My biggest near miss I wanted to include, but the series started midway through 2012, and that was Alanna and Marco from Saga. They would have been top 3 if the series had been eligible.

Another miss because it was too recent is David and Meg from Scott McCloud's The Sculptor, who might have been a top 5 couple had it been eligible. I turned to Jenny and Zach in Zot because I could not include this McCloud couple.

I almost included a handful of super-hero couples that were on my initial list. Katar Hol and Shayera were the last cut. Oliver Queen and Diana Lance were a very close second to them. There were a couple of other DC couples on my initial list, but they didn't make it past the initial brainstorming. None of the Marvel couples made it past my initial brainstorming list. The closest to making it were Logan and Mariko and Peter and MJ pre-One More Day.

I considered Adam and Eve as an iconic couple adapted into comics, but Paris and Helen filled that literary niche in my list.

I strongly considered Flash Gordon and Dale Arden, my favorite comic strip adventure couple, but decided against it because in the end, it was too imbalanced with Dale being relegated to damsel in distress far too often for them to be a couple with two characters and not a character with a plot device posing as a couple.

I considered Conan and Belit, but I find I really dislike Roy's portrayal of Belit. She is a independent powerful woman in Howard, who takes a back seat to no one, and too often in Thomas' adaptations, she is indecisive, too deferential to Conan in letting him make decisions for her, and too often cast as the damsel in distress rather than a protagonist with agency equal to that of Conan. She and Conan were equal partners in Howard, she's relegated to sidekick at best and window dressing at worst through most of the Marvel run so I couldn't vote for that portrayal of the couple, even though outside of comics it is one of my favorite heroic couples.

I like Usagi and Tomoe as a couple a lot, but I only wanted one Usagi pairing, and the dynamic of childhood sweethearts struggling to raise a child long after they were separated by circumstance appealed to me a lot more, so I went with Usagi and Mariko.

There were some other indy comic couples I thought of, but either I hadn't revisited them recently enough or read enough of the series for them to really stand out as favorites. Race Bannon and Jezebel Jade got some consideration from Messner-Loebs Jonny Quest comics. Jon Sable and Myke made my brainstorming list, but it's been so long since I read the series, I couldn't express why I liked the couple. just that I had fond memories of their relationship in the book, so I cut them early on since I wasn't going to get to revisit it before the event was over.

-M

You weren't devastated when she sold his life out for a hit of heroin?

It showed how deeply she was a crack ho.

My near misses (for varying values of ‘near’):

Sam Guthrie and Lila Cheney: This was the last painting to drop off my list. Something about the romance between to down-to-earth country boy and the intergalactic rock/jewel thief just appeals to me. I was reluctant to lose it, especially as it was my only Marvel entry. However, like most subplots in the mutant books, it did seem to drag on interminably without really going anywhere. What ultimately swung it for me was that I realised I have no idea what the current state of the relationship is, or how it ended (assuming it ever did). So it ended up being bumped for a couple from an indie book I thought could use some exposure.

Green Arrow and Black Canary: When I started compiling my list, I thought this pairing was a lock. But as other couples came to mind, GA & BC kept moving down the list until they fell off the end. Looking at it later, I realised that while I love both characters, their relationship has little to do why I love them. Their relationship is seldom the focus of stories, and when it is, they almost always revolve around Ollie being a jerk. Plus, I think their marriage was a mistake on DC’s part, and recent writers have tended to portray Ollie as a philanderer, which leaves a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to his relationship with Dinah. (If I had a woman like Dinah, I’d sure as hell never stray. And not just ‘coz she could kick my ass.) Probably would have made a Top 20 list.

Timber Wolf and Light Lass: As others have noted, it would have been easy fill the entire 12 slots with Legion romances, so I decided to limit myself to one, and that was always going to be Dawnstar and Wildfire. Had I included a second, it would have been this pair. When I was regularly reading LSH, Timber Wolf was my favourite Legionnaire (after Dawnstar, but Timber Wolf got way more screentime). Timber Wolf was brooding and troubled Byronic hero, and his romance with Light Lass was a perfect pairing of dark and light (if you’ll pardon the pun). And, quite frankly, it gave Ayla some much needed characterisation beyond being Lightning Lad’s sister.

Travis Morgan and Tala: Another one I thought long and hard about. I love the ERB-style lost world heroics of The Warlord, and at the heart of it is the relationship between Travis and Tala. However, as I examined it, I realised that it is the idea of the romance rather than the actual romance that drives Travis. He keeps striving to return to her, but no sooner does he succeed then he abandons her for another adventure. He spends way more time in Shakira’s company than ever does in Tala’s. I briefly considered beta couple Mariah and Machiste, but Michael Fleisher, a writer I normally love, screwed that relationship up so thoroughly it tainted it forever.

Zatanna and John Constantine: That these two could have been a couple makes sense to me, but in the comics we have never really them as a couple: only as exes. And I actually prefer it this way. I like the idea of a shared history—which is only hinted at to the reader—but Zee is now older and too wise to fall for John’s superficial charms again.

Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer: I like this relationship a lot, especially as it involves two more mature characters. Ultimately I excluded it only as it is comparatively recent (as far as classics go) and I wanted to focus on books from my personal golden age and the more obscure indie stuff. Check in with me a few years down the track and I may have elevated it.

Silver Sable and the Foreigner: A pair of exes—one a mercenary and the other an assassin--who sometimes try to kill each other and who sometimes wind-up having sex. And sometimes both. Charming a screwball comedy kind of way (albeit a very black screwball comedy), but ultimately too slight to be in my Top 12. I probably would have squeezed them in to a Top 15.

The Shadow and Margo Lane: I quite enjoyed how this relationship has been handled in the Dynamite books, especially The Shadow: Year One which fills in some much-needed backstory for Margo and helps to explain her unusual relationship to Lamont Cranston. Fortunately, this was too recent qualify, so I was spared having to make a call on whether to include it.

Phantom Stranger and Cassandra Craft: It's been too long since I read these stories, and I did not have time to go to back to them and establish how much of a romance this actually was.

Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon: Fun, but not as important to my head canon as the Dick/Kory relationship. Might have made a Top 20.

Batman: Batman is my favourite character and with his 80+ year history, there were plenty of relationships for me to choose from. Ultimately, I went with the two I considered the most iconic—Catwoman and Talia—but several others got at least consideration from me.
• Julie Madison: Julie is a bit of a cypher, but is still an interesting character. She sits at the heart of some of the best of the very early Batman stories: the two-part Monk story and the two golden age Clayface stories. Very much born of Batman’s pulp origins, you can almost see the writers experimenting with their nascent artform and discovering that some of the pulp tropes don’t translate well to the comic page and quietly writing her out. Matt Wagner did an interesting take on her in his modern retellings of the Mad Monk and Monster Men stories. Had she stuck around longer in the golden age, the lovely Miss Madison might have been higher up my list.
• Linda Page: Bruce Wayne’s forgotten love interest. Had I stretched myself to third Batman entry, it would have been Bruce and Linda. Falling between Bruce’s original love interest Julie and blatant Lois Lane clone Vicki Vale, Linda actually paves the way for many of Bruce’s later romances. Born into wealth and privilege, she finds high society life boring and unfulfilling and pursues a career in nursing. Although prone to some of the female foibles common in comic books of the era (such as an obsession with strange hats), she nonetheless is an interesting take on the ‘modern woman’ of the early 1940s. She is career-minded, but in a career dedicated to helping others rather than personal achievement. And her personality traits actually would have made her a good match for Batman. She is dedicated; stubborn; quick thinking and cool under pressure (when she is kidnapped by gangsters (because she is a nurse, not because she is wealthy), she contrives to secretly leave a message in her apartment for Batman to find); fearless (she clouts a gangster over the head with her high-heeled shoe); and proactive, helping to drive the plot rather than being dragged along by it (in one story, she drags Bruce along with her to Texas to help find a saboteur at her father’s oilfield). Way more interesting than Vicki Vale. I’d love to see what a modern writer could do with her.
• Silver St. Cloud: I like this relationship, but its shortness counted against it in my book. And the less said about what Kevin Smith did to the character the better. Also, I figured this pairing would be getting love from other posters, and I wasn’t disappointed.
• Zatanna: During the Favourite Team-ups 12 Days, I talked about why I love Paul Dini’s take on the Bruce/Zatanna relationship. But ultimately, for me, this falls into the ‘What Might Have Been’ category rather than a true romance.

I only ever saw this relationship as purely physical. I will admit to not having read very much Constantine comics.