Death is rarely permanent in comic books. But when it comes to obstacles for Fan Preferred Couples, some fans wish it was.
- Archie Comics is well-known for the decades long Betty and Veronica love triangle. Naturally, this has occurred:
- Betty has overwhelmingly become the preferred girl due to being a sweet Girl Next Door. Betty/Archie fans who demonize Veronica as a Spoiled Brat and a Rich Bitch aren't uncommon. This even extends to some adaptations that exaggerate her negative aspects.
- On the other side, some Veronica/Archie supporters will consider Betty a Dumb Blonde and a yandere. Betty hasn't been that obsessive over Archie in decades.
- Cheryl Blossom has been very controversial from the start due to being the Third-Option Love Interest for Archie. Shippers often hate her for being a Jerkass or call her "too sexy".
- Any female that "gets in the way of" Batman family Ho Yay is almost guaranteed a vilifying in fandom. Catwoman is exempted because of the Grandfather Clause and her already being a villain; no one else is safe. Similarly, Lois Lane is often conveniently ignored as if she didn't exist when there's Batman/Superman Ho Yay to be had.
- The general exception to this rule is Stephanie Brown (aka Spoiler/Robin IV/Batgirl III), formerly Tim Drake's (Robin III) canonical love interest. While most of Tim's love interests gets deliberately ignored by Ho Yay shippers, they generally love Steph and her history with Tim. Except in the cases of Kon/Tim fans who hated her, although it was mostly limited to a Vocal Minority.
- There have been many fights about who Dick Grayson should be with; Tamarean Princess Koriand'r/Kory/Starfire or 'Batgirl/Oracle' Barbara Gordon. Even the writers got into that one: see the Teen Titans example for details on it.
- It's been said that you just don't get between Wonder Woman shippers and Catwoman shippers when they're fighting over Batman. Sorry, but you just don't, if you value life and limb.
- One baffling example of the trope happened not to a love interest, but an infant: When the Catwoman title had Selina give birth to her daughter Helena, the revelation that the child was not sired by Bruce caused some angry fans to begin calling for Helena's death as they felt she was in the way of Batman and Catwoman ever truly being together, as well as feeling that Sam Bradley being the father was an Ass Pull. Although Helena wasn't killed off, she did get conveniently written out as being given up for adoption. Come the New 52 reboot, any existence of Helena Kyle has been retconned out (although a rebooted Helena Wayne as Huntress does exist).
- When it comes to The Flash, Wally West fans that don't accept Linda as his wife have preferred she'd get out of the way for their own favorite love interest. This can include such options as Raven, Magenta, or Donna Troy (who he had an unrequited crush for).
- There are also some people who feel Wally should date another fellow superhero in general, as opposed to Badass Normal Linda Park. One strange pairing is Wally West/Jesse Quick, which was even present in-universe; Jay Garrick says that a lot of Wally's friends hoped the two would get together. The two can't stand each other, but hey, Shipping Goggles.
- Green Arrow is often vilified by Dinah/Babs shippers because of his and Dinah's relationship. They even bashed him when he was dead, but nowhere near as much as they've done since he was resurrected. It's just gotten worse since he and Dinah tied the knot, with Ollie's writers apparently liking to help the shippers with that. On the other hand, the other male in the picture, Dick Grayson, gets almost no abuse, but is rather roped into One True Threesome ships.
- Believe it or not, The Joker gets this a lot from the Ivy/Harley shippers. Justified in that Ivy does treat Harley better... somewhat.
- Conversely, if you ship Harley with anyone else, be prepared to duck. There are some fringe extremist Harley/Joker fangirls will attack you and whatever character you ship her with — violently. This would probably embarrass most Harley/Joker shippers.
- Harley gets a lot of this from people who want to see the Joker with Batman or (among people who mostly watch the movies) Scarecrow. This is goofy because Harley and Joker have broken up in the comics and are now both free to be shipped with anyone.
- And now the Harley x Scarecrow shippers have started in on the Joker, as evidenced in multiple
fan videos for the pair on youtube. Actually, probably all the alternate Harley pairing shippers have started in on him.
- In the Runaways fandom, Alex/Nico shippers hate Victor and Karolina - the former for being Nico's rebound love interest, and the latter because the Ship Tease between Nico and Karolina began so soon after Alex's death.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- The fandom's attitude towards Sally Acorn gets this way from time to time with Sonic/Amy and Sonic/Mina fans, especially during Sally's Chickification period. Whole fan groups were dedicated to drawing/writing her getting murdered and mutilated in various ways.
- Sally Acorn fans are known to bash Amy for her crush on Sonic and her fangirlish behavior, even in universes where Sally doesn't exist such as in the games or in Sonic Boom.
- A rumor late during the comic's run that Ian Flynn planned on revealing Sally as bisexual and having her enter a relationship with Nicole sparked waves of shipper backlash, with some theorizing he was only doing it to get Sally out of the way because he wanted Sonic with Amy, with others hitting back with accusations of biphobia. The comic ended and was rebooted before any of this could come to pass, but the arguments persisted.
- Spider-Man:
- Die for Our Ship canonically happened with the death of Gwen Stacy. Gerry Conway has stated that a big reason for killing her off was that he felt Peter and Mary Jane deserved to be together, and Gwen was a boring Designated Love Interest who had little to no personality. The passing of four decades and counting, as well as other love interests for Peter, has yet to defuse the debate among the fans themselves.
- Ultimate Spider-Man has relatively little of this despite the love quadrangle around Spider-Man, since the fans are fond of both the love quadrangle and its participants. There is, however, a small vocal band of Mary Jane haters who usually ship Peter/Kitty; they were most active during a short period following the Clone saga. The addition of Jessica Drew, Peter's genetically engineered female clone, has led to a lot of opportunities for alternate pairings for girls not currently involved with Peter.
- Superman:
- This is actually canon for Lois Lane in many Elseworlds, where the writers are constantly offing her so that Superman can hook up with Wonder Woman. This has been so jaw-droppingly overused and cliche, and the Supes/Wondy romances have traditionally been so appallingly badly developed, that it has given rise to all sorts of massive
Unfortunate Implications, from the general feeling that Diana spends her life stalking Supes while waiting for Lois to kick the bucket, to the apparent message that superheroes are vastly superior to us Puny Humans, and should not defile themselves by marrying one of our mortal female lumps of flesh. - Happened to Lana Lang in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, a hypothetical ending of Silver Age Superman. Lana was fried by Lightning Lord so that Lois and de-powered Clark could live their life together.
- This is actually canon for Lois Lane in many Elseworlds, where the writers are constantly offing her so that Superman can hook up with Wonder Woman. This has been so jaw-droppingly overused and cliche, and the Supes/Wondy romances have traditionally been so appallingly badly developed, that it has given rise to all sorts of massive
- Teen Titans: The comic version has as much of this trope as the animated version. One case? Beast Boy and Raven. When Geoff Johns made the two an Official Couple, there was mass rage from not only Beast Boy or Raven fans that didn't want them paired up, but also Beast Boy/Terra fans, Beast Boy/Terra II fans, Jericho/Raven fans, Beast Boy/Cyborg fans, Nightwing/Raven fans... fans of any pairing other than the two together. Much hate was directed at Beast Boy from the fans who were more sympathetic to Raven and invoking this trope for him, while fans more sympathetic to Beast Boy began calling Raven an evil slut and scrambled to show their canon proof that she would be an abusive and cruel girlfriend to him, as well as stating that he would surely become weak and turn evil because of her. For some of those on Raven's side, kissing the 'green puke' ruined her forever. Of course, it didn't help that the pairing also lacked stability and much on-panel development through the volume 3 run and Winick's "Titans", with Johns first breaking the two up so he could put Beast Boy on the Doom Patrol (feeling that the Titans needed less adults), and then later writers going back and forth on whether the two would get together or not. They finally settled on continuing their relationship at the end of volume 3, but then the reboot hit.
- However, the Beast Boy/Raven fans were not entirely innocent themselves. Some of them had bashed and wished death on any other woman that other fans dare suggest get paired with him, like the later two Terras or Flamebird. They got one wish when Terra II was killed off. Terra III (Atlee) was then erased by the New 52 reboot, and Bette Kane now has no connections to Gar in the new continuity while the first Terra has been rebooted as a hero. The New 52 reboot thus resets the ship war to being between the first Terra and Raven. To complicate things, in the finale of The Ravagers, most of the Ravagers (including Terra) have been captured. Beast Boy was left for dead, but Raven finds him and takes him to the Teen Titans to combat Trigon.
- Nightwing/Starfire is often bashed by fans who pair him with Oracle and who feel that a Batman character does not belong with an alien or anything more supernatural than what is normally seen in Gotham. Devin Grayson was notably opposed to the pairing and did what she could to discourage and sink it in her Titans run, going as far as to portray Starfire as a shrill, embittered harpy who would fling starbolts at Nightwing if he (easily) offended her. Let's just say that, if you value your sanity, do NOT instigate a discussion of if Oracle or Starfire would be the better girlfriend for him.
- Cassie Sandsmark was hated by some shippers for her relationship with Kon-El, partially for her personality becoming increasingly obnoxious (though depending on who was writing her), and also because she was considered "in the way" of people shipping Robin and Superboy together. Even further back to the Young Justice days, Cassie earned controversy due to Peter David killing off Kon's previous love interest (Tana Moon) in favor of her, making a canon example of this trope unrelated to slash.
- During Bryan Q Miller's short run on the Titans, he attempted to have Aquagirl actually get in the way of Blue Beetle and Traci 13's relationship. The result? Enraged fans called for the character's death, referring to her as "The Aquaslut". Although in the end, Blue Beetle and Aquagirl didn't get together.
- A few old-school fans still wishing that Kid Flash/Raven would have happened can be rather vitriolic towards any of their later love interests, such as Linda Park (who Wally married). Although, some have also been accepting of Linda and don't approve of DC having erased her (and thus Wally, their marriage, and family) with the reboot.
- In the Watchmen fandom, Rorschach/Dan shippers tend to turn Dan's canon Love Interest, Laurie, into a) a shrieking harpy who either b) dies horribly or c) turns into a supervillain. Or all three. This allows Dan to be with his true love, Rorschach... who is a homophobic, right-wing ugly nutjob who never bathes and has No Social Skills. Oh, fandom.
- The fact that Dan and Laurie didn't have a true relationship until the very end of Watchmen (they were Friends with Benefits at best before the climax of the story) means that desperate Dan/Rorschach shippers not only have to break Dan and Laurie up, but come up with a workable way to resurrect Rorschach from death by molecular dispersal (with the one man plausibly able to do so having left the planet, and also just happens to have been Rorshach's killer in the first place). This speaks volumes about the skewed mentality of the Die For Our Shippers.
- Some Wonder Woman fans hate any guy that might develop a relationship with her; they feel that nobody is worthy of her, which makes it more a case of "Die for her celibacy".
- Exceptions: Steve Trevor due to Grandfather Clause (though he wasn't an option for a long while post-Crisis on Infinite Earths), Superman (although the presence of Lois means that's limited to Elseworlds and far future), and Batman (for obvious reasons).
- There are actually a fair number of Wonder Woman/Superman shippers (not nearly enough to outnumber the Clark/Lois fans, but they exist) who excitedly fantasize about the possibility of Clark and Diana getting married and giving rise to a dynasty of Kryptonian/Amazonian super-babies. Bonus points if their first super-baby is a daughter who can grow up to inherit the mantle of Queen of Themyscira AND the mantle of Last Daughter of Krypton (Supergirl is either conveniently ignored, or goes into retirement so that Clark and Diana's daughter can become the new Supergirl). These fans of course, get vilified by the more hardline members of the SM-Lois camp who go as far as to try to shut down the SM-WW camp's non-canon sites, which is taking things to a FanDumb level.
- While few shippers kill them in fic, shipping Diana with Clark or Bruce is still a huge Broken Base issue and a great way to start a flame war at any comics forum. Rama and Io, on the other hand, Diana's two most obscure suitors (one was in a story arc nobody read, and the other is a female love interest too subtle for most fans to pick up on), are generally liked by anyone who's heard of them and are probably protected from this mostly because most fans aren't aware of them.
- X-Men:
- The Love Triangle Jean Grey/Cyclops/Wolverine from X-Men has long been a complicated storm of controversy. Many fans have shipped Wolverine/Jean Grey since the day Wolverine joined the X-Men, but Marvel has long refused to give into fan demands. So fans engage in Scott and Jean bashing. Marvel has also changed Cyclops (first having him abandon his wife Madelyne Pryor and newborn son Nathan Summers, something not even Jean approved of and later being sent to reformed villainess Emma Frost for therapy over his post-traumatic astral possession stress, who promptly took advantage of him - her extremely mentally vulnerable patient - in a fashion that was presented simply as her being into the kinky sex/role-playing that Jean refused to engage in — while they portrayed Jean Grey as a forgiving and enabling saint who ultimately gave her blessing to Scott and Emma on her deathbed). Meanwhile, perhaps spurred by those who dislike the often misogynistic views upon marriage that Marvel takes (that is, it's always the woman's fault if a marriage fails in a Marvel Comic), Marvel in recent years have portrayed Wolverine as refusing to consider a relationship with Jean out of respect for Scott, even going as far as to reject a desperate Jean's advances when she confided to Wolverine that Scott was refusing to touch her sexually. So, the badass is "always right," and his love rival is "always wrong". <sigh>
- In typical Mark Millar fashion, Ultimate X Men had the "cool guy" Wolverine not only take Jean Grey's virginity, but also STAB the nerdy, put-upon "loser" Ultimate Cyclops and leave him to die to ensure that Jean would be his and his alone. And the Fan Dumb rejoiced, but their rejoicing was hilariously cut short when Cyclops turned out to be Not Quite Dead, staged a return, and angrily optic-blasted Wolverine off the team. And when Jean found out about Wolverine's Murder the Hypotenuse plan, she threatened Wolverine with all sorts of Mind Rape if she ever caught him having even one romantic or sexual thought towards her.
- Then there were the Pete vs. Piotr Flame Wars. When Warren Ellis first hooked up Pete Wisdom and Kitty Pryde in Excalibur, Colossus' initial reaction was to beat the dogsnot out of Wisdom. This, even though in his most recent previous appearance Colossus had come across as level-headed and wasn't even thinking of Kitty. Ellis himself admitted later that he wrote Colossus Out of Character. Alas, the damage was done; Colossus is still reviled by a vocal sub-group of X-fans for one Out-of-Character Moment. Many Pryde/Wisdom fanfics treat Colossus as mentally retarded at best and a rapist at worst.
- And that's not even counting all the canon Die for Our Ship examples for X-Men (and many other comic book series too) coming from those Running the Asylum. Just go to Derailing Love Interests to read them in all their tawdry glory.
- Following the films, Iceman gets this now from rabid Romy fans. In the comics, Bobby and Rogue were just close friends, but received a Relationship Upgrade in the films (which is then adapted into the Ultimate universe), and with the third film and Bobby being tempted to cheat on Rogue with Kitty (Again, happens in the Ultimate universe too), people now, whenever writing stories based in those universes, will write him off as a despicable, cheating bastard or just out right say they hate his guts now based solely on the Film Script writers.
