Weirdest relationships in comc books

Cafe Society
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In which we discuss relationships in comics that are 'flicted as all get out.

I don’t mean romantic relationships, by the way. Not necessarily, anyway. You can nominate the likes of Mantis and the Cotati if you want, but any sort of friendship or pseudo-family interaction is eligible.

I will start with Mon-El and Superboy from the Legion of Super-Heroes. For the youngsters: In the Silver Age, Superman’s do-gooding career began when he was a young teen–maybe just a tween–as Superboy. A few years into this, Clark met a slightly older humanoid alien teen whose spaceship had crashed near Smallville, who was wearing a palette-swapped, insignia-less version of Kal’s costume, sported the same powers (but was a little stronger, being bigger) and had amnesia. Naturally thinking this was a fellow Kryptonian refugee, and being both big-hearted and lonely, Clarkie persuaded his big-hearted parents to take the new guy in; he used the civilian identity of Bob Cobb and the superhero id of Mon-El, because they met on a Monday. They considered them foster brothers.

Which is not the weird part. The weird part comes in when Superboy, being a paranoid git on top of everything else (hey, his previous best friend had been Lex Luthor), began to suspect Mon wasn’t really Kryptonian (maybe he did the math) and to test it, tested a lead rock green and pretended it was kryptonite. When Mon succumbed to the panful exposure, he yelled “Aha! I was only faking, you hoser! That shit’s harmless!” Only it wasn’t. Turns out Mon-El – whose real name was Lar Gand – was actually from Daxam, a planet very similar to Krypton except that (a) it hadn’t exploded, and (b) its inhabitants had a lethal allergy to lead, only a single exposure could kill and removing the stiumulus didn’t help. The pain of the exposure had restored Mon’s lost memory, though on balance he would have preferred to remain amnesiac but not dying. Realizing how badly he had fucked up, Supes did hte only thing he could: grab his birth daddy’s Phantom Zone projector and sending his blood brother to the Zone, where he wouldn’t die on account of being a ghost already but would be tortured by the other inhabitants, who were all Kryptonian super-villains, monsters, and so forth.

Which isn more tragic than weird, I admit. The weird shit comes after Mon’s spent a thousand years in the Zone. By the 30th Century the Legion of Super-Heroes has formed, and their resideent super-genius Brainiac Five invents a potion to get Mon out of the Zone. Oddly, a millennium of telepathic rape has not driven the Daxamite batshit, and once back in the physical world he joins the Legion as their mightiest member. The time-traveling Superboy is ALSO a member, and he and Mon re-establish their foster-brother relationship (Ultra Boy gets to be like a foster third cousin) and Mon does not hold a grudge over Supes’s boneheaded prank.

Weirde as fuck, if you ask me.

But that’s just my opinion. What’s the weirdest comic book relationship you can think of?

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I think the X-men have some weird relationships.
Particularly the Cyclops/Jean Grey/Maddie Pryor/Cable/Nate Grey relationship is reaaaallly weird.

I’d say Cap/Sharon Carter romance where they hid their relationship from a delusional elderly Peggy Carter got to bizarre sitcom levels of weird.

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When Lex Luthor had Supergirl (the alien protoplasmic shape-shifter that thought she was Supergirl) as a girlfriend/sex-slave…that was just damn creepy. He’d have her play shape-shifting bedroom games, and, yeah, she’d do it, but she felt uncomfortable with it.

Batman and Talia al Ghul is a sad, twisted, forlorn love affair. She even had his child, but they can never be together.

Batman and the various Robins. He let one go, another died, and he adopts yet another. If he’d adopted Dick Grayson, things might have been a lot healthier.

Conan and Red Sonja: one of the classic “frustrated sexual tension” motifs. They both wanna screw like minks until the sea rises and engulfs the Hyborian Lands, but, instead, they sigh and make whiny faces at each other. Hey, they’re already half naked: get shucked and get f****, ya dummies!

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Matrix didn’t think she was Supergirl. She WAS Supergirl, in the same sense that PostCrisis Clark was Superman. She adopted a name coined by another (the Earth Prime Lex in her case, Lois Lane in Kent’s) as her her own. She did not believe herself to be Kara Zor-El (who did not exist at that point, and who had never even been heard of by anyone other than the Psycho-Pirate anyway)

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The weirdest relationship i see is with comic book superheros and their fans.

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It’s especially tragic how somebody broke into your house, fettered you to a chair but left your hands free, and forced you to open and read this thread. What a monster!

I’d sue if I were you.

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NM

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Nah, too lazy. Just a lame snarky response is all I could muster.

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The Dread Dormammu and Umar the Unrelenting (love, love, love that moniker). By the Vishanti! You’re siblings! No banging allowed. Being drunk is NO excuse! The fratricide is just business, though.

I think Ultron/Hank Pym/Janet van Dyne has been analyzed to death already.

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The whole Deadpool/Blind Al and Deadpool/Weasel relationships are pretty pathologically unhealthy. Admittedly, Wade doesn’t have what you might call a “healthy” relationship with anybody, but there’s a lot of abusive codependence both with Blind Al and Weasel.

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There’s no reason to think Dormanmu was drunk when he fucked Umar, and while I’ll concede Umar might have been ravished, there’s nothing reason she must have been. Don’t be fooled by Clea; they’re nothing nice.

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Victor von Doom and 7th Century Morgan la Fey made an awesome power couple, I thought. Until she got clingy, anyway.

Crystal and a shlubby realtor strained credulity. That poor girl really doesn’t have a type.

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Mr. Natural and Flakey Foont.

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This is known as threadshitting, don’t do it. If you don’t have anything to offer a topic other than snarking on those who enjoy it, don’t bother making a post.

Just a note, not a warning, but don’t do it again.

Idle Thoughts
SDMB Mod

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The Marvel superhero Longshot was genetically engineered to lead a rebellion in a different dimension. For a while, he was on the same team as time-traveling superhero Shatterstar. It was eventually revealed that Longshot would, at some point in the future, father Shatterstar. Shatterstar is later sent even further back in the past, where some of his DNA is harvested to create… Longshot.

So Longshot and Shatterstar are, technically speaking, each other’s dad.

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Also, Supergirl and her horse, Comet.

As far as Supergirl knows, a Comet is just a horse. With superpowers, of course, but there was a whole league of super pets at the time, so this wasn’t that extraordinary. However, what she doesn’t know is that whenever an actual comet passes through the solar system, he turns into a human. Specifically, a human who is dating Supergirl. Who is unaware that her boyfriend and her horse are the same person.

This is far and away the* least insane* part of Comet’s story.

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Here’s that story. Quintessential Silver Age absurdity :slight_smile:

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How many times can Doctor Octopus convince May Parker that he’s nothing more than a benign scientist who’s making a huge pitcher of lemonade out of the bushel of metaphorical lemons represented by his disfiguring lab accident?

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That was the one I came in here to mention. I’ll include Rachel and Stryfe as well.

For instance:

What’s the relationship between Stryfe and Nate? Stryfe is a clone of the son that a different universe’s version of Nate’s dad had with the clone of that universe’s version of Nate’s mom.

And that’s not nearly the worst one…

What’s the relationship between Rachel and Cable? In an alternate near-future, Rachel was the daughter of Cable’s dad and the woman whose clone was Cable’s mom, although to be clear they weren’t Cable’s dad and mom in the past of her timeline (as he didnt exist in that timeline) but rather in an alternate past which she eventually traveled to. Later she was trapped in an alternate far-future and founded the group which brought Cable (as a baby) to that far future and then sometime later temporarily brought the minds of his dad and the woman whose clone was his mom to that time so they could raise him while inhabiting different bodies, and later still sent those same two back over a century into their past where they’d play a critical role in the creation of the villain who’d later create the clone which became Cable’s mom, and thus allowed him to ever be born in the first place. But Cable’s actions in the present ultimately changed the far-future timeline in which she’d done all those things, allowing him to rescue her in a new far-future timeline so they could return to the present.

And that’s not even getting into Cyclops’ brothers or his space pirate father. Or the fact that Jean has now been replaced with an alternate version of her own younger self.

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You left out Havok (with whom Maddie has been known to bump uglies as well, and who for those not paying attention is Cyke’s brother) and little test-tube-brother Gambit. Not that adding the rest of the possible-family (Corsair, Polaris, Polaris’ not-really-your-daddy Mags) makes things any less eye-crossing. Lemme tell you: if I was a superhero(ine) and anybody with the lastname Summers made eyes at me, I’d suddently develop stellar-range teleportation.

Than again Scarlet Witch, her android husband, and the twins which may or may not have existed (depending on when was the comic you grab printed), may or may not have been the product of demonic posession, may or may not have been a virginal birth, are surpassed only by how calmly the rest of the Avengers took the news of her pregnancy.