Queen now? I forget whether they actually got married, although thinking about it she probably would’ve kept her name) who are pretty encouragingly crazy about each other. Their relationship has had its rough patches – the part where he was dead, for a start – but somehow they always come through.

But most of all, there’s Wesley Dodds and Dian Belmont. For all the nightmares and the sleeping gas, Wesley and Dian lived a life together within their comics world. Utterly committed to each other, right into old age. Not some saccharin hearts and flowers parody of love, with nothing but champagne and cherry blossom, but a real relationship that matured through the ordinary trials and tribulations of life that were quite incidental to all that spandex nonsense.

So, this Valentines day, I’ll be thinking of them, and perhaps for the first time in my life, I’ll be being glad I’m not Spider-Man.











*Actually, that’s not really true. I remember the troubles I had because girls never actually noticed I was in the room, but that’s a therapy session for another time and place.

**Or lack thereof…

***Of course when I was actually going through all that adolescent bullshit Petey was just getting married to Mary Jane so if anything he was rubbing my face in it a bit. Hell, now I think about it at the time even Bruce bloody Wayne had a girlfriend! Damn – there’s no wonder I was so screwed up…

****In the case of May and Ben, I guess about 75% of the partnership is dead. Ben’s always been dead, May has been dead at least twice but keeps getting better.

*****Mostly because of that relationship actually, because I always found it cloyingly sentimental.