Valentine's Day: Five Unbelievably Creepy and Inappropriate Comic Book Romances

Love can be strange.Especially in the world of comics, populated by time-travelers and aliens and [...]

By Russ Burlingame

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Love can be strange. Especially in the world of comics, populated by time-travelers and aliens and sentient robots and animals, love can be very strange indeed--and while most people don't notice when John Stewart marries an alien who just looks like a gorgeous woman with a bad sunburn, it's a bit easier to be put off when Supergirl has an unreasonably close relationship with her horse. So, yeah. Sometimes, even in the context of comics, where everything is a little weird, there are things weirder and creepier than others. Here's some of our favorite relationships-that-should-not-be just in time for Valentine's Day dinners!

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Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor If your girlfriend passed away tragically, would you hurry out to find one that looked just like her, thus diminishing the significance of both women and making yourself seem like a creepy fetishist? Well, that's just what X-Men leader Cyclops did--years before he would travel forward in time from the past and develop a crush on a teenage mutant who knew him as a middle-aged man first. Anyway, back on the other thing: He married Madelyne Pryor, which made things really awkward when Jean Grey, the woman who shared Maddy's genetic code and Cyke's previous lady-love, made it back to the realm of the living. Ol' Scott Summers knew what he wanted, though, and married Jean next. Oy.

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Deathstroke and Terra Oh, just so much wrong. Years before he appeared on Arrow, Slade Wilson was largely a Teen Titans villain. In a Machiavellian plot to destroy the team from within, he used Terra--a teenage girl with whom he had an uncomfortably physical relationship--to gain entry and manipulate the members. This entry's short. Mostly because "homicidal maniac manipulates teenage girl into hurting her friends by rewarding her with sex" is a pretty self-explanatory reason it's bad.

aunt-may-sexAunt May and Doctor Octopus

This one took a level in creepy recently, when the brain-swap between Peter Parker and Otto Octavius left Spider-Man with memories of his ancient aunt's wedding night with his archenemy lodged in his brain (above), but even before that, there was something not really right about it. While Otto was obviously older than Peter, the two were more or less peers; in the scientific field as well as the costumed vigilante stuff, Otto and Peter can butt heads and compete to see who's better, and in general if he were old enough to appropriately date Aunt May (who has been at death's door since the '60s, it seems weird that he can present much of a challenge to Peter in a fight. So let's just say it: Otto and Pete's aunt were dating, he was probably way too young for it not to be weird. Compound that with his simmering hatred of her adoptive son and you've got a really odd, creepy relationship even before the terrible brainwashing thing made it worse.

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Hal Jordan and Arisia Arisia was a kid when Hal Jordan met her, and she used her Green Lantern ring to mature her body enough to catch his eye. No part of that sentence is inaccurate or oversimplified. Now, people will tell you that she's actually chronologically quote old because the alien race she's a part of age differently. That doesn't change the fact that before she altered her physiology to be more appealing to the guy she had a crush on, she not only looked but also acted like a human pre-teen or teenager just starting puberty. There's a great run-down of the relationship at Comics Should Be Good, which pretty much explains that even though Hal was aware of these conflicts, he eventually went ahead with the relationship anyway.

the-ultimates-8-scarlet-witch-quicksilverUltimate Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch

In the main line continuity, for years there was debate among fans and even creators as to whether there was an undercurrent of incest running through the jealousy and overprotectiveness with which Quicksilver treated his sister the Scarlet Witch. In the Ultimate Universe, Marvel decided to turn that up to eleven and actually make the incestuous relationship a part of their official story, rather than just a Batman & Robin-style relationship that people nervously joke about. Of course, while this is one of those things that Marvel Comics would probably rather forget, it's worth noting that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is heavily patterned after Ultimate Comics, so it's something likely to come up in conversation over the next couple of years. Conversations like: I wonder if that'll make it into Avengers: Age of Ultron? Yeah, probably not.

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