Imagine for a moment that after an ill-conceived wish, someone you were dating or married to forgot that the two of you had ever been together… and then went on to sleep with someone else. This is the basic concept behind the latest storyline in the superhero parody comic Evil Inc., with Captain Heroic having forgotten his marriage to Miss Match, and it has left me feeling decidedly cold. Part of this lies with the fact that I have strong opinions concerning the sanctity of marriage… and while Heroic may not “remember” his marriage, he has cheated on his wife. And yet the fact he’s sleeping with another woman (and a superheroine at that) doesn’t faze Miss Match in the least.
Okay, sure. Miss Match is a villain, though as far as villains go she’s not particularly villainous. What’s more, we’ve already seen in the past that their relationship isn’t built on a firm foundation; when Heroic unknowingly was flirting with her alternative-reality counterpart, she was about ready to leave him. And yet now, he’s out-and-out cheating on her and that doesn’t matter in the least. There’s no jealousy. There’s no anger. There’s a brief moment of wondering if letting this continue would let him be “happy” before the typical joke of it being her duty as his wife to destroy his happiness. But that’s all.
I will admit that Miss Match’s ill-conceived wish was responsible for this mess to begin with. But ultimately, she made the wish when backed into the corner by another villain (who she’d thought of as a friend) who was threatening to reveal her marriage to Heroic unless she handed over a dangerous artifact to her. So there’s no blame. And likewise, there’s no point to this. Instead, we have a massive derailing of both Match and Heroic’s characters and for no real reason. Unfortunately, the artifact has vanished, so Brad J. Guigar can’t even just “wish away” this storyline, and pretend it never happened.