Something occurred to me while reading the blog post by Flash editor Brian Cunningham at the end of last week, when he announced that Barry Allen was now no longer a married man in the New 52 – Well, something besides “Wait, wasn’t Barry essentially single in the last Flash series? I mean, there was some kind of flirting/dating with Iris potentially, but were they supposed to be married?” – namely, what the hell does DC suddenly have against matrimony?
After all, it’s not just Barry Allen who suddenly finds himself de-married in the New 52-verse; Lois and Clark are famously in the same boat, and from the looks of pre-release interview, solicits and other material, Mr. Terrific and The Savage Hawkman have gone from being widowers to being swinging bachelors without a care in the world that isn’t related to fighting crime and looking good doing it. It goes even further, of course; if Ryan Choi really is the Atom in the new 52, then it’s not just the Ray Palmer/Jean Loring marriage that doesn’t exist anymore, it’s all of Ray Palmer. In fact, in the new DCU, I’m having trouble thinking about a marriage that has actually survived… Ralph and Sue Dibny, perhaps, but they’re potentially dead if Identity Crisis and 52 still happened (Seriously, aside from the Legion of Super-Heroes relationships, am I missing a marriage that’s made it through the New 52 unscathed? I mean, even Ma and Pa Kent are dead now).
This all has the aim, of course, of making the characters seem younger and more relatable to readers. After all, no comic readers are married, and no young people ever get married, so… success achieved, DC! Congratulations on making One More Day seem restrained.
(A stray thought: Wouldn’t it be hilarious if, in the middle of these announced de-marrying of characters, DC quietly retcons in a marriage? I’d love it if, in the middle of Green Lantern #1, Hal Jordan casually mentions that he and Carol have been married for years without his superhero identity causing any problems.)
September 6th, 2011 at 10:54 am
Sorry to burst your bubble but Ray Palmer is alive and well in Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE. Mister Terrific doesn’t have to stay a grieving widower forever. He even had a thing with Sasha Bordeaux. I have no idea what’s going on with Hawkman, if he even has any love interests.
The Animal Man marriage is still intact. They’re the Fantastic Four of DC. The family dynamic defines them since the beginning. That can’t be said for Barry or Clark.
September 6th, 2011 at 11:08 am
I don’t think the implication was that Terrific had to grieve forever, just that being the “most eligible bachelor in the DCU” or whatever it said in the solicitation suggests the marriage he had was erased completely and would no longer be part of his character development. Which, I agree, seems a bit silly.
September 6th, 2011 at 11:18 am
There’s simply more story opportunities for unmarried characters.
They can get married for one!
September 6th, 2011 at 11:23 am
Bruce is still married…to his job.
September 6th, 2011 at 11:50 am
I think it’s a given in a lot of fiction that marriage is the end of the story. It’s not true, or fair, but it’s how marriage is perceived. When the couple at the center of the story, be it sci-fi or sitcom, gets hitched, the story as we knew it is over.
September 6th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Mark Gruenwald was famously, or notoriously, against superheroes being married — and thought kids were even worse — but that was because he seemed to think that writers of stories relied on certain formulas, and marriage and kids prevented writers from using those formulas.
It’s pretty easy to establish that two complementary characters as a duo, the Vision and Scarlet Witch being one example, are stronger than either character is alone, because the combination increases the number of story possibilities. However, that supposes that readers will be at least as interested in emotional differences, conflicts over principles, and adult treatments of various topics as they would be in formula fiction. If all the reader wants is mindless entertainment, the married characters will be boring, and so will the stories.
SRS
September 6th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
It seems like Aquaman and Mera are still married as well, but I had a similar reaction when I read about the disappearance of the Barry/Iris marriage.
September 6th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
I find the current wave of retconning married superheroes into being swinging singles rather dull, for much the same reason that I’m increasingly losing my patience with secret identities in superhero comics, because far from opening the field to NEW stories, it simply reinstates the former status quo of OLD stories that made me so sick of the genre that I quit ALL superhero comics in grade school and didn’t come back until college.
*Gasp!* How can I save the lives of my friends, or win the love of the girl I pine for from afar, without revealing my secret identity?” YAWN.
For all the exciting potential and possibilities of the superhero premise, all that we have are writers who want to resurrect the white-bread personality-free generic male protagonists of the Silver Age and run them through the standard ’60s “love triangles,” except now with an added “hated and feared by the world they’ve sworn to protect” ripped-off-from-the-X-Men angle.
September 6th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
And yeah, if you’re going to wipe out Barry Allen’s marriage, AND wipe out his EXPERIENCE as a superhero, which was one of his few SELLING points, then why are you calling that character” Barry Allen” anymore anyway? Then again, I’m the guy who actually prefers his superheroes to be SMART, so what do I know? Clearly, what the market needs is a character who has all the unappealing aspects of a stuck-in-the-Fifties bowtie-wearing square without any of the INTELLIGENCE to go along with it.
September 6th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
If Barry isn’t married to Iris – is he supposed to be in the future? How the heck do we have a Bart still around then?
As for retconning marriages out – all the same arguments for reading years of unmarried Clark before “Lois & Clark” forced DC’s hand exist now for post-married-now-unmarried Clark. And, I fondly remember reading the Earth-2 married Clark stories in the Superman Family books from way-back-when, too. Couldn’t there be something to that effect again? There is plenty of material to mine.
The ultimate question for the business of DC selling floppies & digital prints of men-in-tights is WILL IT SELL? Guess the proof will be known 6-10 months from now. That’s all we can do at this point is wait-n-see.
September 6th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
The Lois and Clark relationship erasure is unquestionably the stupidest aspect of this for me. Her not knowing makes her look incurably clueless, and him not telling her makes him look unforgivably manipulative. They’re both infinitely LESS interesting characters when they’re not sharing his secret. I have NEVER understood the appeal of the Superman “love triangle,” and even Superman’s co-creators tried to end it during their run (in the same story that would have introduced “K-Metal,” a.k.a. Kryptonite).
September 6th, 2011 at 4:11 pm
This allows DC to make Barry Allen gay.
Do it, DC.
September 6th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
This seems like a needless change. Lois and Clark I can see, but this one is strange; especially with Bart running around. Just one more reason not to have Wally around?
September 6th, 2011 at 7:11 pm
“This all has the aim, of course, of making the characters seem younger and more relatable to readers. After all, no comic readers are married”
Since superhero comics are adolescent fantasies, getting rid of all these wives makes sense. How many middle-aged fanboys wish they were still single and childless, I wonder?
“I have NEVER understood the appeal of the Superman “love triangle,”
I always thought Superman should’ve chosen Jimmy Olsen over Lois Lane. Oh well.
“This allows DC to make Barry Allen gay.”
I think Bruce Wayne is probably a more likely candidate for being gay; isn’t “being married to one’s job” just a euphemism?
September 6th, 2011 at 7:23 pm
If we’re going to retcon their marriages, then more superheroes need to be bisexual.
The joke is that I’m completely serious. There’s absolutely zero tension in wondering whether or not Lois and Clark will or won’t ever get together, because there’s no such thing as a credible challenger for Superman’s affections among DC’s female characters (no, sorry, Lana Lang and Wonder Woman don’t count), but turn it into a REAL love triangle, between Lois, Clark and BRUCE? Hell, yes, you’re going to see some REAL drama.
September 6th, 2011 at 7:27 pm
“If all the reader wants is mindless entertainment, the married characters will be boring, and so will the stories.”
This cuts both ways, though. As a kid, all I wanted from Superman comics was Superman having fun being Superman and going toe-to-toe with cool bad guys, and instead, what I got was a bunch of unconsummated wangst between Lois and Clark. Saying that the “love triangle” appeals more to fans who want even just a “mindless action” Superman is like saying that the people who still pay money to see Michael Bay’s Transformers movies are doing so because they can’t get enough of Shia LaBeouf and his character’s relationship dramas with his interchangeable terrible actress girlfriends with model-perfect good looks.
September 7th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
I said this before and I say it again. They’re not copying Brand New Day when they truly are.
September 7th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
SUMMATION: It’s easier to have the illusion of storytelling with single characters than married ones. It would take actual writing talent to make a married character compelling, and DC hired an artist turned writer (Manupal) and no one we’ve ever heard of (the other guy) to write stories about a super-boring character that should’ve stayed dead (Barry Allen).
September 8th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
I had a moment when I realized that Scott Free and Big Barda were still alive. But then I realized that in the Geoff Johns verse, they probably weren’t. And he would have to escape prison for her murder.