12. Pandora Breedlswight and Fantasia Faust (Ironwood)



I have never known a series so completely and utterly destroyed by its final issue as Ironwood. But before that happened, Bill Willingham did give us a charming and sexy relationship between feisty demon-possessed airship captain Pandora Breedlswight and sword-for-hire Fantasia Faust (who happens to be a murderous iron golem and a hot babe on toast in the bargain).

Unlike most right-leaning writers, Willingham can write compelling female characters (think of how much of Fables was driven by the interplay between sisters Snow and Rose), and the relationship between these two sexy and driven women was engaging (and hot), for most of the story. And for all that Willingham seemed to think that the feckless Dave Dragavon was the hero of this tale, Pandora was the true protagonist and heart of this story.

Unfortunately, Willingham's ending made Pandora's death not so much tragic (which I will charitably assume is what he was aiming for) as completely pointless, and felt petty and vindictive. But until then, I had adored the interplay between Pandora and Fantasia.

Here we go!
Today's Song: "Can't Help Falling In Love"- Elvis Presley. 

#12- Cliff Secord and Betty Page

Dave Stevens gave to the comic universe a couple that, on page really aren't together as much, but their love for each other is felt throughout the run of the book. Cliff's undying love for Betty is so strong as he tries to make amends for every thing he's done wrong in his life and their life together. Does it work out?  Ehhhh.. not really but he tries, no matter what craziness happens between them. What makes them a compelling couple is that it's relationship that feels so real. Not only grounded in reality, Stevens took pin up model icon to new heights and gave a new generation of readers to fall in love with Cliff's gal. What's not to love about having a romance of a simple ham-and-egger fall in love with a budding pin-up queen?

The wonder feel that Dave Stevens wrote and drew of the relationship between Cliff and Betty is that no matter what odds were against them; Betty's lure to New York or Cliff on the run against the mob and the government, their love for each other holds strong. Cliff tries hard to impress Betty but knows that deep down all the nonsense of Hollywood and Broadway she's a simple gal that loves her man so.

On the first day of Christmas, True Love gave to me one of the longest continuously running couples in comicdom: Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead





The strip started in 1930 following the exploits of Blondie Boopadoop and her boyfriend Dagwood Bumstead, heir to an industrial fortune. Their early romance was fraught-filled, with Blondie being a carefree flapper girl and Dagwood being the serious foil for her antics, with Dagwood even being written out and replaced, but brought back due to negative fan response. Their romance was frowned upon by the Bumstead family, who thought Blondie was beneath his station, and Dagwood had to go on hunger strike to prove his love for her to his family, who never truly accepted it, giving their permission but disinheriting Dagwood from the family fortune. True love requires sacrifice, and if Dagwood was willing to give up all that for Blondie, she must be some woman, and he must truly love her and both turned out to be true.

The marriage changed the dynamic of the strip, reversing their roles with Blondie becoming the sober, serious, responsible foil for Dagwood’s antics, and transforming the couple into the poster child of the trope of the 20th century married couple where the wife is the one keeping it together and the husband is the gallant fool who loves his wife but never treats her with the respect she deserves-a trope seen in other comic strips such as Hagar and Helga in Hagar the Horrible and in other mid-century American media in such couples as Ralph and Alice Kramden and Fred and Wilma Flinstone (both of whom also appeared in comics and got consideration but I only wanted to represent that particular couple trope once). I grew up reading the funny pages and Blondie and Dagwood were ubiquitous in that time. A lot of my early attempts to self-teach myself cartooning and drawing involved trying to draw Blondie to try to learn how to draw normal girls (as opposed to super-heroic woman), and paperback collections of Blondie strips were among the many we had in the house (along with Hagar, Beetle Bailey and others). To me they will always represent the American couple in comics.

Blondie and Dagwood as a couple represent a lasting love (90+ years and counting) that is true and sincere, even if it is flawed and often taken for granted by one or the other of the participants until something (usually some gag with a bit more serious side) reminds them why they are in love with each other. It's sweet (often saccharine) and simple, but there’s something reassuring and comforting about their relationship as well.

-M

(and hey there's a red dress )

Not the first time one of your write-ups has enticed me to go out and buy a book. I may still be looking for those damn Andy Panda stories, but at least this book was only $20 on ebay!

#12. Robin and Bat-Girl

Warning: Just to be clear here. Today's choice and nearly every other one on the list have been taken from my warm and fuzzy memories of the Silver Age, when I was brand new to comic books, the proverbial wide-eyed naif who had no idea of allusion, homage, sub-text, the sub-conscious, the unconscious, post-modernism, or any other literary term… except prelapsarianism, which I didn’t know anything about until I learned what it was and realized that during those idyllic days when comics’ Silver Age coincided with my own Golden Age, a time others used to call childhood, I was living in the prelapsarian world.

Anyway, one of my earliest comic memories was reading the first-ever novel-length Batman story, “Prisoners of Three Worlds” in Batman 153 (on sale inn December 1962), featuring Batman and Robin teaming with Batwoman and Bat-Girl. Long story short, both couples were exiled to different alien worlds and as the chapters progressed, it became increasingly apparent to the couples and to the readers that they were not going to make it back to Home, Sweet Home.

Which meant an extraordinary (for the time) climax to each chapter that involved each pair admitting their love for each other at long last. Because, after all, they were all going to die alone together light-years from Earth. Or at least that’s what a very new, very enraptured eight-year-old comic book reader was going to believe!



This was adult literature for me at the time, with the feelings between a couple of kids of an indeterminate age treated seriously and respectfully in the face of impending death.

Over the years I would find via reprint and back issues, the other Robin/Bat-Girl stories from that era, in which Bat-Girl was forever Flirtina McCutie and Robin played his part-- none too effectively-- The Boy Who Feared Cooties. Inevitably Bat Girl kissed Robin chastely and Robin blushed like the red planet Mars, but we canny readers knew that these were indicators of true love, however nascent.



Nothing came of all this, with Batwoman and Bat-Girl vanishing from the more serious New Look comics, and my becoming a more “sophisticated” comics reader.

But I still look back warmly at the skill with which the great Bill Finger balanced his skill at writing for kids while tapping into emotional depths that still resonate in my memory.

#12 : Jugurtha and Vania

umages

Jugurtha was a strip published in the Tintin weekly back in the 70s and '80s, and written by Jean-Luc Vernal. In its first iteration, drawn by a young Hermann, it was a historical adventure inspired by Sallust's The War with Jugurtha, and featured the clash between the Roman Republic and the eponymous prince of Numidia. Then, after a few years hiatus, the series was restarted with artwork by Franz; this time around, we followed Jugurtha as he escaped from his Roman goal (where, in real life, he died) and went on to lead a slave revolt, establish a new country on an island in the Atlantic ocean, sack the city of Rome and get lost for many years, Odysseus-like, traveling the far reaches of the world (China and central Africa).

Something I am an absolute fan of in literature is a romance that grows organically, and that feels as if it surprised the writer as much as us readers. Such a thing can happen when characters are so well-rounded that they take a life of their own, and it was the case here with Vania.

When Jugurtha founded his new mid-Atlantic country ("The Island of Resurrection"), on what seemed to be remnants of the old Atlantis, we expected him to assume the traditional role of the male hero in such historical fantasies; as is usually the case, he was even given a potential love interest in Svannée, a blond and pulchritudinous princess descended from Atlanteans. I expected the series to show how the new country prospered, with Jugurtha and Svanée at its head.

But then things changed! While on a trip to the continent, Jugurtha was exposed once more to Rome's brutality, and although he had decided not to mess with the great city again, he was convinced by angry Gauls to lead an army against the eternal city. The army was successful, the city sacked, and among the prisoners made along the way was a Roman girl, Vania, who at first pretended to be a seeress. She really seemed to be a secondary character at best. But lo and behold, the red-haired and freckled firebrand managed to make her mark, and to grow into our favourite character! No wonder, too, because she's essentially a Roman Laureline.

She and Jugurtha weren't a couple at first, although the sexual tension between the two was palpable. As they got abducted by slavers, then by King Mithridates, then by more slavers, then by Chinese warlords, they had the chance to save each other time and time again. They seemed to bicker more often than not, but also not to be able to live without the other! Svanée was promptly forgotten, both by Jugurtha and by the readers.

It was in the last Jugurtha book I read that he and Vania finally got around to realize what they felt, and got together. I hope they stayed that way through the rest of the series!