Heterosexual Life Partners/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Batman and Robin. Wait, never mind.
  • Cable and Deadpool in, well, Cable and Deadpool (although many fans perceive this as going straight into Ho Yay). They are extremely close despite Deadpool's personality being obnoxious even at the best of times, and Deadpool was the first person Cable pictured/made psychic contact with while trying to decide whether to blow himself up. They were genetically commingled, so that "one phone call" would have happened even without intent....And Cable needed to make that contact to manipulate Deadpool into Doing The Right Thing.
    • Deadpool is an omnisexual due to his mental instability, but there is not enough evidence to prove anything more than this trope.
      • Deadpool and Weasel could also fall under this trope.
    • Both C and D are well aware of their Life Partner status, especially evidenced when they both regularly called the time during a small falling out between them ("Small falling out" in this case being Deadpool's new membership in a mercenary group hired to destabilize Cable's fictional country Providence. Said membership was revealed when 'Pool shot Cable in the back of the head.) a "divorce".
  • Luke Cage and Danny Rand, also of Marvel Comics, with Luke going so far as to name his daughter after Danny.
    • Their close friends Misty Knight and Colleen Wing also are considered Heterosexual Life Partners, with Luke Cage going so far as to recommend the two get "gay married."
    • When Danny is asking Luke to join his new non-profit, he says 'I love you with every fiber of my being'.
  • Justice League International
    • Booster Gold and the Blue Beetle (hereafter "Boostle") of JLI fame are probably the most prominent Heterosexual Life Partners in The DCU. One storyline in Booster's comic involves Booster time-travelling to keep Beetle from being killed; when he is told this has the potential to destabilize the entire multiverse, he decides Beetle is worth the risk.
    • When encountering former (dead) Flash Barry Allen while cruising through the time stream, this exchange occurs:

Beetle You 'rear-ended' Barry Allen?
Booster Oh grow up!

    • There's also the scene where, after one of their "break-ups", Booster trails Ted in a public place and begs Ted to take him back.

Beetle Get a grip, Booster. You're acting like some jilted lover.
Booster Well, that's what it FEELS like!

    • Beatriz "Fire" DaCosta and Tora "Ice" Olafsdotter. It was even in-canon -mistaken- for gay when Tora was temporarily dead and her replacement, who (for some reason) looked a lot like her, misunderstand Bea's mourning. Admittedly, Bea was really off the deep end but still. The way it was written it did seem to indicate that Bea's close friendship towards Tora had sapphic undertones and that the resultant subconscious sexual jealousy was a big reason for Bea's sometimes extreme antipathy towards Tora's boyfriend, Guy Gardner. Once Icemaiden made her face up to that, Bea could learn to appreciate Guy's good qualities, and for a time the two found solace in each other's arms.
  • Absolutely endemic in classic Franco-Belgian comics, whenever they followed the formula: a young, male hero, without any personality beyond some vague benevolence, going on adventures with an older, more emotional, sarcastic and morally flawed lifelong companion. The two would live in the same house; the young hero would never show or be shown any interest for/by the opposite sex, and, while the older one could sometime get involved in a romantic C-plot, the girl rarely reappeared in subsequent books and the romance would never go beyond a kiss on the cheek or the nose. The formula went out of fashion a while ago, and is now either lampshaded to death or exploited to its logical conclusion.
    • Partly due to the Moral Guardians of the time, which explicitely prevented attractive women to appear in comics.
  • Tintin. The eponymous hero started his adventures alone, but was soon joined by Captain Haddock. It's debatable whether the two are heterosexual or Asexual, though they're both definitely Celibate Heroes. This is probably due to Herge being a devout (liberal in later years) Catholic who didn't believe in including any romance in his works.
    • The detective duo Thomson and Thompson (Dupont and Dupond in the original French) probably count; though they look like twins, we're never given any indication that they're actually related.
  • Blake and Mortimer: together they fight pseudo-scientific crime...then go home to their house in London.
    • Not really: they don't live together, although Blake does sleep over at Mortimer's place from time to time.
  • In the American Civil War-set adventure comic The Bluecoats, patriotic and often naive Chesterfield tends to consider Corporal Blutch to be an defeatist coward while cynical and pragmatic Blutch considers Sergeant Chesterfield to be an obnoxious blowhard, but are virtually inseperable from the other.
  • Spirou and Fantasio, in which the two eponymous intrepid reporters live together in some incarnations of the series. Recently, one of the (many) writers went out of his way to mention that Fantasio was obviously gay and pining for Spirou.
    • This is a rare case of Depending on the Writer in Franco-Belgian comics, as Fantasio has been shown to be very interested in girls in the earliest books, with usually horrible luck (except when using a Mind Control Device to get kisses). Latest books have downplayed this, though. Conversely, Spirou, usually close to Asexual, has occasionally shown interest to girls.
  • Asterix came a few decades after the previous examples and subverts the character types, but not the dynamics.
  • If you get away from the older/younger dynamic, "Tif & Tondu", "Johan & Peewit", "Quick Flupke"...
  • Even, if you stretch it a little, Lucky Luke (with Jolly Jumper).
  • Pol Pitron and Vic Video from Roger Leloup's Yoko Tsuno, who form a Power Trio with Action Girl Yoko. After some Time Travel, Pol gets together with Innocent Flower Girl Mieke, whereas Vic has quite the Will They or Won't They? with Yoko.
  • Cutter and Skywise from Elf Quest (at least the earlier volumes). Although their relationship isn't entirely platonic.
  • Sandman: The Dead Boy Detectives. It helps that they're, y'know, dead, and also really, really young.
  • Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, especially as written by Mark Waid.
    • And Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan - one Waid story had Barry jealous of the time Hal spent with Ollie.
    • Hard Traveling Heroes was full of this. And it was Lampshaded by Kevin Smith in his early run by Roy Harper (Red Arrow/Arsenal), saying that it was "typical Ollie, get a kid ward, train them, get close to Dinah then leave them both to go hang out with Hal". This is AFTER Queen had come back from the dead, and was brought to the afterlife to talk with Hal Jordan/Spectre to see what was up.
  • Jay Garrick and Alan Scott, as well as their successors, Barry Allen and Hal Jordan and (to a lesser extent) Wally West and Kyle Rayner. Maybe it's just a Flash and Green Lantern thing.
  • Mortadelo Y Filemon. Definitely.
    • It even gets lampshaded a couple of times.
  • Spider-Man and the Human Torch definitely.
    • This is more of a recent development; Torch and Spidey used to be friendly rivals and Daredevil was the closest thing to Spidey's HLP.
  • Until recently, X-Men villains Black Tom Cassidy and the Juggernaut.
    • Also until recently, Wolverine and Nightcrawler.
    • Also Nightcrawler and Colossus. Sometimes two would fight over the other like jealous girlfriends
    • Seriously, no mention of Magneto and Professor X yet? A tragic case of a broken life partnership, and Depending on the Writer Magneto especially regrets that their ideologies have driven them apart.
  • Beast Boy and Cyborg.
  • Depending on the writer, Dick Grayson (Robin I/Nightwing/Batman II) had this with either Wally West (Kid Flash/Flash III) or Roy Harper (Speedy/Red Arrow/Arsenal).
  • James "Biggles" Bigglesworth and Ginger Hebblethwaite in the Biggles comics. The BBC sitcom The Thin Blue Line makes a case that Ho Yay is in the air, but Inspector Fowler, who is a fan of the books, vehemently denies it.
  • Jill Trent Science Sleuth: At least in the Internet-available (and public domain) examples of this obscure Golden Age feature, Jill and her gal pal Daisy are almost always together. And no sign of boyfriends for either of them....
  • Matt Murdock and his law partner/Cowardly Sidekick Foggy Nelson.
  • Supervillain example, Mentallo and the Fixer. Though they "broke up" when Fixer joined the Thunderbolts, Judging by the MODOK's 11 mini, Mentallo stills misses the Fixer.
  • Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner in Green Lantern Corps. So much so that Kyle's death causes Guy to become a Red Lantern.
  • Captain America (comics) gives us Steve Rogers and James "Bucky" Barnes, and Steve and The Falcon (and the Falcon and Bucky too).
  • The Iron Man book gives us Tony Stark and his best buddy Jim Rhodes (War Machine).
  • Peppermint Patty and Marcie from Peanuts.
    • and earlier, Patty and Violet.
  • Rictor and Shatterstar of X-Force fame were this for a long time, along with that special touch of Ho-Yay, until finally the 'Heterosexual' part was thrown out.
  • Calvin and Hobbes.
  • Batman and Superman, more so in some incarnations than others.
    • One of the major changes from Pre Crisis to Post-Crisis is the removal of this trope from Batman and Superman's relationship. The impact of The Dark Knight Returns, as well as Character Development in the Bronze Age that had turned Batman back to his dark roots, set the stage for relatively little kerfuffle over the retcon, the reasoning being that their "true" personalities (friendly, laid-back reporter versus gruff, brooding vigilante) were too different to get along.
    • And now it's back to Heterosexual Life Partners status, with the launch of the Superman/Batman title. But with the incoming DC Reboot, who knows where the relationship is going?
  • Robin/Red Robin (Tim Drake) and Superboy (Conner Kent)
  • Rudi and Freddy (German comic). Goes so far that they don't get an apartment because the landlady thinks they're really a gay couple, which she can't stand.
  • The eponymous duo of Quantum and Woody. Enforced by the quantum bands they wear; if they fail to knock their bands together every 24 hours, they turn into energy and dissipate.
  • Patrick "Steelgrip" Starkey and Flynn "Flyin'" Ryan.
  • Rocket Raccoon and Groot. As the series went on, Rocket's relationship with Groot went from wanting The Big Guy for back up to this. And it only became more apparent after the Timely Inc. mini-series as they're currently the only active members of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
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