If you’re like many people, Valentine’s Day probably puts you in the mood for a nice, beautiful, doves-flying-and-flowers-blooming wedding. If that’s you, you might want to look elsewhere because you won’t find any sweetly romantic weddings here. Heck, I doubt you’ll find many of them in comics in general.  When you’re living the life of a superhero, you’re lucky if a relationship even gets to the altar, and if it does…well, it’s a sure thing that someone’s going speak now and not forever hold their peace, a super-villain’s going to attack, the groom will fall under evil mind control and marry the bride’s sister, or something else unexpected will go down. In short, superhero weddings tend to be chaotic hot messes!

The heroes of the DC Universe are no different. They’ve had some truly crazy, unforgettable ceremonies over the years, and this is the perfect day to look through the wedding albums…

Elasti-Girl and Mento

The Doom Patrol have always been DC’s most unconventional super team, so it comes as no surprise that the wedding between Elasti-Girl and Mento was anything but normal. In DOOM PATROL #104, Rita Farr’s wedding to her longtime admirer Steve Dayton was not sabotaged by super-villains, but her own teammates Negative Man and Robotman! They had a letter delivered during the ceremony which tricked Rita into thinking Steve was marrying her for a business deal.

Larry and Cliff eventually felt guilty about wrecking their own friend’s wedding and came clean, but Rita called the whole thing off anyway. She had only agreed to marry Steve to teach her teammates not to take her for granted, and the lesson was apparently learned. Now, the last time we nearly got married to send a message to our friends, all of us wound up hugging it out and singing karaoke afterwards, but apparently that’s not how the Doom Patrol rolls.

You see, Rita did love Steve, and he was a bit angry about being left at the altar, so the Brotherhood of Evil took advantage of the heightened emotions to trick the Doom Patrol into fighting Mento. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, Mento proposed to Elasti-Girl again, and they put together a second wedding ceremony in three hours (which may just be the most unlikely thing in this crazed scenario). The shindig was attended by the Justice League, the Teen Titans and even the obscure DC character Super-Hip! Rita remained for the whole ceremony this time, but she skipped the reception to help her teammates stop a bomb scare. Mento was a bit perturbed, but he knew what he was getting into when he married a member of the Doom Patrol, and hey, at least the reception had an open bar, right?

Batman and Talia al Ghul

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done in your sleep? Whatever it is, it’s a fair bet that Batman has you beat. In 1978’s DC SPECIAL SERIES #15, Batman was married, completely unwittingly, during a very poorly timed nap. After being attacked in the Batcave, the Dark Knight awoke, standing up fully, to find himself in the final seconds of a wedding ceremony with Talia al Ghul. Ra’s Al Ghul, Batman’s enemy and now father-in-law, conducted the ceremony, ending it with the classic line, “I now pronounce you Batman and wife.”

Batman had many questions, the most important of which was probably, “Could you have at least wiped the sleep-drool off my face before starting the ceremony, you filthy heathens?!?” However, also pertinent was how he could get married without saying “I do.” Apparently, the wedding was conducted outside the United States, and in Ra’s country, only the consent of the father-in-law is required.

Reading this story, it’s funny how casual everyone at the wedding is about the whole thing, as if waking up married happens all the time when couples tie the knot. Ultimately, the whole thing is shown to be a ploy to distract Batman while Ra’s and his cohorts conduct their plan of the week, which Batman stops anyway, in the process completely obliterating any idea of living out married life with Talia.

This odd wedding was forgotten about for years until the BATMAN: SON OF THE DEMON trade paperback. In it, Batman finally agreed to take Talia as his bride, and she reminded him that they had already been married years earlier. Their brief time together as “husband and wife” produced Damian, so as odd as the marriage was, it did have lasting effects!

Swamp Thing and Abigail Arcane

When Swamp Thing gets married, would having flowers at the ceremony be considered offensive? I’ve always wondered that.

Anyhow, love may come in all shapes and sizes, but even the most open-minded person must admit that the relationship between Abigail Arcane and Swamp Thing is a bit strange. Abby and Swamp Thing had been friends for years, but by SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #34, their relationship faced a crossroads. Swamp Thing had recently come to terms with the fact that he was never actually human, as he originally thought, and Abby’s marriage had recently fallen apart after her husband’s pact with the world of the undead didn’t pan out (always get things in writing when dealing with the undead!).

With her spouse in a coma, and their marriage effectively over, Abby confessed her feelings for Swamp Thing, and he admitted he loved her too. After a brief, not-at-all-awkward discussion on how a union between a human woman and a living plant creature would work, the two decided that love conquers all and embraced the idea. Their wedding ceremony was every bit as unusual as their relationship, with Abby swallowing a hallucinogenic plant that came from Swamp Thing’s body and finding herself on a psychedelic mindtrip that connected her to the Green and merged her soul with Swamp Thing.

It’s uncertain if they did the chicken dance afterwards.

No paperwork was filed, and Abby never finalized her divorce, but from that moment on, she and Swamp Thing considered each other husband and wife. Abby even changed her last name to Holland to match the name that Swamp Thing once thought was his own. (Also, “Abby Thing” just wouldn’t have the same ring to it.) In appropriately bizarre fashion, they even conceived a child with the help of John Constantine acting as a surrogate. Their union may not have been the most traditional one out there, but the couple remained happy and devoted to each other for decades, so who are we to judge?

Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen was one of the zaniest DC titles in the Silver Age. Jimmy married gorillas, turned into giant turtles and dressed up like a woman to infiltrate the mob, so it comes as no surprise that his marriage to Lucy Lane in the book’s 100^th issue would pull out all the crazy stops.

After years of dating, including a previous marriage attempt in JIMMY OLSEN #82, Superman’s pal finally got engaged to Lois Lane’s kid sister. The problem was that Miss Gzptlsnz, an Imp from the Fifth Dimension, had a crush on Jimmy and wasn’t too happy about him being taken off the market. So, naturally, she put a curse on Lucy’s lipstick so that every time she kissed Jimmy, Superman would turn into a Super-Mole.

Hey, this is a classic method of revenge in the Fifth Dimension, okay? Nothing makes someone regret their actions faster than seeing someone else turn into a mole. Especially when you’ve just loaned that person a whole bunch of money or loaned him the keys to your car.

Now, Super-Mole made an unforgettable appearance at Jimmy and Lucy’s wedding reception, prompting Jimmy to decide to postpone the honeymoon until a cure could be found. Of course, you can imagine that Lucy wasn’t happy about this and frankly, who could blame her? Finding a cure could be hard and take a long time, but finding a new lipstick would take, like, five minutes and could be done on the drive home.

Jimmy, always making things more difficult than he needs to.

Even worse, once the lipstick problem was solved, a whole series of Jimmy Olsen’s evil exes randomly showed up trying to cast their own spells, which leads us to two very important questions: One, where did they all come from? And two, WHO KNEW JIMMY HAD SO MUCH GAME?!?

Sadly, feeling that their marriage was attracting too much trouble, the newlyweds decided to call it quits. The presiding judge agreed to grant them an annulment, but only if they agreed to remain friends. Which, I guess is cool. I wouldn’t mind having a friend who was buddies with a giant mole.

Green Arrow and Black Canary

When Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance got engaged, it shocked the entire superhero community! After all, their teammates had a front row seat to Oliver’s philandering ways for years, to say nothing about the nature of their on-again, off-again relationship. But once they realized this wasn’t one of Ollie’s jokes, most of the DC Universe’s heroes showed up to the wedding, eager to see if Ollie and Dinah would see things through in the infamous GREEN ARROW AND BLACK CANARY: WEDDING SPECIAL #1.

Unfortunately, they weren’t the only ones who showed up. An equally impressive group of super-villains led by Deathstroke couldn’t resist the opportunity and attacked the ceremony. With the Justice League, Outsiders, Teen Titans and more in attendance, you can only imagine how that went.

For starters, you’re attacking the wedding of a woman who knows something like five different kinds of martial arts and can melt your eardrums with a hiccup. Needless to say, the angry bride fought her way through the villains while rocking a fishnet wedding dress and managed to retrieve her wedding ring. Around that time, the villains realized this really wasn’t going well for them, and also that they weren’t going to serve dinner until after all of the wedding party had given their speeches, so they got the heck out there. Ollie and Dinah got married, but their honeymoon had some issues of its own when the groom was replaced by an evil shapeshifter.

Ah, love… If it’s a battlefield, then DC weddings are a warzone. Happy Valentine’s Day, DC fans!
 

Joshua Lapin-Bertone writes about TV, movies and comics for DCComics.com and DCUniverse.com, and is a contributor to the Couch Club, our weekly television column. You can find him on Twitter at @TBUJosh.