LOVED this series. . and so wish they had done way more

so these two were all up and down my list . almost ended up at 12, then moved up to 6, and finally settled at #9

Kathy George & Lenny Shapiro (with Shade the Changing Man as the spoiler 3rd wheel who was also with Kathy)


it gets super complicated, and I was in awe of this book - with some stellar writing from Peter Milligan, and my first real exposure to Chris Bachalo's art being what really sold me.

shorthand? Shade is an alien who takes over the bodies of the recently dead so he (they) can exist.

he meets Kathy and falls in love with her. . . but the only issue (and it's a big one - that's what she said (HA!)) is that Shade is in the body of the serial killer who murdered her family. . . and had been put to death, allowing Shade to take over.

that's the basis of the 1st 12 issues of the series, as Shade, along with Kathy, and their friend they meet along the way, Lenny, fight "the American Scream". . a hostile alien from the same dimension as Shade who is free on Earth as well, and wants to destroy everything.

as can be deduced, Kathy has very conflicted feelings about Shade (who loves her), and eventually Kathy and Lenny become a comics version of Thelma and Louise (I guess is the best way to put it). . dating each other, while Kathy also has a relationship with Shade.

all drawn beautifully by Bachalo:






it gets even more complicated when Shade takes over the body of a deceased woman. . . yet still dates Kathy.

they were more a Poly couple than a standard couple, but Lenny remains one of my all time favorite comic characters, and I loved her honest/f-ed up relationship with Kathy.

so they are my #9.

I had no idea! I thought Jug finding Ethel O.K. happened as recently as in the Married Life series.

Good to know that the kids grew out of their awkward phase in the regular titles too.

Yeah, there was a great issue in the 00s where Jughead hangs out with her and we learn she's really cool. She also volunteers at an old folks home in addtion to sharing a lot of Jughead's interests. And Jughead's like.... man, I've been a real jerk. I can't remember the issue number or else I would have posted an image form that story. 

And on the Fourth Day there was...

#9 Mikaal Tomas & Tony

One of the really great elements of James Robinson's Starman series was his respect for past stories. Rather than jettison what he didn' like and do an "Everything you know is wrong!" retcon, he tried to find a more creative way to repair damage done to characters by bad writing, in the past. He took those stories as done, then tried to find a way to rehabilitate the character. He also had a talent for finding the cool parts of obscure characters and Mikaal Tomas, aka the alien Starman, of First Issue Special #12, tying him and all of the others who carried the name Starman, to Jack Knight and his father, ted, the original Starman. Mikaal's one story, his debut, existed in this world, even with a post-Crisis way out. No one had touched the character, leaving it a failed experiment of a bygone day. Robinson picked him up and added him to the roster. Jack discovers that something happened to Mikaal, in the 1970s, after his debut adventure. He was drugged and ended up a slave, in a freak show, where the owner fed off the misery of its performers. Mikaal had no memory of his past, no idea of his power, thinking it gone. Jack makes his first conscious decision to perform a heroic act, because it is the right thing to do and he has the ability to do it. previously, he fought in response to the Mist's attack on his family. Now, he took up someone else's fight. He freed Mikaal and took care of him. Mikaal would be placed in the care of Ted Knight, who helped him recover. Soon, a childlike Solomon Grundy would join him, before Nash, the Mist's daughter, came back for revenge. Mikaal was used as a hostage, before he rediscovered his power.

We cut ahead, in storyline, after Mikaal has been mostly out of the picture. Jack has discovered that his girlfriend, Sadie, is the sister of the former Starman, Will Payton, who died fighting Eclipso. Except, he may not be dead and may, in fact, be a prisoner, somewhere out in space. Jack undertakes a trip to the stars to find him. He approaches Mikaal about coming with him. Mikaal feels a longing to return to space and find his lost identity. However, there is a complication that arises, that was a surprise to readers. In the time since he was last directly involved in Jack's adventures, Mikaal had found a lover; a man named Tony.



Mikaal has to tell Tony that he is leaving for space; it is something he has to do. It is clear that he deeply loves Tony and Tony fell in love with him the moment he saw him. Tony understands, and says goodbye, not knowing if Mikaal will come back; but, he will wait for him, because Mikaal promised to come back. Tony has given him a reason not to remain in the stars.

For a period of time, James Robinson was one of the best writers working in comics. He early work was really, really good and he helped elevate some questionable concepts, like Malibu's Firearm. Robinson took the idea of a gun-totting normal, in a new superhero universe, and turned him into a private detective riff that was filled with literary references and book recommendations, in the letters page. You didn't get that with the Punisher. He dabbled with Grendel, wrote a Vertigo piece with the 3 Witches, who formerly introduced horror stories in DC's The Witching Hour. He did a neat little graphic novel for Epic, 67 Seconds. he wrote the post-War JSA, in The Golden Age, exploring the McCarthy Era paranoia, and gave them a reason to be paranoid. Starman was his epic masterpiece.

Robinson had a knack for giving us intriguing characters, in just a few panels, with a great image from artist Tony Harris, and a bit of dialogue and/or exposition, from Robinson. This was one of those seminal moments. On the first page, Robinson introduces Tony as the new man in Mikaal's life. We were just digesting the idea that Mikaal was gay, given he avenges a dead female lover, in First Issue Special. On the next page, we find out that he loves this man, but he has to leave him to find himself, out in space, or he will never be whole and cannot embrace that love fully. Tony sends him off to do what he must and we ache for him, because we get the idea that Mikaal may not be the same, once he goes off into space. As "The Stars My Destination," as the storyline was titled, plays out, Mikaal is changed. He finds his lost warrior spirit and the full extent of his powers. When he and Jack return to Earth, after finding the truth of what happened to Will Payton, Mikaal is changed, and it scares Tony. Yet, he loves him and asks Jack to talk to Mikaal. At the end of the series, Jack does, but nothing is certain....



Sadly, Tony was killed off, so that Mikaal could be grieving and deal with other things. Not even Robinson could match his previous work. But, for that brief period and a handful of panels, Mikaal and Tony were a wonderful, loving couple, who made us smile. Even as we learned that Mikaal is neither heterosexual or homosexual, or bisexual; he is an alien and does not easily fit within human understanding. Mikaal still loved and could be loved, and Tony loved him and after all of the suffering Mikaal endured in his debut and in the pages of Starman, it was a shining moment and it made us love Tony all the more, because he loved Mikaal and lifted Mikaal up out of what had happened and he returned the love.

I often wish that Robinson could reconnect with his younger self, and write like this again. The best he manages is flashes of it. Maybe someday.

9. Red Tornado and Kathy Sutton



OK, I couldn't resist having this year's list overlap my favorite characters list from the first CCC, so Red Tornado and Kathy Sutton popped to mind early on. Is theirs one of the great comics love stories? Well, no, it's not especially memorable. But I just plain wanted Reddy to have a happy life, and the idea of this android finding love, and an adoptive daughter to boot, was appealing to me. This relationship made a lot more sense to me than that between another android and a flesh-and-blood woman which I expect we'll be seeing a lot of in the days to come. Maybe it's just that Reddy's low self-esteem resonated with me, but he seemed likeable enough that the right girl just might have fallen for him. And if you were a normal human in the DC Universe, Red Tornado would have been a lot easier catch if you had your eye on marrying a super-hero, right? And this is a character who's proven he's willing to sacrifice time and time again, right?