When a Superhero Gets Married and Has a Child (Part 1)

 I've been meaning to compile this list for a while now, so here goes: generally, giving a superhero a child is a death knell, the ending of a story rather than a continuation of one. Why? Well, nobody really wants to read subplots about changing diapers or waking up at four in the morning due to crying; those things are mundane events that generally people read comics to get away from.

And yet some creators can't help themselves sometimes in giving characters kids. Why? Because, after two characters get married, it's the next logical step for them. Heteronormativity says that couples need to have 2.5 children and a picket fence with a dog and a cat, but writers are generally hesitant to give a main character those things and let them stick, because the story has to keep going. There is no "The End" for these characters. So let's look at some examples and what happened after the love and marriage and a baby carriage appears.

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Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor (Uncanny X-Men). This is the big example a lot of X-Men fans know about. After the death of Jean Grey, writer Chris Claremont made plans to have Scott Summers meet someone nearly identical to his lost love, a woman named Madelyne Pryor, get married to her, and they would both retire to Alaska and have a child, relegated in the future to cameos. This was possible because Claremont had already introduced a large number of other characters and built up the characters he had (like Storm), so that Scott wasn't really necessary for the continuation of the book. So Scott and Madelyne are married in Uncanny X-Men #175, their son is born in Uncanny X-Men #200, and then Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter said, "Hey, wait, we actually want to use Cyclops in this new book X-Factor and also bring Jean Grey back from the dead." Oops.

The result: Madelyne Pryor is shot, her baby kidnapped. Eventually, she joins the X-Men, but ends up selling her soul and becoming the Goblin Queen, instigating the Inferno, and almost sacrificing her son before dying. Her son is then raised by Scott and Jean, except Apocalypse infects him with the Techno-Organic Virus, necessitating sending him to the far future, where it turns out that he actually came back from the future as the gun-wielding, be-pouched Cable.

Alive or dead? He's still alive and older than his father.

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Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson (Amazing Spider-Man). The other big example of writers deciding to marry off their big character and give him a baby and then deciding "Wait, no, we can't do that." Peter and MJ's long romance finally resulted in them getting married in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 and then, during the Clone Saga, MJ discovers that she's pregnant. The original plan was that Peter and MJ would have the baby and retire, while Ben Reilly (who thought he was the original Peter Parker and not a clone at the time) would take over as Spider-Man. Unfortunately, the writers and editors quickly realized that if they did this, the fans would revolt.

The result: Mary Jane loses the baby in Amazing Spider-Man #418, although, in this case, "loses" actually means "her death was faked and the baby kidnapped by Alison Mongrain and taken to Norman Osborn." What happened to the baby after that? Uh, it died? Maybe? Who knows. Peter and MJ's marriage itself was eventually erased by Mephisto during "One More Day" and now Peter is free to be a swinging single bachelor in his 30s for the rest of time. Oh and in case you didn't like that, Tom DeFalco created May "Mayday" Parker, a teenager version of that baby and she got her own spin-off AU book called Spider-Girl. Did you know that Spider-Girl was the longest running female-led book at Marvel? Her book lasted a hundred issues before being relaunched and going on for thirty more.

Alive or dead? Oh who knows. But on Earth-982, she's alive and well.

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Arthur Curry and Mera (Aquaman). Ever since Mera was first introduced in the pages of Aquaman #11, she's been a mainstay in Arthur Curry's life and pages have been taken up by their romance. Seven issues after her introduction, in fact, she was married to him in Aquaman #18. And then five issues after that, in Aquaman #23, their son, Arthur Curry Jr or Aquababy, was born. Yes, really. Introduced in 1963, it took just two years for them to get married and have a kid. In fact, Aquaman is the first Silver Age superhero to have a child during publication (Franklin Richards wouldn't come around until 1968).

The result: By the 1970s, the Silver Age was starting to shift and the Amazing Aquatic Adventures of Aquababy didn't really have the same ring to it -- so in the pages of Adventure Comics #452, written by David Michelinie, Aquaman's nemesis Black Manta kidnaps Aquababy and puts him in a globe filling with air, which will suffocate the water-breathing baby if he's not released. Aquaman valiantly fights Manta and breaks the globe, but it's too late: his son is dead. This shocking event causes his marriage to Mera to fracture as well and they break up for a long period of time. Eventually, after two (or possibly three) reboots, Arthur and Mera get together again and have a baby in Aquaman (vol 8) #58 and get married in Aquaman #65, the finale to Kelly Sue DeConnick's run. Their baby is Andrina "Andy" Curry and we've already seen a future version of her in DC Future State, so odds are good that she will stay alive.

Alive or dead: Dead. 100%.

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Donna Troy and Terry Long (New Teen Titans). Donna Troy, the original Wonder Girl, has such a convoluted backstory, it's too long to get into, but she was a favorite character of George Perez and Marv Wolfman, who revamped the Teen Titans and made them super popular in the 1980s with The New Teen Titans. In New Teen Titans #8, Donna Troy meets college professor Terry Long and they quickly fall in love and Tales of the Teen Titans #50. Later, during the "Titans Hunt" storyline, she discovers she's pregnant and a version of the Titans from the future called the Team Titans tries to prevent her son from being born, saying that he will eventually grow up to become one of the Lords of Chaos. Donna prevents this from happening by getting herself depowered and then having a baby named Robert.

The result: Donna and Terry grow estranged, get divorced, and then, in the pages of Wonder Woman #121, Terry, baby Robert, and Jennifer, Terry's daughter from a previous marriage, all die in a car accident. Yes, all three of them. What the fuck, John Byrne? Ron Marz tries to make some lemonade out of the news by showing Donna receiving the call in the pages of Green Lantern #89 in a heartbreaking sequence, but the damage is done. 

Alive or dead? Well, he used to be dead (his corpse was even turned into a Black Lantern during the Blackest Night event), but a recent storyline in The Flash #799 revealed that he had been kidnapped by Granny Goodness right before his death. So he's alive! But Terry and Jennifer are still dead, sorry.

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Johnny Blaze and Roxanne Simpson (Ghost Rider). Since his first appearance in Marvel Spotlight #5, Johnny Blaze has been a man cursed. He made a deal with the Devil to save the life of his surrogate father, Crash Simpson, from terminal cancer. Crash's cancer was cured, but he then died doing a stunt. (Mephisto loves his little loopholes.) Johnny was also in love with Crash's daughter, Roxanne. They had a slow burn romance over the years where Roxanne would leave, get amnesia about Johnny, remember him again, return, and so on. Eventually, a new Ghost Rider would appear named Danny Ketch and the mystery of what happened to Johnny Blaze would be reveal: he settled down and married Roxanne and they had two children, Craig and Emma. Essentially, by having the new Ghost Rider be someone else (someone younger and hipper, too), John Blaze (as he now called himself) wasn't the main character anymore and, much like Cyclops before him, he could retired with Roxanne. Too bad that nobody actually retires in comics, right?

The result: Craig and Emma first appear in Ghost Rider (vol 3) #22 and quickly become recurring characters in the new Ghost Rider spin-off Blaze. However, now that Blaze is a main character once again, oops, no need for that wife and kids: all three are "killed" by a new villain named Hellgate. The children are eventually revealed to still be alive and Roxanne is resurrected by Blackheart as the brainwashed "Black Rose," but they never go back to Johnny and, instead, die again, as Johnny meets them in Heaven in Ghost Riders: Heaven's on Fire #6 by Jason Aaron. Yes, somehow, they died off-screen.

Alive or dead? Well, they used to be dead, but both children have recently appeared in the mini-series Danny Ketch: Ghost Rider by Howard Mackie. So perhaps they're alive again?

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Wanda Maximoff and the Vision (Avengers). This one is pretty well known by now, so let's skip to the relevant details: Wanda Maximoff, also known as the Scarlet Witch, and the Vision, also known as the Vision, got married in Giant-Size Avengers #4 and, using a bunch of chaos magic, she somehow got pregnant and gave birth to twin boys in Vision and the Scarlet Witch #12. And then John Byrne started writing West Coast Avengers and oh boy did things go wrong.

The result: The Vision is disassembled and, when he's reassembled as "White Vision," he is no longer in love with Wanda. Their kids turn out to be slivers of Mephisto's soul that were being hunted by Master Pandemonium and, well, look, just google "Master Pandemonium baby hands" and you'll see. Both Billy and Tommy were erased from existence in the pages of Avengers West Coast #52, Wanda went crazy for a bit before having her memory erased, but then she remembered, but then she didn't. Then she went cah-RAzy and blew up Avengers Manor in Avengers Disassembled and killed a bunch of people and then, in House of M, depowered 99% of all mutants. Eventually, she found her way back to sanity and finally, finally redeemed herself in 2021's X-Men: The Trial of Magneto.

Alive or dead? Well, the twins weren't technically alive to begin with, but it's complicated. You see, they were erased from existence...but then they were "retro-reincarnated" in the past. Billy became Billy Kaplan and Tommy became Tommy Shepherd. Their souls were the souls of Wanda's boys and she refers to them as her sons, which they...kind of are? Technically, Billy and Tommy Maximoff never existed, except when they did, but they are dead, except they have been reincarnated and oh god my head.