Hank McCoy (Before the Fur)

Valentine’s Day.

So who’s the hottest up and coming couple in our adolescent-superhero-soap-opera universes? If you said Batman and Wonder Woman, you spoke correctly, sir or madam.

Yeah, this has been brewing for a long time; at least, as long as Joe Kelly’s excellent run on JLA earlier this decade. As Diana nurses a wounded a feverish Batman back to health, Bruce babbles a few incoherent and un-Batman-like thoughts about just what a big fan of the Amazon princess he really is. I’m not exactly abreast of all the details- all I know is that rumors are that you can expect to see this relationship unfold, a bit, in the sometimes shared pages of their individual series (and JLA, most likely) over the course of the next year.
Now do I like this?

Well, I suppose, permanently (or far more likely temporarily) tying Batman and Wonder Woman’s mythology together isn’t the easiest trick I’ve ever seen. But hey, it could be done. Who’s to say that Amazon warriors can’t fight crime on the streets of Gotham too, right? Or that billionaire Bruce Wayne can’t hitch a ride to Themiscrya and help said Amazons contain such and such Greek myth from unleashing evil onto the world? And, okay- this couple’s got a few cool things going for them.

I mean is any man really going to BE man enough for Wonder Woman other than Batman? And, vice versa (just, you know, ‘woman’ enough, etc.)? Of course, I suppose the typical assumption during the 80’s was that Superman and Wonder Woman were bound to shack up together at some point. This sort of coupling seems like something off an affront to gender stereotype educators everywhere; however the idea of Super“MAN" and Wonder "WOMAN" together just seems a little unwholesome and oppressive, somehow, at the end of the day. Of course, the irony of what I just wrote there is that Superman and Wonder Woman’s friendship is, I think, one of the most touching- or, at least, genuine- relationships in the entire DC universe.

I mean, do you ever have that? Where you meet someone, and it’s sort of obvious that you WOULD be a good couple but it just isn’t there? Like, sure, maybe if you ended up together you wouldn’t exactly be complaining. But, even though people tell you you're both nuts for not getting together, something about it just doesn’t do it, for either of you. And you kind of both realize this. That’s kind of the ‘tone’ for the Superman-Wonder-Woman-not-quite-romance these days, I think.

Now I don’t mean to get all Freudian and freak people out I do LIKE the idea of exploring this relationship. But you know before when I said that Batman was ‘man’ enough for Wonder Woman? The thing is you ever get to that place where you read enough Batman comics that you start to realize, like, for a badass vigilante martial artist genius, Batman is kind of permanently arrested, developmentally, as a child? I mean, I’m not saying he IS a child, exactly. But it’s sort of like rather than learn to tolerate just how cold and harsh the world can be, Batman decided he was going to do everything in his power to make it a good place to live.

I mean, he does tolerate a lot more than most people can handle. But it’s all geared towards one goal: stopping crime. So Batman, sort of, tolerates awful, awful things, but only because he really CAN’T tolerate that the world IS filled with those things. He has to stop those things. Whatever the cost. And I mean who can blame him, right? The guy is traumatized. The people who were supposed to care and nurture him were killed right in front of him. Who wouldn’t be stuck, developmentally, after an experience like that? So Batman is a guy with kind of a childish goal, maybe. He just happens to have the wealth, intellect, and raw physical power to actually PURSUE IT.

Okay. So. Batman, maybe, is prone to extremeness. And we aren’t saying it’s wrong or bad; it’s just what makes Batman tick. In light of this, however, tell me it doesn’t make you think twice that Bruce Wayne is drawn towards a character that can only be described as the penultimate figure of femininity and womanhood in the DC universe? I mean do you see what I’m saying, here? Isn’t there something just a little bit stunted going on, when the guy who lost his mother as a child starts hooking up with this mystically created embodiment of all that is nurturing, pure, and strong about womanly-ness?

I’m not saying it’s WRONG. I mean hey, aren’t we all drawn to what we need, really? I guess this exposition ended up in a little bit more of an uncomfortable place than I had originally intended. I still think it’s cool to see them together, as a couple. Happy Valentine’s Day?