#10. Preston Payne (Clayface III) and Helena

as written by Alan Moore


Whenever I get into it with someone who loves Alan Moore for works like “The Killing Joke” or “For the Man Who Has Everything,” I snicker and then show them “Mortal Clay” from Batman Annual #11. In it, we see Preston Payne (Clayface III) utterly exposed as a vulnerable human with a heart, desperately gambling everything for an unrequited love. It's so universal and familiar, especially as it turns progressively darker, and we see Payne in the end having gained the wife he sought at the cost of everything he has held dear. He blames the woman, and some part of us feels his resentment and fury. And yet, the true brilliance of this piece is that she is a department store mannequin. Every wrong she has committed, every sacrifice she has demanded, were projected from Payne's own unconscious, raising serious questions about who is truly at fault when idealized relationships turn toxic. It's a bleak, brilliant exploration that is, on the one hand unforgiving, and on the other beautiful and humanizing. We don't hate Payne; we pity him.


And then we look in the mirror and ask some serious questions of ourselves.

10.  Monsieur Mallah and The Brain



Say what you will about Grant Morrison, love him, hate him (I don't think anyone is indifferent to him) he used to be willing to take chances.  I find that he's very hit and miss for me, but Doom Patrol was great and part of that greatness was his use of Monsieur Mallah and The Brain.  The heart wants what the heart wants.  And if that happens be an ape or a disembodied brain, so be it. 

And you can always sing along..."It's Mallah, it's Mallah and the Brain...Brain...Brain." 

#10 Horatio Hellpop and Sundra Peale

Who?

How about The Great and Powerful Nexus and Sundra?



Horatio Hellpop is the son of a mass murderer, who, as a child, fell under the control of a powerful alien entity and channeled tremendous fusion power to murder his own father. Then, he was plagued by headaches and visions of mass murderers and compelled to hunt them down and destroy them.

Sundra Peale was a secret agent, sent by the Web, an intergalactic federation, to spy on Nexus, who was deemed a potential threat to the Web. Under cover as a journalist, she rigged a rescue by Nexus that landed her on his home base of Ylum, where she discovered that things weren't so cut and dried. Nexus was also known as Nexus the Liberator, as he freed slaves and conquered peoples from the tyrants who subjugated them. Ylum became a community for the dispossessed, a home to refugees. Nexus even takes an orphaned boy, Mezz, under his wing, to keep him out of trouble. Sundra sees all of this and the corruption of the Web, and her loyalties soon change. She sees the warm and gentle soul behind the mask of Nexus, the man named Horatio Hellpop. She abandons the Web and becomes the lover of Horatio, and, eventually, his life partner. However, their lives are hardly uncomplicated.

Mike Baron & Steve Rude constructed a complex world within their seminal comic series, Nexus and the heart of it is the love of Horatio and Sundra. They are wary opponents, at first, but Horatio wins over Sundra and she eventually abandons her mission. That costs her in connections to home and draws the wrath of her boss, Ursula XXX Imada. Imada comes to Ylum under the guise of a diplomat and then seduces (with chemical aids) Horatio, fathering her twin daughters. Sundra is hurt and angry, but, most of her anger is directed at the Web and Ursula. That sets off a dangerous rivalry, which sees Nexus' daughters used as pawns.

Sundra eventually starts her own business, with Jil, which proves successful. Horatio attempts to free himself of the Merk's control, so that he can have a life with Sundra and be free of the killing; but, it's not so simple.

Horatio and Sundra are one of the more complex couples in comics, which also makes them one of the more realistic. They fight and make up, deal with complex problems that don't have easy solutions. Through it all, they share a bond that keeps them going and they ride out the bad times and revel in the good. When I think of the pair, my mind is filled with panels of them having a quiet picnic, or dancing with abandon to the swinging sounds of Mezz's horn.

10. Peter Parker (Spider-man) and Mary Jane Watson
Pete and MJ are probably the first two who come to mind when someone says ‘superhero romances’ or ‘comic book couples’ – yep, even before Superman and Lois.
This probably has a lot to do with when I came into comics, i.e., the mid-1970s. At that point, the main series was deep into Len Wein’s run, where Pete and MJ were a kind-of/sort-of couple and she even appeared as Peter’s girlfriend in Spidey Super Stories, so it was natural for me to assume that she was Spidey’s love interest. I wasn’t even dissuaded when I started picking up the reprints in Marvel Tales, where he was still pretty seriously involved with Gwen Stacy. However, I started reading that series probably a few issues before that story in which she died, so it immediately became clear to me that the Gwen chapter in his life had definitely been closed. Besides, this very memorable scene in the immediate aftermath of Gwen’s death really cemented my view of Mary Jane as the one:

10. Swamp Thing & Abby
Swamp Thing (sort of Alec Holland) and Abigail Holland, née Arcane
from Swamp thing #3
by Len Wein & Berni Wrightson
DC, 1973
Particularly as portrayed in Saga of the Swamp Thing #21-38 & Swamp Thing #39-64
by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and friends
DC, 1984-1987



Growing up, I would have guessed my life would have been fine had I never known how a woman and plant creature might have sex. Alan Moore felt differently.



From tepid confessions of love to psychedelic consummation to societal scorn to a journey across the stars with the sole goal of being reunited, at peace in their bayou.

#10. Bizarro Superman and Bizarro Lois (Silver Age)



One of the most entertaining aspects of Silver Age Superman comics is that all of those repressed romantic and sexual feelings between Superman and Lois emerge in a number of strange, displaced forms (Freud would have had a field day with these comics). One of the, well, most bizarre and popular iterations of this is Bizarro Superman and Bizarro Lois. According to Bizarro creator Alvin Schwartz, the character was a "deconstruction of Superman ... that mirror-image, that opposite ... I was certainly inspired to some degree by C.G. Jung's archetype of 'the shadow' and Bizarro certainly reflected that." Where Superman and Lois were strictly limited in how they could express affection, their Bizarro counterparts not only had no such strictures, but, by definition, were compelled to express their love for one another. As such, Bizarro Superman and Bizarro Lois were able to fulfill these longings to the point that in one of their earliest appearances (Superman #140) they even have a biological child. And throughout they are faithfully devoted to one another. Only in DC Silver Age comics could heteronormative domesticity look so decidedly queer.