Valentine’s Day: Love Stories in Superhero Media

It’s Valentine’s Day, and love is in the air (as opposed to the other days when love isn’t). Now is the time for people to snuggle up with their partner, pool stuff for a big romantic date, or buy a cool gift for them. It’s also a time to get together and think about romantic movies and TV Shows you could share together. That got me thinking about something I’ve wondered for a while. What are my favorite love stories in the superhero genre? Not only in the comic, but also the movies, cartoons, etcetera. Superhero comics have always had a romance element but do they qualify as love stories? What’s a love story anyway?

Romance is a perennially popular subject and theme since the dawn of the reading public. No matter how dubious in writing quality, Romance is a guaranteed moneymaker. The persistence of love as a trope is exemplified by stories with knights and heroes, who have always had love-interests, sweethearts, girls-back-home, and so on.

For feminists, such stories feature women mostly as instrumental props and not as real characters. Heroes have love-interests for the same reasons they needed swords or horses, not because as characters they feel specially motivated by relationships. The superhero genre at its core is about people punching things. The genre often does have the love-interest in various forms but they can’t said to be love stories because the female characters in the story are generally props. Kelly Sue DeConnick herself described the nature of female characters in such stories, describing what she calls a “sexy lamp test“. Where the love-interest has no direct relation to the story and can be replaced with a sexy lamp and continue just the same.

So in that respects, most superhero stories don’t qualify as love stories, i.e. dealing with stuff that is compelling as a story about a relationship, about chemistry, about being in a couple, about commitment and devotion. The love-interest in such stories are just human props, reward for the heroes, and not persons in their own right.

ALMOST LIKE BEING IN LOVE

This can’t be love, I get no dizzy spells
My head is not in the sky
My heart does not stand still
Hear it beat, this too sweet
To be love.

“Almost Like Being in Love”, Music and Lyrics by Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner, variously performed by Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, among others.

Superhero stories, and genre fiction, have elements that feel like love stories but, in my opinion (and this is subjective), are not. They are almost like love stories, almost like being in love but not quite there.

Let’s take two simple examples. Han/Leia in Star Wars and Ron/Hermione in Harry Potter. I’ve contrasted these two couples before. Harry Potter and Star Wars are two mega-franchises of speculative fiction with famous and iconic characters.

Han/Leia and Ron/Hermione are secondary protagonists each, the primary characters of their stories are Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter, and both of them are essentially friends to the Hero (Leia is a friend, semi-love interest, turned sister). And both of them end up together. So roughly both of them are similar and have parallels and of course Rowling’s Harry Potter released in the 90s is obviously living in the House that George Lucas built. Of course Star Wars was created for the movies directly and Rowling’s Harry Potter are books (The WB movies while similar for the most part makes many crucial differences to the books). So I am comparing the movie versions of Han/Leia with the book versions of Ron/Hermione.

In my opinion, Han/Leia is a love story, while Ron/Hermione is not.

Han thinking out loud: “What am I marrying into?”

• Leaving aside suitability (i.e. shipping), the fact is that both stories feature protagonists is not geared around a love story. Harry Potter’s quest is to defeat the bad guy, Luke Skywalker is the same. In short, the romance element of Ron/Hermione and Han/Leia are subplots of the larger story of the protagonist. Their bond as a “trio” counts more than the two characters as couple. The reason why Harry Potter doesn’t end up with Hermione, and Luke doesn’t end up with Leia, is that the hero’s quest relies on a friendship with both, an equation that would be unbalanced if it becomes a true love-triangle with winners and losers. George Lucas couldn’t have any of the three lose so he (rather inelegantly) introduced a retcon in Return of the Jedi that Luke is actually brother to Leia. So that way the bond between the three supersedes any rivalry, and the same effect is done with Harry Potter for the same intent.
  
  

• Both couples have similar dynamics. Ron and Han are codified are scrappy poor suitors who stumble around, while Hermione and Leia are posh “out-of-their-league” types (i.e. “Uptown Girl”). Now I am aware that in the HP books, Hermione is actually a minority in the fantasy world-building, and Ron is technically an old family on the skids. But certainly when one reads the books the impression of Ron and Hermione in terms of speech is a male suitor of a lower class paired against a more cultured and educated catch, all the while insecure about the Hero who’s the Chosen One who’s super-rich with a bank account filled with gold. In Star Wars, you have the Smuggler Han Solo pining after the Princess, all the while basking in the shadow of the Jedi Knight Luke.
  
  
• The Harry Potter novels are told from the POV of its protagonist. With select exceptions, we largely have scenes entirely with Harry, so that means that every scene with Ron and/or Hermione is scenes with Harry Potter or revolving around Harry Potter. The Harry Potter version of the ‘Bechdel Test’ would be to locate a scene of Ron and Hermione having a conversation together that isn’t about Harry, a test that would be almost impossible to pass because there’s no scene with them together.
  
  
• Star Wars is narrated with an omniscient switching POV. So you have scenes told from multiple perspectives, sometimes from the villain’s perspective, sometimes from supporting characters as and when the story needs to ratchet suspense and build tension. Luke is the main character of the original trilogy, but we have many moments told through the perspective of other characters.

• This fact is crucial because The Empire Strikes Back splits apart Luke from Han and Leia, and the entire middle of the film is Han and Leia by themselves, with Chewbacca, Artoo, Threepio for company as they escape Darth Vader. We see an entire film of Han and Leia go from a crush and attraction, the typical back-and-forth snappiness (called tsundere) that signifies growing attraction (though executed in a way that is maybe a bit too dated today). We see them trust and rely on one other as leaders of their small band. So we see the prospective couple go through all the stages of romance in a single film, they start acting like a couple before becoming a couple in going from friends to partners and colleagues relying on one another emotionally and psychologically.
  
  

• The climax is when Han is about to be immersed in Carbonite, and Leia declares “I love you” and he says “I know”. This scene is ranked among moviegoers, across all genres, as one of the great romantic moments in movie history, not just in the genre, but across all movies.
  
  
• With Ron/Hermione, you never have a story on them together by themselves apart from Harry narrated on-page. When Ron/Hermione finally become a couple near the end of the final book, it feels mechanical and plot-directed and not something inside the characters.

A good chunk of the dramatic tension of the Original Trilogy of Star Wars is dedicated to the Han/Leia romance in a way that the Ron/Hermione romance isn’t in Harry Potter. Han/Leia is a true love story, while Ron/Hermione is a romance on paper.

We accept the latter only for mechanical genre reasons and not for character reasons, no matter where HP fans stand on the shipping issue. In genre fiction, a love story ought to be defined in terms of on-screen interaction, said interaction driving and inspiring character development, and the closure of their relationship (the couple getting together) being a logical character movement from said interactions.

So with that out of the way, having established what I think is a love story in genre fiction, the question becomes — are you a Han/Leia or a Ron/Hermione — and where do many superhero romances fall in that spectrum?

TAINTED LOVE

Don’t touch me please
I cannot stand the way you tease
I love you, though you hurt me so
Now I’m gonna pack my things and go

“Tainted Love” Lyrics by Ed Cobb. Popularized by Soft Cell

Fantastic Four #24 – Art by Jack Kirby. Text by Stan Lee..

In superhero comics, if I were to choose a Ron/Hermione couple then that would be Reed Richards/Susan Storm, i.e. a couple who (as originally published) are mainly together to uphold a group dynamic rather than any real characterization establishing their relationship. If Susan Storm were to do the sensible and believable thing, she would have divorced Reed and escaped the 4 and found someone else and moved on. But doing so would rupture the entire team dynamic, so the two have to be together. The relationship between them in characterization, compatibility, and chemistry is frankly unbelievable. Both characters are hard to like as it is, but in the Lee-Kirby era, they read as positively toxic.

FF#14

In the original Lee/Kirby run of Fantastic Four up to their Wedding issue, we hardly ever had scenes of Reed/Susan, by themselves, alone and apart from Ben and Johnny. Susan Storm was famously underdeveloped and sidelined in the original FF stories, and she didn’t really come into her own as a character until much later by which time she was already a wife and mother for decades of publication history.

Fantastic Four #14 – Cover by Jack Kirby.
Pay very close attention to Susan Storm’s eye-line and what she’s actually staring at.

Reed and Susan on-page came across as a famously incompatible couple and the reasons for them being together was mostly for the sake of a team dynamic because the FF comics were about a group and it was a science-fiction high-concept story about big ideas, props, and impossible stakes. The only tension in the Reed/Sue relationship was her attraction for Namor.

Reed/Susan are emblematic examples. They represent the tendency of the superhero romance within the genre. They tend to be Ron/Hermione more than Han/Leia though in practice most relationships sit on the spectrum and not cleanly one thing or the other.

Let’s take the most proverbial superhero romance of all — Superman/Lois. For many this is the classic love story of the genre. Superman is the original superhero, Lois is the original love-interest. They are the template for every superhero couple after them someway or the other.

• If you were to read the classic Superman comics from the 30s to the 60s, Lois is for the most part not an impressive character and her characterization was extremely sexist, and Superman was absolutely awful to her. They didn’t make sense as a couple. The charitable interpretation of Superman/Lois back then was an entitled abusive asshole gaslighting and manipulating a capable career woman into hysterics, distress, and emotional cruelty all centered around male entitlement and privilege, i.e. Superman is the best thing that happened to Lois and he can do as he pleased confident that Lois would take it and pine away. The sexism was so extreme that Harvey Kurtzman’s famous MAD parody “Superduperman” (Issue #4) ruthlessly exposed it in the 1950s itself.

MAD #4 – Art by Wally Wood/Text by Harvey Kurtzman – “Supderduperman” (1952)

• Now Superman fans will say that the comics have moved on but the fact is that when Superman Comics were #1 sellers, it was that version of the character and that dynamic that went over to the public, not the revisionist latter-day consolidation. Are there great romantic moments in the comics since? For sure, but not enough of any significance that it overcomes the iconic foundation of their serial romance, which is that Lois loves Superman while ignoring Clark. Where somehow the character is expected to be satisfied with the meek spineless coward Clark who in personal encounters comes of as unimpressive but somehow Lois is supposed to look past that and realize he’s a “nice guy”/Superman underneath.

• The one truly good Superman/Lois love story is the 1978 Superman, with Margot Kidder/Christopher Reeve. Yet this movie’s approach to this couple is essentially a better executed version of the 1950s Superman love triangle of Lois/Clark/Superman, and the sequels greatly regressed it. Still the chemistry between the actors sells it, and as hokey as it feels today, Superman choosing to reverse time because he cannot live in a world without Lois Lane is absolutely one of the great romantic moments in the genre. The sequels however walked back and in general none of the major and influential media adaptations of Superman since have featured Superman/Lois as a compatible couple. The most influential version of Lois in that time is Superman: The Animated Series where she’s voiced by Dana Delany. Stuff like Lois calling Clark “Smallville” and Lois having purple eyes and wearing purple clothes have seeped into comics but even Dana Delany’s Lois is still a variation of the Silver Age paradigm.

In other words, Superman/Lois is a romance that for the most significant part of its franchise history, was rarely a true love story. Lois had an attraction for Superman which the latter didn’t reciprocate in his Superman guise, while Clark Kent pined for her but often appeared as a spineless coward in public to hide his “true self”.

So it’s not enough to list the most iconic couples in the superhero genre and call it an “iconic love story” by dint of seniority.

LOVE IN MY TUMMY:
FAVORITE LOVE STORIES

The following survey is absolutely subjective, and it’s reflective of my current reading. The list will strike many as heteronormative but it’s not by any means meant to say that this is how the genres should be in terms of romance. Furthermore, while one of the relationships here is coded as “heteronormative” I do think they can be classed as non-binary and non-traditional.

Furthermore, when I pick certain relationships, I am identifying certain blocks of time since comics being they are serial continuity, often walk back and move stuff around. So there’s a specific block I’ll identify to limit the version I meet.

Likewise let me say that this doesn’t include all my favorite love stories in the genre, there’s some stuff I’ve kept out (from the X-Men Comics) and might do next year but which I have no recent familiarity to expound on at present.

This is the first time I’ve written on Valetine’s Day, it need not be the last.

RIVER DEEP MOUNTAIN HIGH:
SWAMP THING/ABBY ARCANE

I love you baby like a flower loves the spring
And I love you baby like a robin loves to sing

“River Deep Mountain High” Music and Lyrics by Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich. Performed by Tina Turner.

Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing Vol. 2 (#20-64) is a watershed. Over 45 issues, Moore raised the barrier of writing in superhero comics, mainstreamed horror in the superhero genre, and pumped out more single-issue masterpieces than most writers achieve in whole careers.

Swamp Thing begins with the greatest retcon in comics. Alec Holland the human scientist who transformed into a swamp monster, as established before, is actually a swamp being who thinks it’s a human. With that retcon, Moore transformed the series into an exploration of an inhuman consciousness.

To ground all of that, Moore has Swamp Thing fall in love with a human woman, who returns that love.

Art by John Totleben.

Swamp Thing/Abby Arcane is a relationship that is far more convincing in every respect than many human relationships in comics. Moore takes us on a journey through their interactions, we see two figures who are lost and lonely and who get together because they can’t be with anyone else.

The romantic-psychedelic nature of their relationships leads to some of the most bizarre and weird stuff, but also compelling, moments in the genre. Especially Issue #34 – “The Rite of Spring” where Bissette’s pencils, inked by John Totleben, creates stuff nobody’s matched in the genre yet.

The nature of Swamp Thing/Abby as a couple complicates our sense of normal and acceptable romance because, while Swamp Thing is coded as male and heterosexual it’s fundamentally a plant being, and through that Moore frames them as a challenge to heteronormativity.

Swamp Thing Vol. 2 #53:
In the time before the “Batgod”, Batman could have his ass handed to him by a B-List Horror Title Protagonist

Eventually Moore politicizes this when Abby Arcane is arrested in Gotham City on grounds of indecency for having a relationship with a non-human. In response, Swamp Thing lays siege on Gotham and takes over the city and even defeats Batman in a straight-up fight.

Batman then gets possibly his most “woke” moment in comics where he tells the Mayor that love is love and that it’s not up to the police and the state to decide on that definition.

He then dares them to arrest Superman for having a rather public courtship with Lois (and amusingly throws Nightwing under-the-bus for his relationship with Starfire to make his point).

Swamp Thing Vol. 2 #53 –
TIRED: Batman comes up with contingencies to nuke his teammates.
WIRED: Batman serves as a Fixer and Wingman keeping the love-lives of heroes under wraps from the moralistic urges of the Public.

For all that people accuse Moore of being cynical and bleak and “bitter”, the Saga of the Swamp Thing ends on a totally optimistic note, with Abby/Swamp thing in a happily ever after. Later writers after Moore introduced melodramatic stuff to good and bad effect, but that doesn’t change what Moore did and the note he ended this story on.

Recommendations: Really the full run. Grab the Omnibus and start from Swamp Thing #20 to #64. If you have to read one issue, then it has to be “The Rite of Spring” but that issue is not by any means an intro-to-Swamp Thing or intro-to-Abby and Swamp Thing issue, at the same time if you find that issue interesting or weird maybe you’d want to read the whole thing, who knows?

HE NEEDS ME:
MR. MIRACLE AND BIG BARDA

For once, for once in life
I’ve finally felt
That someone needed me
And if it turns out real
Then love can spin the wheel

“He Needs Me”. Music and Lyrics by Harry Nilsson. Performed by Shelley Duvall.

Jack Kirby created arguably the greatest married superhero couple in comics in Mister Miracle with Scott Free and Big Barda.

He’s the son of Highfather trained to be raised in Apokolips as part of the Pact (Orion, son of Darkseid, got to be raised in New Genesis). He was tortured by Granny Goodness and her Orphanage of Fear all through his childhood.

Barda was similarly trained to be one of the Female Furies and tortured similarly. These broken tortured people in the Hell-Planet rebelled against their upbringing, found each other, fell truly in love and rebelled forever against the tyranny of Darkseid, aka the God of Fascism itself.

That is to put it bluntly, romantic as all get-out and a love story both metal and poignant.

You have a couple who suffer great oppression, who overcome that violence as a couple, fall in love and become greater than the forces that put them down. Jack Kirby, along with Stan Lee created Fantastic Four and The Mighty Thor, and whether it’s because of Lee’s editorial or for other reasons, his Marvel output is riddled with sexist tropes. Blogs like “Kirby Without Words” have exposed the dichotomy between the active way he showed Susan Storm which was often undermined by Stan Lee’s sexist dialogue which often had her mansplained and reduced in the story.

Mr. Miracle #7 – Art and Text by Jack Kirby.
“You and I are proof to all of Apokolips — That it can Fall!”
is one of the most romantic lines of dialogue in comics history.

People in the Kirby-Lee authorship debate privilege Stan Lee’s dialogues as evidence that he was the genius, but writing is not just about dialogues. In the superior way he wrote female characters after leaving Lee (Big Barda, Sersi, Thena, among many others in his 70s works), it’s clear that Kirby was in fact the greater writer.

The nature of Scott Free and Barda as a couple also broke gender boundaries, Scott is the quiet, staid, thin laidback guy who’s capable but who’s not as much a fighter as Barda. Barda is all muscles and filled up but also a clearly beautiful woman, and Kirby makes it clear that these two are perfect for each other. As an added bonus, most accounts confirm that Scott Free/Big Barda is based on the real-life love story (via metaphor) between Jack Kirby and his wife Roz.

Recommendations

— Kirby’s Mister Miracle Issues #1-18 (#18 is the Wedding Issue). There’s others but this should be your start.

— The animated cartoon: Justice League Unlimited Season 2 Episode 15: “The Ties that Bind”. The only adaptation of Miracle/Barda that really captures their dynamic.

— Mister Miracle #1-12 (2017). I have come to dislike Tom King, who I had initially thought was a capable writer in the genre but now see as overpraised and limited. Still, despite my ill feelings, I do think his miniseries with Mister Miracle with amazing art by Mitch Gerards is one of the better Scott/Barda stories. It’s not as good as Kirby, and it’s way too kitschy in parts in its Alan Moore imitations but this is still a more emotional and moving work than King’s other stuff.

SHE ONCE WAS A TRUE LOVE OF MINE:
DAREDEVIL – BORN AGAIN

So if you’re travelin’ in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

“Girl from the North Country”. Music and Lyrics by Bob Dylan. From The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

Back Page of Born Again TPB.

Recommending Born Again as a love story is something I feel positive about on an emotional level, but at the same time I feel I need to add caveats and asterisks because of a variety of factors: who the author is, some of the choices made in the story, and the latter-day happenings in Daredevil continuity.

Born Again is one of the imperishable superhero stories in serialized continuity. It’s not only the greatest Daredevil story, it’s also one of the greatest stories in Marvel Comics, in the shortlist alongside The Galactus Trilogy, The Dark Phoenix Saga, Kraven’s Last Hunt, and one of the greatest stories in comics and in my opinion, the greatest story Miller has done in the superhero genre (his best work overall would be his Ronin). This reputation stands even if much inside Born Again has been undone in continuity subsequently, especially everything related to Karen Page.

Karen Page was originally the intended love interest for Daredevil in the Silver Age. She was a colleague alongside Daredevil and Foggy Nelson in their law-firm. Eventually she was written out of the continuity altogether but not before learning Matt’s identity and repulsed with the idea of him being Daredevil.

Art by David Mazzucchelli

Frank Miller brought her back in Born Again (DD#227-233). The manner in which he brought back a Silver Age girlfriend — a drug-addict driven to prostitution after a failed acting actor in the West Coast, who sells out Matt Murdoch’s identity in search of a fix, thereby kickstarting the plot — is a huge can of worms in terms of Miller’s myriad gender issues. But in the context of Born Again, I’d say Miller executed it well enough.

The story of Born Again is a story of characters being brought low, of being crushed and ruined by corruption and violence, and somehow finding love and forgiveness amidst the ruin and despair. That romantic element of forgiveness where Matt comes to accept Karen as his true love even after knowing everything about her, and after realizing she sold out his identity, is still incredibly moving even outside of all the issues that Miller added on to the story.

Mostly because Miller’s writing here is humanistic, and unsentimental, and he believes in that romance completely. Born Again is the ultimate Daredevil story which shows Matt Murdock as a figure of defeat, downtrodden and crushed by the greater powers of Kingpin — physical, political and economical — but whose essential spirit remains unbound and whose heart remains untamed. At the end, Matt is still poor and destitute, deprived from his law practice and reduced to living semi-homeless with Karen in a soup kitchen, but despite all that it still ends with an affirmation of hope in this incredible final image which homages an iconic Bob Dylan cover.

The Daredevil comics became more complex after Born Again, with Ann Nocenti’s great run introducing a feminist criticism of Matt’s paternalistic attitude to women coupled with his hypocrisy and infidelity. Later in the mid-90s, Karen Page would be killed off in a terrible overpraised and over-promoted story called Guardian Devil (the creative team behind that monstrosity is enough to make me gag).

So Miller’s Born Again confirmed Karen Page as Matt’s greatest love, but also finished her as a serialized character since nobody seemed to know what to do with her after him. Still Deborah Ann Woll’s performance in the Netflix Daredevil series, which deconstructs some of the problematic aspects of Miller’s portrayal, owes itself greatly to this comic in many other respects.

For me, Born Again is the greatest single story-arc love story.

NO THIS WILL BE THE LAST:
BATMAN – MASK OF THE PHANTASM

Will the wind ever remember
The names it has blown in the past?
And with this crutch, its old age and its wisdom
It whispers, “No, this will be the last”

“The Wind Cries Mary” Music and Lyrics by Jimi Hendrix.

Fans of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm tend to be a hyperbolic bunch.

It’s an expanded movie by the team behind Batman: The Animated Series (1993) that released in theaters, accompanied by weak marketing, poor sales, and indifferent reviews in the year of release (though it acquired high-profile support by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, celebrity-film critics of the 90s). For the fans of this movie, MOTP is the “greatest Batman movie”, “truest Batman movie” “better than live-action” etcetera. Claims that derive in part from a resentment of animation not being taken seriously.

I love MOTP and I had that mentality once. I’ve since become more nuanced about the film’s failure in the early 90s. Not that I think it’s failure is deserved, but in the context of the radical vision by Tim Burton achieved in live-action with Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), MOTP is essentially offering some of the same story elements in an animation style that is dolled-up TV nowhere near as dazzling as 90s Disney, as expressive and aesthetically immersive as Miyazaki, and nowhere as experimental as Into the Spider-Verse 25 years later. In other words, MOTP posed genuine problems for marketing in the 90s since it had no special hook aside from being a Batman story in a genre, told and done in the straight and narrow path without the idiosyncracies of Tim Burton, and the spectacle of Disney. So while it’s still one of the best Batman adaptations and movies, I tend to think people have gone a bit overboard. Now that ITSV has proven a great superhero story, while being great animation and a great movie, MOTP has lost a good part of its shine it once had for me.

But there’s one hyperbole that I think it still deserves.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is the greatest love story in Batman’s entire franchise and one of the greatest in the genre.

No comic, no movie, no cartoon, and no game featuring Batman has ever offered a love story and romance as compelling, believable, and genuinely tragic as the one between Bruce Wayne and Andrea Beaumont. Voiced by Kevin Conroy and Dana Delany, the characters sound just right together and as animated by the department, the mix of the flashback showing the young Bruce/Andrea and the present-day older and mature version of the same characters, carrying the embers and sparks of that mis=spent young romance is *chefs kiss*.

MOTP is fundamentally a non-canon story which entirely works to sell the Bruce/Andrea love story that represents two things at once: the one and only chance that Bruce Wayne had to give up being Batman and be a normal human being, a tragic portrayal of how the vengeance-vigilante story could have gone the other way with Andrea/Phantasm. The DCAU subsequently tried to canonize it in a few comics and cameos late in the continuity but each later version subtracts from the original film which was obviously meant for an audience that had no interest in the animated series and its serialized continuity.

Andrea Beaumont herself ranks among the greatest female characters in the DCAU. She has an absolute integrity. She’s not presented as insane or evil, she’s got human moments, and she loves Bruce Wayne truly and her sacrifice of happiness is truly heartbreaking, as in the final scene aboard the ship. She’s essentially a female Darth Vader, and that’s rare enough in genre media, and she gets to get away and not be subjected to the paternalistic moralism of Batman, similar to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in Batman Returns.

That scene with Bruce as a young man bargaining with his parents that maybe he won’t do the whole Batman thing because he didn’t count on being happy, and Andrea comforting him right then and there, is among the most moving things in this genre. You get a sense of Bruce Wayne having a chance to be a real human being but then tragedy takes that away, and we see him become literally consumed by his legend.

MOTP makes Wayne becoming Batman an absolute tragedy, and makes you actively wish that Bruce never became Batman. The scene where Bruce puts on his mask for the first time is emotionally and texture-wise something that only works in animation.

In animation, Bruce Wayne and Batman are absolutely not the same characters. They are two different cels, two different models. So seeing the soft, and kind face of Bruce buried under the blank slits of the Batman mask and seeing Alfred’s reaction, drives home that Bruce becoming Batman is horrific and monstrous. That monstrous nature is driven home with Andrea becoming Phantasm who becomes a double to Batman.

As a character Andrea is obviously based on Talia and Selina but her relationship with Batman in this cartoon reaches an emotional poignance greater than any story with those ladies. Not that I think Phantasm is greater than Batman Returns but that film isn’t truly a love story between Bruce/Selina (for all the chemistry between Pfeiffer and Keaton) the way this film is absolutely one between Andrea and Bruce. The genuinely vulnerability and humanity ,is something that Andrea brings out in Bruce.

None of the romances Batman has in the DCAU is as compelling as the one in this movie. The entire animation and cast put so much behind this film, that the energy to build up the more usual love-interests — the core versions of Catwoman and Talia once introduced in the DCAU — was clearly lacking. The minute you told the story of Bruce and Andrea and how Bruce was tempted by happiness into giving his quest only to walk away from it not once but twice, you essentially guaranteed that the fate of Batman was to grow old and alone without any relationship ever working out. And so it happened eventually.

Mask of the Phantasm confirms the essentially tragic and lonely fate of Batman. His story is not meant to, and doesn’t support at all, any kind of happy ending. That said there’s one other romance in the DC Animated Universe that comes close to the depth and feeling of Mask of the Phantasm, and one which takes place in the serialized continuity moreover, and which might have a happy ending.

FOOL FOR YOU:
JOHN STEWART/SHAYERA HOL

Then you came along
Into my life
Destroying my mind
Mounting up the toil and strife
But I’m a fool for you [x]
Guess I’ll always be
And I claim it famously
‘Cause I’m a fool for you

“Fool For You”, Lyrics by Curtis Mayfield, Performed by The Impressions

The Justice League cartoon series and its follow-up Justice League Unlimited was the sequel to Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, creating a true shared universe crossover on TV animation of the kind that the MCU replicated in live-action.

The Justice League had a roster of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Martin Manhunter, Flash (Wally West), Green Lantern (John Stewart), Hawkgirl (Shayera Hol) who are the Original 7, i.e. the protagonists of the entire series. The Justice League over its serial run took on the air of a workplace drama, high adventure exploration and a bit like a sitcom. And as with any sitcom there has to be romance. Initially it seemed like it might be Batman/Wonder Woman that ultimately (and rightly) settles into a chaste romance/strong friendship that makes the best sense for both characters.

But the ultimate romance was John Stewart/GL and Shayera Hol/Hawkgirl.

Both characters were fairly unlikely entrants into the DCAU and as such they allowed the producers most freedom to reshape them. In the comics, John Stewart created by the trailblazing pair of Denny O’Neill and Neal Adams in 1971 was always overshadowed by the prime Green Lantern Hal Jordan and kept on the margins of comics. The Justice League cartoon allowed him the chance to be the Green Lantern, and a more fully realized character than Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner, and his own counterpart, ever got to be in their comics.

Shayera Hol/Hawkgirl is a little more interesting in that originally Gardner Fox, the famous creator of Hawkman introduced Shiera Saunders as the civilian love-interest but a few issues in had her become Hawkwoman. Thanks to the cartoons, Shayera/Hawkgirl became far more famous than the male hero she was once created as a counterpart for. The characters of John Stewart (Phil LaMarr) and Shayera (Maria Canals) over the course of the first two seasons are often paired together. Their attraction gradually grows and at the end of the episode “Wild Cards” we finally see Shayera remove her mask and reveal her human face (a redhead like Andrea Beaumont, with whom she has much in common). The three part second season finale “Starcrossed” has revelations, betrayals, remorse, and a parting of ways but the entire show confirmed Shayera/John as this epic and intense love story with both characters torn between duty and their feelings for one other.

The interesting thing about John/Shayera is that the followup in Justice League Unlimited handled the fallout of their relationship in a fairly mature way. We see both characters adjust, trying to move on, but still having a torch for one another, being respectful and trying to treat each other as friends even if they clearly care deeply for one another.

The show ended before John/Shayera get back together again but a future timeline confirms that they would one day have a child in the confirmed far future of Batman Beyond: Rex Stewart/Warhawk.

The GL/Hawkgirl romance was also among the first interracial romances in a major children’s cartoons, and given that Hawkgirl is actually Thanagarian with bird-wings attached to her body, it’s also an interspecies romance. The fact that the voice-actors are an African-American and Hispanic-American respectively, also adds value to representation in seeing the same complex and shaded melodramatic romance of the kind you see across superhero stories centered around these characters.

WOULDN’T IT BE NICE?:
PETER PARKER/MARY JANE WATSON

Art by Nick Bradshaw.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong?

“Wouldn’t it Be Nice?” Lyrics by Brian Wilson, Tony Asher, Mike Love. Performed by The Beach Boys.

The greatest love story in the superhero genre across an entire serial continuity. The other romances only make sense in single incarnations or stories, but Peter/MJ have worked over multiple decades in a variety of incarnations and forms, and retained their popularity and fame in various aspects.

It’s a romance whose charisma hasn’t faded, and whose popularity reignites with every decade among multiple generations. We’ve seen their interactions and compatibility and history play out on-panel and seen their romance in many aspects: first meeting and early flirtation, fading of initial attraction, deepen into friendship and then into a loving relationship in the Conway era; difficulties of maturity, and then a breakup leading them to re-enter into a friendship with hard won reflection and wisdom on both sides. And then we’ve seen them married and age up their romance appropriately.

All the aspects of relationships that exist in some of the other couples (though not the same extremes) exist with Peter/MJ. And their relationship is at the heart of the best stories in the continuity and is the emotional texture of the continuity. These are two distinct characters, who we get a sense of apart from each other, and we see them grow and change in interaction to one another with each person enlarging and revealing aspects of their character in context with one another. I plan to write more on this well after this post, so for today I’ll talk about this briefly and just recommend one story.

ASM Annual #19

As for which story to recommend, there’s plenty, but I’ll choose Amazing Annual #19 which Douglas Wolk argues here might be “the first Big Two superhero comic book to be written, drawn and lettered by women”.

It’s a story of Mary Jane getting in an adventure with the Spider-Slayers in a point in their relationship where she and Peter are thinking of getting back together but not yet there.

This comic by the great Louise Simonson (one of the finest writers and editors in the 1980s) was perhaps the first to introduce the motif of Aunt May noting that Peter and Mary Jane’s courtship and romance and their on-off nature was exactly like her and Uncle Ben when they were young (an aspect translated to Spider-Man PS4 with that game’s version of May), and also alluded by Spencer’s Aunt May in his run.

ASM Annual #19. Art by Mary Wilshire.
Scan from my personal physical copy.

It’s also a lovely and sweet moment with the two romantic leads switching places with Mary Jane becomes more confident of being in Peter’s worlds while Peter ends up feeling more vulnerable and less sure, such is the depth to which he cares for her.

By the end of this comic, Peter/MJ aren’t fully on the road to marriage yet but they are closer and have a bigger sense of life with one another and their need for one another while closing in a moment of great sweetness.

ASM Annual #19. Art by Mary Wilshire.
Scan from my personal physical copy.

The sense of need that both characters have in each other’s lives comes out strongly in this comic, released two years before their marriage and whose subplots indeed set up the engagement leading to the wedding.

CONCLUSION

Romance can no longer be taken for granted. Something we’ve seen in the recent Disney Cartoons since Frozen which remove the kind of perfunctory romance the genre once relief on. The MCU and the DCEU have also for the most part eschewed romance and relationship dramas.

I think the genre needs to reckon with romance and love stories in a real tangible sense rather than keep it perfunctory as most of the genre is. The way to do that is rethinking romance and love stories and hopefully the examples above can help gear the conversation to that.

If nothing else, they are fun stories to get into during Valentine’s Day. And I have a suggested playlist next to it too.