Five Inseparable Comics Duos (Currently Separated)

Yeah, we didn’t know that was a thing, either, but now it’s trending on Twitter. And it ties into some thoughts that we’ve been having lately about the nature of commitment in comics, since…well…reboots, time travel, deals with the devil, all that good stuff.

In fact, what had been bugging us was that when Ted Kord recently reappeared, he doesn’t seem particularly like a guy whose company Booster Gold would enjoy. That, on top of the fact that Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen don’t seem to have been seen on panel together since the launch of the New 52, raises some questions as to whether DC Comics is as committed to breaking up their most recognizable “bromances” in the same way they did characters’ marriages in order to shake up the status quo.

It isn’t just DC, though; relationships at the Big Two as a whole aren’t particularly smiled upon these days, and whether it’s BFFs who just one day stop interacting or romances that go on the rocks for really…weird…reasons, it seems like those people you would have once thought inseparable are no longer sharing a ZIP code.

Like who? We’re glad you asked.

Before we go into the list, which we’re going to limit just to friends, let’s explain why: there are too many marriages to count and their reasons for dissolution are usually pretty similar, so the whole article would get repetitive. Lois and Clark, Barry and Iris, Peter and Mary Jane, Scott and Jean and on and on…and in the case of DC Comics, almost all of them were separated by the New 52’s rebooted timeline, and now the universe is building toward creating them again.

It’s always an attempt to “keep the characters young,” which actually seems like it would lend itself to reuniting the characters who follow, as they’re mostly described as being like old college buddies…

When he dedided to do a “Throwback Thursday” post on social media, longtime Justice League penciler Kevin Maguire shared the image above — one that was liked and shared hundreds of times.

It wasn’t long after they met during the old Justice League International days that Beetle and Booster became inseparable. Written as the comedic duo who kept things light in the often very dangerous and bleak world of superheroes, they eventually became known to many as the Laurel and Hardy of DC Comics.

Their reputation became so cemented that it was actually difficult to use them elsewhere or in other settings; the idea that they were “funny” characters started to overtake the pair and many writers didn’t take them seriously. This was likely exacerbated by the fact that both heroes relied on technology for their “powers,” so a frequent, easy way to write them into danger would be to strip them of that and make them ordinary people.

Eventually writer Geoff Johns decided that the way around the problem was to kill off Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) entirely and, in so doing, reboot Booster as a hero with a bit more grim determination. In Countdown to Infinite Crisis, Ted was killed while Booster, injured from a previous attack and momentarily stripped of his powers, was off-panel and unable to prevent it. In a clever bit of fourth-wall-breaking, Ted only died because other DC heroes wouldn’t take him seriously when he went looking for assistance ahead of his final mission.

After that, the partnership fared…surprisingly well. After Beetle’s death at the hands of longtime JLI ally Maxwell Lord, fan interest in the team was rekindled and a few miniseries and one-shots were produced revisiting that time in DC history. When former Justice League International writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis joined Booster Gold, the title became a Beetle-and-Booster team-up set in the past for a while (and even THAT was after Johns and Dan Jurgens had used Beetle in key stories during their runs).

Then came the New 52. Ted Kord has never been Blue Beetle and seems to be significantly younger than Booster in his role as Kord Industries executive. The two haven’t yet crossed paths.

I’m not sure what brought this bromance to an end, and maybe somebody more closely associated with Avengers lore can tell me (sorry, Marvel fans, my teams are Fantastic Four and X-Factor, and beyond that I’m a solo-hero type in your universe).

What I do know is that it’s been years since I’ve seen these two on-panel together for more than a page or two, but it wasn’t that long ago that they seemed like they were an official team.

Okay, so “years” might be a little much. The shot above is from a 2012 issue of A Plus X. But at that point, they’d been apart for long enough that Newsrama interviewed Christos Gage about the issue and made the reunion their headline.

“Neither man is the same fun-loving party animal they were back in the day, and each has major issues with what the other has done,” Gage said at the time. “So I thought it would be fun to see what it’s like when they get together now. Sort of like when old college friends meet up years later when their lives have gone in very different directions.”

And, like old college friends who go different ways, they haven’t really hung out again since.

Two guys who started out hating each other and evolved into one of the most interesting relationships in comics, Hal and Oliver were friends for years — so close, in fact, that when an editorial edict came down that Hal was going to turn bad and lose his Green Lantern ring, the last story outgoing writer Gerard Jones decided to tell was one last go-’round with Green Arrow.

And then when Ollie died and needed to come back, DC utilized the relationship again, since Hal at the time had the massive, cosmic power of The Spectre.

During the heavily mythology-driven Geoff Johns run on Green Lantern, during which time the Justice League was often made up of replacement heroes, there wasn’t a lot of GL/GA action (although after a rough start, its first really enjoyable story, for my money, was a Hal/Ollie team-up around issue 8 or 10). Since the launch of the New 52, we’ve seen basically no hint of the pair having a history (and the relationship that Hal and Ollie crafted, starting adversarial and building to something close, seems to be going to Ollie and Animal Man).

…Or really, any random young girl.

When Wolverine was at the height of his popularity, he had a disconcerting habit of hanging out with young girls.

That’s probably why we don’t see him spending a ton of time with Kitty Pryde, Jubilee or whoever these days…because it became a bit of a running joke.

This one’s a few things. First of all, the pair seem to be trading off who has an ongoing series when. Cage had a book that ran in the ’90s, while Iron Fist has had a couple since Cage ended.

There’s also the fact that, like many real-life friendships, it’s not so much over as it is far less visible — in no small part because one of those involved got married. These days, you can’t have Cage without Jessica Jones, and the idea that you’d have to have all three of them would make Iron Fist look like a perpetual third wheel and, again, give rise to punchlines Marvel doesn’t want.