Superman & Wonder Woman (and Peter Parker & Gwen Stacy)

So, hopefully by now you've heard all about how Justice League #12 featured the big reveal of the romance between Superman and Wonder Woman.

If not, well, that just happened.

Superman went steady with Lois Lane for seven decades.  They made a TV show about it.  When DC Comics launched the New 52 last fall, one of the first things done in the pages of the Superman relaunch was the end of that relationship.  It wasn't even important to Action Comics, arguably the more significant of the two comics.

For many years, Lois was incredibly important to Clark Kent, Superman's alter ego.  Yes, in Lois & Clark, it was all about human lives.  In Smallville, Lois popped up several season in and became a staple.  But there was a shift, even then.  This was a Clark who constantly battled with his powers, who was more defined by a gradual transformation into Superman than being human.

For a long time now, a lot of people who are not fans of Superman claimed it was too difficult to care about him because he was too powerful, too remote.  It was exactly his relationship with Lois that was supposed to humanize him.  Perhaps someone realized that this no longer worked.

Wonder Woman is a character whose significance begins and basically ends as the most significant female character in comics.  It's always been difficult to define her beyond that.  Batman is the consummate human.  Superman is the consummate immigrant.  Wonder Woman is the consummate...ambassador?  Some writers have even tried to make that compelling, especially in the knotty times following the straining of international alliances following the launch of the Iraq War.

Since its launch last summer, Justice League has made one of its main elements Wonder Woman's relationship with Steve Trevor.  As the team became more widely recognized, Trevor found himself increasingly marginalized.  What could an ordinary guy do to matter in a life like Wonder Woman's?

In a lot of ways, that's the story that couldn't be told with Lois Lane.  In the '90s, she finally married Clark.  (They married in the TV show, too.  No one cared about it after that.)  In some of the franchises, the New 52 retained old continuity, but mostly with Batman and Green Lantern.  Action Comics began with something of an origin story, set five years in the past.  Superman was set in the new present.  The main split from old continuity was established with a new costume.

And the fact that Lois Lane was no longer the stalwart girlfriend, much less wife, of Superman.

The possibility of romance between Superman and Wonder Woman was most famously breached previously in the pages of Kingdom Come, set in an alternate future where the Joker murdered Lois and unleashed a chaotic series of events that brought allies together and forced a climactic war between heroes.  Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman continued to stand tall by the end of it, having realized anew their true significance in the world.  Notably, this included a romance, and child, between Superman and Wonder Woman (Batman was the godfather).  Kingdom Come was about seeing the mythic vision of DC characters.  Even simply an alliance between Superman and Wonder Woman was enough to establish in the story.  As perennial allies in the Justice League, they had certainly worked together before.  But it was only when they realized that that they needed each other's support that they realized they needed each other.

That's something of what underlines the development in Justice League #12, something that will be explored still more in the coming months.

The Amazing Spider-Man was released in theaters this summer, and instead of focusing on Peter Parker's relationship with Mary Jane Watson, as with the three Sam Raimi films before it, the new movie features Gwen Stacy, whom some fans still consider Peter's true love.

In recent years, Marvel did the same thing DC just did between Lois and Clark, ending Peter's long-term relationship (and marriage) to MJ.  Gwen was featured in Raimi's third film as a rival, but in the comics, it was the exact opposite.  She was Peter's first love.  If you pay attention to the end of Amazing Spider-Man, you'll have a strong indication of her ultimate fate.  In the comics, she is eventually a victim, very infamously, of Spider-Man's war with the Green Goblin.

If you only know Spider-Man from his movies, you may assume he's another character who can only be defined by his relationships, and perhaps sometimes that's exactly the case.  Yet he's also something of a consummate loner, something Amazing Spider-Man does depict well.  He's not a loser like in Raimi's version, but someone who just doesn't fit in, who's basically already Spider-Man before he's ever bitten by a spider, but not yet good enough to get away with it.  But it's not the powers that gives Peter the will to succeed, but finally learning the truth about his father, and gaining confidence, and a true sense of responsibility.

This is a Spider-Man who significantly decides to keep being Spider-Man because he has to take the villain down, not because he just has to keep being Spider-Man.  His relationship with Gwen is about finding a kindred spirit, not unrequited love.

Superman spent years loving Lois Lane.  Spider-Man spent years loving Mary Jane.  But that doesn't mean that these were the only ways they could ever find love.