Why Dick Grayson Should Go Ahead And Marry Barbara Gordon, Peter Parker Should Re-Marry Mary Jane, and Dinah Lance Was Right To Marry Oliver Queen
November 20th, 2008 by Esther Inglis-Arkell | Tags: black canary, comic books, DC comics, dcu, Marvel comicsBecause they can’t marry anyone else.
Well. They could. Barbara Gordon could get back together with Ted Kord, depending on whether or not he’s alive again this week. Dick Grayson could get more serious with Whatsername, The Insufferably Bland, whom he clearly loves very much. Peter Parker could go out with another woman and ignore the palpable aura of doom. Oliver Queen could keep manslutting his way through the DCU and Dinah could give R’as Al Ghul another shot, now that he’s been resurrected.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Some couples capture an enduring place in reader’s minds, and from then on, any other pair is just marking time. Often, that’s fine. There’s no reason that other relationships can’t be interesting or entertaining. At some point, though, after the characters admit their feeling for each other, after one character, and then the other has had their heart broken and pined for the other, that throwing random other relationships at the couple seems a bit like pointless delay.
There’s a joke (that is also a title of a comic about Barbara and Dick by Devin Grayson):
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn’t say ‘banana’?
Okay. It’s not a funny joke. But the timing is right. Timing works in comics, too, especially for relationships. When you stall too long with them what you get is:
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
At some point, it’s time for the punch line.
Similar Posts:
- Something Light For Friday: Who Would Win In a Fight?
- On Nightwing Annual #2
- Frank Miller Owns Batman: building a better robin
- With A Whimper
- Batman & Robin & The Facets of the Joker
Interesting!
On the flipside, the constant drama that comic book relationships bring also have the same effect.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
I hate that you’re a hero and I’m going to cry myself to sleep every night for at least six issues and maybe think about leaving you.
Um.
I love Peter Parker. I love Mary Jane. I loved them when they were married, but I kind of love them more now that they are apart.
I love reading stories where they can lean on and support each other, but those tend to be few and far between. Good ones, at least. Too often, they fall back on the trope of the unhappy wife. “Why do you have to go out and be a hero?” Mary Jane asks, seemingly having forgotten that Peter does it because he must, and that they’ve been over this, dear, really now, do we have to have this argument every time I put on tights?
Those stories make both characters (be it Peter & MJ or Clark & Lois or whoever) unlikeable, but a conflict-less marriage/relationship isn’t what comics do, for some reason. All of Daredevil’s girlfriends of note are either dead, insane, or evil. Sometimes all three. MJ freaking out over Peter going on patrol makes her look selfish, and Peter’s rebukes make him look like an insensitive jerk. If he plays the understanding husband and quits… we’ll see him back in costume three issues later, which shows that a) his sense of debt to Uncle Ben is more important to him than his wife and b) he’s an insensitive jerk.
I know I’ve talked with you about that ridiculous Superman issue from a couple months back, but Lois Lane freaking out over Zatanna possibly being a threat to her relationship to Superman is pretty much exactly the problem with comic relationships. You can’t have that supportive wife or loving husband, because that’s “boring.” When Peter Parker comes home crying, Mary Jane can’t hold him until he falls asleep. Not enough drama!
I’d love to see a good long-term take on a comic book romance that doesn’t have the “Do you have to be a hero?” talk every eight months and “I’m leaving you and/or cheating on you but it was fear gas” or death by plane crash oh wait it was a fake every eighteen months.
I think the two best candidates for it are, hilariously enough, Ollie and Dinah, maybe because I’m so unfamiliar with the both of them pre-2000. I think that Peter and MJ could have been that couple, and definitely were at brief moments over the past twenty years, but the writers on Spidey were so awful during the ’90s and ’00s that they squandered a lot of that potential and buried what’s left of it under baggage.
Clark and Lois should be that couple. I always hated the Superman love triangle. Why is the greatest man on the planet going to lie to the love of his life just to be sure that she falls in love with the right guy? And why is a newspaper’s #1 investigative reporter too dumb to figure it out? Ugh man just tell her.
(you can tell i am interested in this subject because i wrote a book in response to your post.)
My upcoming Dick Grayson/Oliver Queen fanfic totally says you’re wrong about who can marry who. At least in Massachusetts right now…
@LurkerWithout: And Conneticut!
I never considered how characters can get that pop culture “&” association after the fact (eg Romeo &, Abbott &). Only in a long running sequential medium could something become an intrinsic and essential aspect of a character years after their first appearance. When’s the last time you saw Superman go twenty-two pages without flying?
Give it ten years and I could easily see Peter Parker marrying someone new. The same dudes who howled about OMD will howl about it, but everyone else who let it slide will let it slide, while a whole new generation will ask the question, Who was Mary Jane Watson?
@david brothers: Geeze, David. That worried me. I thought I’d finally picked up a dedicated troll.
I can see your point. Endless marital squabbling is no fun to read, either. Lois and Clark haven’t been married long enough for that to really kick into gear, but look at Homer and Marge. It seems like one of them is considering leaving the other three times every season.
But I see that as a lack of creativity. One great Superman bit was a story in which Clark is asked to interview an old girlfriend, IF he completes a certain amount of stories. It’s a busy day, and it’s also Lois and Clark’s anniversary. Lois needles him a little about the ex-thing, but seems mostly amused. Clark tries to fight crime, set up a date with Lois, and get the stories and ends up dropping the ball on the last two. He gets home, miserable, to see that Lois has set up a dinner and finished his articles for him. She says that she likes teasing him, but she trusts him unconditionally and wants to help him out. Happy ending.
Also, sometimes I wonder why the characters don’t discuss the events going on in the story. It seems like a bunch of stories could be gotten out of minor disagreements that don’t jump to ‘we must end this marriage’ drama.
What I was describing, though, seems more like a flaw in the structure. Yes, there could be some tension with the first partner. Dick and Kory? Genuinely strong couple. Both interesting characters. Both well established. And not much drama had built up with Babs. By now, Babs and Dick have been engaged and agreed that, in time, they will settle down together. Introducing some random girl who shows up for two panels every three issues of Nightwing seems a bit weak, and there isn’t any other character on either side that would make for a good story, or anything more than filler.
@LurkerWithout: If you can convince me of the deep and abiding love of two characters who haven’t spoken more than twenty words to each other over the past decade, then by all means, sir, send them to Massachusetts.
@Adam: Or Connecticut.
@HitTheTargets: Okay. Point. But that would take a good, coordinated effort. No longing looks. No almost-hookups. Just this new character for ten plus years.
I can’t decide if I want Babs or Diana to get with Bruce…
…probably Babs because I hate Dick more than Ollie. Hell I probably wouldn’t even have ever come up with Dinah/Bruce if Gail Simone hadn’t teased it that one time.
Alternately, Dinah and Babs can get married.
@Esther Inglis-Arkell: This is going to sound strange, but I’m not sure what you mean. I wasn’t really even making a point, just saying it’s a storytelling quirk that caught my eye here because it happens too gradually to notice otherwise. Like how Dick first appeared in 1939, but his soulmate Barbara wasn’t featured in ink until ’66. And even then she wasn’t introduced as just Dick’s girlfriend, but over time the idea of them being a couple stuck hard. And now, as you say, it has an enduring place in the audience’s collective mind. The fact that this happened without any mapping out or planning is what interests me.
Consider Dick’s near marriage to Kory. I haven’t read that run so I can only speak hypothetically, but the strength of Dick’s portrayal in Titans could’ve sold the thing had Raven not ruined it with demon shenanigans. The timing could’ve been right. Kory becomes Flamebird, and the happy couple is still together, with deft storytelling shutting out the crazy ‘Dabs’ shippers. That coordinated effort you talked about coulda made them the pair we don’t want to see split apart.
Long term relationship? Has Twillight, Mercedes Lackey and the like taught us nothing? True Love happens INSTANTLY! Eyes lock, BAM! DESTINED LOVE! All it takes is the one night working a stake-out together, the both get hit by a freeze ray, huddling for warmth. Next morning its off to New England…
Though I think they were both in the JLA together during Obsidian Age…
You know who should get together? Jason Todd and Cass Cain. They never met before, but they have waay too much in common (and yet are complete opposites in personality), it’d be funny as heck.
ok, I think it’s fair to assume that true love does NOT happen over night. there is first lust and perhaps an attraction but to find true love at the bat of an eyelash is ludacris and I stand firm in my opinion that Twilight the pop fiction genre that it is, is no less creepy then having your necrophiliac boyfriend sneak into your house in the middle of the night and watching you sleep because he’s an insomniac and it fasinates him.
further more; I think if enough people got to the general idea that you could perhaps have superheros from the get go in a relationship it can be completely functional. just because your married or close partners doesn’t nessarilly make the comic boring, junk naturally in everyday life accumilates and people fight and make up no threats of leaving, cheating or any of the nonsense that seems to run these things.
Pandora and The Raven seem to work things out splendedly.
the important thing to realize wether examining superheros or your own life is that you need in these situations a friend as well as a spouse; and what do friends do? they fight but they also depend on each other in sometimes unorthodox ways.
I’d have to say Dick Grayson as Nightwing more then deserves to get married to Barbara Gorden (especially seeing her change from a side kick to her own indipendant type of hero) he leans on her and listens as a friend and more and that’s what it comes down to.
however I’m slightly dissapointed in lois for not realizing her coworker has the same silly piece of hair stuck to his forhead and body build as superman.
wouldn’t it be great if just once they let her know? oh but she doesn’t get with him in superman returns as lame as that was, it was that other what’s his face.
Dick and Kory are soulmates, period. Having to retcon Dick and Babs’ relationship to where they appear to “love” one another is pure BS and should say something about how DC has always viewed their relationship, or lack thereof. Besides, the only thing Babs has on Kory is a better parking spot at the local supermarket.
The only relationship I’d like to see Kory have is with a woodchipper.
@Donna: http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20060206.html
Whilst I’m not quite with Gavok on the whole Woodchipper interface issue, I just don’t think Kory’s right for Dick. She was the college girlfriend where it looked like they’d be together forever but they ultimately grew apart. I buy her as a good friend and even a “friend with benefits”, but “Soul Mate”? Nah, not really.
Barbara and Dick are so cute together!! They are the hottest superhero couple there is…they should get married. It would be so kool if he proposes to her above a hanging cliff just before defeating the world’s most dangerous villian.