Parents and Children in Comics

I was thinking while rereading JSA 81 (an issue I highly enjoyed, as I'm fond of Stargirl and there was also the Shade! Yay! And S.T.R.I.P.E!) that Pat Dugan is a great father figure.

Really, not many dads (or stepdads) would go and create a giant robot to help protect his daughter while she goes out to superhero. And he loves her like she were his biological daughter too. From bitching about her midriff (which I *loved* BTW, I'm glad to see not all adults have lost their senses) and that bit later where with the robot destroyed, he still has to help "[his] daughter." Not Step-Daughter, Daughter.

See, that's one area where DC won me where Marvel and other comics never could. In Marvel for example, the characters are primarily orphans or their parents are rarely addressed at all. Kitty Pride's parents are alive, I think, but when do we see them? Christopher Summers shows up occasionally but the Summers family tree is a weird anomaly that is both awesome and fucked-up at the same time. Cable's dad (Cyclops, as you all well know) is around but young enough to be his son, (gotta love time travel). Possibly because of the original premise of Xavier's manor as a boarding school, there are very few satisfying parent-child relationships in X-Men. (And don't get me started on Xavier's and Scott's relationship, he picked up an abused child who was forced to help rob banks by his evil foster father and had a power that pretty much cut him off from any normal interaction and turned him into his ideal soldier. You want to know why Scott's such a mess of brooding, stick-up-ass issues...Look at Xavier.)

Fantastic Four isn't any better really. I vaguely remember stories in which Sue and Johnny's dad was nuts and Reed's was lost in some dimension thing, but in general, the main four have no relationships to their own parents. Franklin and Valeria are better off of course, (I loved the issue where Franklin accidently makes the computer thing that's obsessed with his dad because he's feeling lonely, Reed has to make a computer program that is himself: "Sue, can I carry a tune?" "Not really, dear.", and at the end, they end up playing magic), but I still wish it seemed like the four's own parents were more of a presence. (Ultimate F4 is better about this).

Spiderman's got some satisfying stuff with Aunt May and Uncle Ben, though, but it's only one.

Manga rarely has parents be a presence. They're usually the ones causing the trouble somehow, and the kids are stuck in the middle of it. Or the kids are orphans. Again, there are exceptions, but it seems to be a trend.

But DC Comics...Parental Figures are very, very important to DC Comics. Whether you're looking at the Kents (it's very obvious that the amazing, down-to-earth and *human* guy that Clark Kent became is due to his adopted parents), the Waynes (or Graysons, who might be dead, but remain a tangible spectre onto their children's lives), Hippolyta (who might have done some questionable things, but it was all to protect the daughter she loved)...

There are great parents, like Pat Dugan, like Helena Sandsmark (how can you not like a woman who dated *Jason Blood*, went to hell and back to save him, got in a catfight with Bonnie King-Jones and still seeks to give her hero daughter something resembling a normal life), like the Kents.

There are flawed parents, like Jack Drake (who was fairly monstrously neglectful before his wife died and he was comatose, and later on became rather over-protective and pushy to compensate), like Maura Rayner (whose inability to let her son grow up combined with his own stubborn bullheadedness led to a long estrangement, only mended after her son became the Green Lantern). Linda Danvers's parents who never quite understood their daughter and took some time to adjust to her change in status.

There are parents like the first Ray and Black Canary and Starman, whose children inherited their legacies.

There are also absentee parents like Aaron Rayner, Oliver Queen, Alan Scott, Courtney's dad. But the difference is that their absence is very clearly felt and expressed by the children left behind. Connor came to find Ollie, Jade and Obsidian have many different issues with their dad, Kyle searched for Aaron/Gabe Vasquez for years...

There are even horrible, abusive parents/parental figures, though thankfully not that many considering.

And there are a lot more heroes with children (though weirdly, not as many heroines. And while many couplings were hero-villainess, I can't think of any villain-heroine pairing that resulted in children...though that might be for the best): Jack Knight, Roy Harper, Linda Danvers to name a few.

The thing is, as tedious as say Conner Kent/Kon-El's parent issues tend to be sometimes, I'm glad he has them. I'm glad parents are so important in the DCU. I'm glad that in general the relationships between parents and children are pretty good in the DCU. I think that it's great that they also show that blood really doesn't matter sometimes. Pat Dugan is as much Courtney's father as the guy who sired her. The Kents have had a lot more to do with the man Clark Kent became than Jor-El of Krypton (who is admittedly very cool).

I guess for me it's a matter of sentimentality. I love my parents so much. They've had everything to do with how I grew up. They've made mistakes, but they're my parents. They've always been a presence in my life, just as their parents were in theirs. And I think it's that way for most people, whether their parents are great, monstrous, in between, blood related, not blood related, not there at all. I think that is ultimately very important to people and the acknowledgement of that connection is a big part of what drew me to the DCU.