THE GREAT DEBATE
Should superheroes get married?
Posted September 18, 2007 9:15 AM |
YES!
by TJ Dietsch
Of course they should. I’m not saying everyone wearing a cape should settle down, but it would be completely ridiculous to assume that no superheroes should ever get married; it’s just unrealistic.
The only way to make a decades-long relationship interesting is to put it to the test through marriage. How many years of stories can you read of a secret-identity-protecting hero keeping his alter ego from the girl of his dreams? It gets boring! Some folks seem to think that wedding bells equal less thrills, but that’s only the case with writers who aren’t up to the task.
When it comes to Green Arrow and Black Canary, they’ve been together on and off for years, they’ve both grown as characters and now it’s time for playboy Ollie to settle down and make an honest woman out of Dinah. Whole new worlds of problems open up when characters get married, which just means more challenges for them, more drama for the reader and a natural evolution that just makes sense.NO!
by Rickey Purdin
Aside from the argument that marrying superheroes ages the characters and makes younger fans less likely to identify with them, it’s just a bad idea for the sake of the characters themselves.
When heroes marry, it forces both to appear in any solo titles the pair may have at the time. And for characters like Ollie Queen, one of the few guys in comics you’d actually enjoy grabbing a beer with, it’s like a friend getting hitched and ending boys’ night out.
That doesn’t mean I don’t think heroes should date. Romance acts as a great lubricant for moving arcs along. But when you tie a hero down, guy or girl, it steals from their independent mojos and you run the risk of shipping the characters off to Boringville for a honeymoon.
And seriously, what’s with the metahuman bridal party rolling up in their costumes? Sure, it’d be funny if one of my boys slapped on a space helmet, but someone ask Adam Strange to cool it with the cosmic head gear…
Personally, I think that while it's alright for superheroes to date, it's a whole different thing altogether for them to get married. Take Spider-man, for instance. As soon as he got married to MJ, he just wasn't the same character anymore. It's kind of hard to emphatise with Spider-man, who suddenly went overnight from being a hard-luck struggling superhero, to a man married to a supermodel with nary a care in the world. I mean, we all rooted for Parker to get married with MJ...but the reality of the situation is that once they got married, it kind of took a spark out of the character.
Yes, getting married does bring up some uniquely interesting situations. Like when photos were taken of Superman kissing Lois Lane, headlines came out that Lois, who was married to a very human Clark Kent, was cheating on her husband. And who could forget Rick Jones' bachleor party before he got married to Marlo in Incredible Hulk #419? It was really funny seeing the Invisible Woman cheat and beat Captain America at pool...even funnier when Captain America had to look away and come up with the excuse "I've got something in my eyes" when he realised that the group had started watching a porno. Even FUNNIER when it was revealed that Marlo, Rick Jones' soon-to-be-wife, was the STAR of the porno.
But all in all, I think that superheroes should just stay away from the sanctity of marriage. Or if they do get married, then get a bunch of writers who won't dilute or lessen the character.
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