Like you, Roquefort Raider, I always appreciated the way Moore looked into what had gone before. It was as if he were bringing a contemporary eye to explore the sub-text, the way we watch an old movie and realize now why there were all those cuts from long kisses to a roaring surf.

And I do remember that abysmal mini-series, which I dumped after the first issue.

Any cretin can take a sledge hammer and a flame thrower to what has gone before and simply tell a different story with different characters; Moore always brought a microscope to the job, mixed regard and respect with his revisionism and retained the essence of what made a character unique.

#2. Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner



It reads like a fan’s own Imaginary Story: a comic book shop owner contacts the writer of her favorite title, they meet, fall in love, and get married on the third date. She becomes a character in his autobiographical stories and then a collaborator on his comic. They remain married for 26 years – until his death – and she becomes the guardian of his legacy. The true-life story of Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner that was fictionalized in Pekar’s American Splendor speaks to the emotional appeal of his work, not as fantasy self-idealization but as an honest self-accounting. As Brabner offered, “I really trusted his honesty from the start – the kind of honesty I find in reading his work. American Splendor gave me a worm’s-eye view of what his other marriages were like, so that was it. How did I get into comics? I became a character in one.” By fictionalizing his everyday life, Pekar articulated the often uncomfortable reconciliation of fiction and reality. He laid bare the insecurities that plague all of us but also his victories over self-doubt within the equally quotidian. Pekar made holding down a menial office job or going down the street to buy a fresh loaf of bread heroic. But his greatest triumph was his relationship with Brabner, who willingly became not just a real and fictionalized participant in his life story but a vital partner in the building of a storyworld we can all identify with. Harvey and Joyce’s story affirms that at the core of love is the recognition of our best selves reflected back to us in the eyes of another.

Havent ever read Pekars work but this makes me feel more inclined to try.

I'm pretty surprised we haven't seen this couple already, but maybe everyone has them at their number one, I dunno.

2. Green Arrow and Black Canary

In the 60s, DC was filled with milquetoast couples, as the heroes mostly had partners who were either boring, shrewish, or both. It's hard to understand reading those issues what these couples even saw in each other. There was just no there there.

And then in Justice League of America #75, we get the start of the relationship between Green Arrow and Black Canary. GA had just been completely revamped in between issues, over in the pages of The Brave and the Bod #85. Black Canary was also completely revamped, switching universes, gaining new powers, and in this issue, getting a new love interest to replace her husband, who they killed off in the previous issue.



It worked and then some. Here's a couple where we see the personalities (because they both actually have personalities!) meshing, and clashing, and sometimes both. We see the sparks, the romance - not just the love, but the lust. It makes sense when you see them together. They feel like people who are actually into each other, a real couple and not just a cardboard cutout of one.

It's a crime we never got a GA/BC series in the Bronze Age with a good creative team (like maybe with Alex Toth on art), because for me, they are arguably the most compelling superheroes at DC that decade. I love it.

They were in the last batch of super-hero couples that were moved off the list to the near-misses for me. Glad to see they are getting some representation on the list.

-M

2. Michael & Miranda
Michael & Miranda Tenicek
Astro City #1/2
by Kurt Busiek & Brent Anderson
Image, 1996



This one might be cheating. They're not actually a couple. In fact, Miranda doesn't even exist. And never did.

So obviously they never married. They never danced. She never bit her fingernails. He never rubbed her neck.

But he remembers her.

It seems to me like it would be easier to forget, but he chose to remember.

Apparently, no one ever chooses to forget. No one.

#2 Wesley Dodds & Dian Belmont

So, popular choice, right? However, again, I'm coming from a different angle than some of the others, I think. Most people have mentioned Sandman Mystery Theater. I only read about the first year of that, when it came out, and was not overly enamored with Guy Davis' work and didn't continue with it. i did like Matt Wagner's take on Wesley and Dian. Since then, I have warmed more to Davis' style, as my own aging has changed my perspective on a lot of storytelling in comics and Guy Davis is a storyteller.

But, that book isn't the reason they are so high on my list. For that, we once again turn to James Robinson. Robinson must be a romantic, at heart, based on how he approached relationships in Starman and some of his earlier work. I've heard tales that, in the real word, he wasn't so great at relationships; at least, with peers and others. By his own admission, he got pretty insufferable, to keep it PG. However, on the page, he seemed to have the knack for presenting loving couples, even when they were having problems. He seemed to be able to get into the perspective of each character, making them all the more human. Claremont wrote strong women; but, I thought many of his men were kind of pathetic....or at least the weaker part of the relationship. Robinson never seemed to fall into that trap, in that period of his career.

So, what does that have to do with Wes & Dian (sounds like a first draft to Mellencamp's song)? "Sand & Stars!"

Jack Knight goes to meet his hero....Dian Belmont. Dian became a Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Jack adores her work. he is tongue-tied when he meets her. Then, she introduces him to Wes, the first costumed hero (in the post-Crisis world). This is the man who started the fraternity, in his eyes, the man everyone looked up to. Wes helps him get past his fanboy inhibitions and speak his heart to Dian, about her writing. Then, he gets to solve a mystery with the original detective couple (in his world). It's like getting to work with Nick & Nora Charles, but with gas masks. As the trio works, Jack observes Wes & Dian. They have been together for so long; they finish each other's sentences, they dote on one another, touch each other and shock the hell out of the young man.....



Wes & Dian are love in the Winter Years. It's easy to smile at Young Love, to remember what it was like to think the sun began and ended with this other person, to hang on their every word, to ache for them to look your way. it's quite another to see that blossom into a deeper love, over time. To progress to the point where you don't even have to say, "I love you." You just give a certain look, a smile, and your love knows instantly what you mean. They are in perfect synch with one another. They are Astaire & Rogers on the dance floor, Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers in a duet, Franklin & Elanor Roosevelt at a public function. They know exactly how to compliment the other, without discussing it. It has transcended the verbal to be instinctual......a form of telepathic love.

The storyline shows them thrilling to interviewing people, piecing together clues in the mystery, directing Jack to the next point of interest, collating the data, and solving the mystery. It reminds them of their youth; but, they wouldn't trade their present for that past, because there has been so much more. They revel in the now, with each other, more in love the next day than the last.

Robinson got what true love really is.....



I fell in love with Wesley Dodds and Dian Belmont in that story.

Old Love.