Romance

Since romance comics had gone out of style well before I was born, I had no idea just how popular and prolific the genre had been. I had always assumed it was some kind of short-lived craze that fizzled out like other comic fads, but then I started noticing how high the issue numbers were on so many of the covers I selected. Turns out romance comics enjoyed an incredibly successful three-decade run from the late 1940s to the late 1970s. I also learned that the comic that launched the genre, 1947’s Young Romance, was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby! You know, the guys that created Captain America a few years earlier. This was without question the easiest one of these galleries I’ve ever had to pull together, because almost every single cover I came across was a home run. They’re all just amazing! There was no sorting and sifting and really trying to get through all the underwhelming garbage to get to the good stuff. It’s all good stuff.

Q: Why do people feel a need to keep inventing new love interests for pretty much every major superhero? -- @krinsbez A: I'm not saying that I am a person who has no OTPs --- ever since I was a kid, I've felt pretty strongly about Peter Parker and Mary Jane, or Superman and Lois, or Batman and the very concept of justice --- but I'm also not opposed to creating a new love interest for an established character. I mean, there are definitely cases where it's done poorly and where a new character is introduced at the expense of one that already exists, but that's not a problem with significant others so much as it is with new characters in general --- the same thing happens to villains whenever new Bigger Bads show up and prove how dangerous they are by thrashing an existing bad guy. But really, I'm not sure the question should be why the creation of a new love interest happens as often as it does. It a lot more surprising that it doesn't happen more often.

Love Machines #4 is interested in romance and time and ideas; the black and white comic anthology is devoted to “love stories about technology with an eye to the past.” Written and published by Josh Trujillo through his Lost Key Comics line, Love Machines is, essentially, about relationships between people and objects through time.

Last week we polled you on some of comics' most celebrated couples. Rather than pitting them head to head, we offered a straight vote between 'True Love' and 'Bad Romance,' and as a result, we have a list of twenty couples rated for greatness, with Harley Quinn and Joker down at the bottom, and the perhaps surprising choice of Wally West and Linda Park at #1. But a lot of famous couples are missing from the list, and even though Valentine's Day is behind us, we've not yet had our fill of love. So here's your opportunity to nominate the other couples that need to be voted on to come up with the definitive list of comics' greatest romantic couples. Wally and Linda are the current king and queen, but can another couple claim their crowns?

Q: Mister Miracle and Big Barda: great superhero romance or greatest superhero romance? --@ReverendMagnett A: You know, Reverend, ComicsAlliance is having a poll right this very minute to determine what our readers think is the greatest superhero romance, but as we all know, polls deal in opinion, while Ask Chris deals entirely in facts. Sure, they might appear to just be opinions with a lot of exclamation points thrown in, but trust me, it'll save us all a lot of time if we just agree that they're facts and move on.

Unleash your OTPs! As lovers everywhere get ready for a Valentine's Day weekend full of romance and passion, and as everyone else updates their Netflix lists and wonders if they're finally desperate enough to check out Hemlock Grove, it's time to ask you, the big-hearted ComicsAlliance readers, to rate some of the greatest romances in comics history to determine which of these legendary pairings is comics' greatest love story!

Unleash your OTPs! As lovers everywhere get ready for a Valentine's Day weekend full of romance and passion, and as everyone else updates their Netflix lists and wonders if they're finally desperate enough to check out Hemlock Grove, it's time to ask you, the big-hearted ComicsAlliance readers, to rate some of the greatest romances in comics history to determine which of these legendary pairings is comics' greatest love story! Over three days we'll present you with a selection of the most celebrated couples in comics. All you have to do is say if their love is built to last or doomed to fail. If you think a couple should be together forever, through all the reboots and break-ups that a cruel god can throw at them, vote 'True Love'. If you think that the couple aren't really right together and maybe ought to reconsider everything their relationship is built on, vote 'Bad Romance'. The couple with the highest 'True Love' score will be have bragging rights as the best couple, and isn't that what Valentine's Day is really all about?

Unleash your OTPs! As lovers everywhere get ready for a Valentine's Day weekend full of romance and passion, and as everyone else updates their Netflix lists and wonders if they're finally desperate enough to check out Hemlock Grove, it's time to ask you, the big-hearted ComicsAlliance readers, to rate some of the greatest romances in comics history to determine which of these legendary pairings is comics' greatest love story! Over the next three days we'll present you with a selection of the most celebrated couples in comics. All you have to do is say if their love is built to last or doomed to fail. If you think a couple should be together forever, through all the reboots and break-ups that a cruel god can throw at them, vote 'True Love'. If you think that the couple aren't really right together and maybe ought to reconsider everything their relationship is built on, vote 'Bad Romance'. The couple with the highest 'True Love' score will be have bragging rights as the best couple, and isn't that what Valentine's Day is really all about?

Q: What's the deal with Batman's non-Catwoman, non-justice love interests? Vicki Vale, Zatanna, Wonder Woman, etc? -- @superseth64 A: Just a few days ago, I was talking to Greg Rucka and he mentioned Denny O'Neil's rule about Batman not sleeping with anyone, because if he does, then he sleeps with everyone. It's an interesting way to put that, and I'm inclined to agree with O'Neil on that point, but you can't deny that over the past 75 years, the Caped Crusader has had plenty of romantic entanglements, almost all of which, as you might expect, have ended in a spectacularly awful fashion. But the thing is, as much as they don't work from a romantic perspective, which is the nature of dramatic tension, they don't really work from a storytelling perspective, either.

Valentine's Day is here at last, and that means that it's time to celebrate the people we love. Admittedly, most of the people we love are fictional vigilantes, but still: Romance is in the air. And for those of us looking for the perfect way to express it, a few of our (real) favorite people have cooked up some amazing Valentines...