We Used To Be Friends / Comic Books

We Used to Be Friends in Comic Books.

---

• Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel: Adam Brashear, the Blue Marvel, and Connor Sims, the Anti-Man, were once war buddies who wound up assigned to the same super-science project, which ended up going wrong and giving them superpowers. However, Connor's powers ended up driving him insane, which eventually resulted in the death of Adam's wife Candace. When they meet again, the normally good-natured Adam is furious at seeing him, even though Connor can't remember what happened.
• All Fall Down: The Pantheon tries to reason with Pronto this way. They don't quite succeed.
• American Vampire: Skinner Sweet and Jim Book. They were raised together after Jim's parents took the orphaned Skinner in and went on to serve together in the U.S. Cavalry. Later, though, Skinner became a psychotically evil outlaw and Jim became a lawman. After Skinner rises from twenty-five years entombed, he makes a point of making Jim an American Vampire like himself. And even years after Jim's death, Skinner respects him, telling an actor playing Book's role in a Wild West show: "You ain't fit to wear Jim Book's name!"
• Aquaman: In Aquaman (New 52), Aquaman and his brother Orm (Ocean Master) are portrayed as having been very close as teenagers, and when Arthur left the throne, Orm grudgingly took his place. The relationship deteriorated when Orm attacked the surface world in Throne of Atlantis, forcing the Justice League into action, thus forcing Arthur to pick a side (he was talking both sides down). Afterwards, once Orm is imprisoned, they still don't particularly hate each other, but it's just the way it has to be.
• Archie Comics:
  • Afterlife with Archie presents Veronica's and Betty's relationship as this. Veronica and Betty were friends in middle school until Archie came to town. After that Veronica's Alpha Bitch personality became directed at Betty. They usually hate each other.
  • Archie Comics (2015):
    • Josie and Alexandra were childhood friends until middle school, when they drifted apart and Alexandra turned mean. According to Josie, it was because Alexandra was too spoiled and selfish to handle it when Josie made other friends that weren't her—but according to Alexandra, Josie was mainly friends with her because she was rich and "the minute I couldn't buy you some talent you bailed on me like Hollywood after an actress turns thirty."
    • Reggie and Archie, if Reggie and Me is any indication, were good friends when younger, but a near-drowning incident combined with Betty's suspicion of Reggie led to their friendship souring.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: In Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Rift, General Old Iron and Lady Tienhai were friends until General Old Iron tried to kill the humans.
• The Avengers: Steve Rogers and Tony Stark in Civil War (2006), which was basically portrayed as a particularly volatile break-up/divorce. With Steve coming back from the dead, their relationship has since improved, not a little because fighting each other tore them both up pretty badly in the first place.
  • And again during The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman), when Steve realises Tony reformed the Illuminati, and then wiped his memory about it. The last arc of the run, Time Runs Out, involves Steve relentlessly pursuing Tony over everything else, including the imminent end of all existence.
  • This has been going on long before those two events. Back during the Armor Wars, Tony was attempting to get into the Vault to shut down the Guardsmen using his tech. Steve, here operating as The Captain, tried to come between them, but when a Guardsman begins suffocating and Steve goes to help him, Tony stuns Steve so he can disable to the last armor. Tony knows doing that damaged their friendship.
• Batman:
  • Harvey Dent was a friend of Batman and one of the first people of authority to support him, but after an incident which caused his transformation into Two-Face, the two become enemies. Notably, Batman is lighter in his dealings with Dent compared to his other villains.
  • Bats and Thomas Elliot/Hush have this going as well. The two were childhood friends, but Tommy's mother would constantly tell him to be more like Bruce, which annoyed him. Eventually, Tommy tried to murder his own parents (his father was abusive) and gain their fortune, but Bruce's dad saved Tommy's mom, which he never quite got over. When Bruce's parents later died, Bruce went around travelling the world and living the life Tommy wanted to live, while Tommy was stuck at home caring for his now frail mother. After his mother tries to cut Tommy off from the fortune, Tommy kills her. He leaves for med school and to travel the world soon after, and when the Riddler eventually tells Tommy that Batman is Bruce Wayne, he tries to ruin his life on a consistent basis.
• Blake and Mortimer: Mortimer and Sushil were best friends since childhood. By the time Mortimer returned to India from his studies, Sushil had changed greatly and joined an Indian extremist group, having grown to consider Mortimer his enemy, but the feeling is one-sided as Mortimer still sees Sushil as his friend.
• Captain America: John Walker, a former Captain America and current U.S. Agent, was once a member of the Bold Urban Commandos alongside Battle Star, Left-Winger and Right-Winger. When the US Government decided to only take John and Battle Star, Left and Right were so furious at this that they opted to reveal John's identity, leading to John's parents getting murdered at the hands of the Politically Incorrect Villain group the Watchdogs. The end result leads to John pummeling the two to a pulp and leaving them to die in a burning oil refinery.
• Druid City: Jack and Hunter. In the backstory, Hunter and Jack were colleagues, roommates, and fast friends. After Hunter betrayed Jack's trust to get the jump on submitting a groundbreaking article, all of that changed. In the present storyline, Jack is presented as a rather justified antagonist. The two characters are still willing to talk things out over the course of the series, but the point of each interaction is ultimately one-upmanship.
• Emmie And Friends: In Remarkably Ruby, Ruby and Mia, the two narrators, used to be close friends but as Mia became popular and made new friends, she started to push Ruby away from her—especially after Ruby started middle school behind her and her awkwardness kept embarassing Mia. It's also hard on Ruby—and their parents—because the two are sisters.
• The Flash: The Flash III (Wally West) and Reverse-Flash II/Zoom (Hunter Zolomon) used to be friends. Hunter was a police profiler who met Wally when he'd already been the Flash for a few years, and Hunter had a bad knee. Hunter's knee was shot by a B-list Joker knock-off early in his career due to a bad call he made, which caused the death of his father-in-law, Hunter's divorce from his wife Ashley, and his firing from the FBI. Hunter liked Wally because he had a public identity and was an open-book, while Wally liked Hunter because Hunter reminded him of his dead mentor Barry Allen (The Flash II). Eventually, Hunter's spine was damaged by Gorilla Grodd, which Wally blamed himself for. Hunter lost his ability to walk, and asked Wally to use the Cosmic Treadmill to go back in time and stop him from making his bad call with the FBI. Wally refused, citing examples like the villain Professor Zoom (Reverse-Flash I) as to why time travel is dangerous and unpredictable. Hunter says Wally refused because he has never experienced personal tragedy, and later tries to use the treadmill himself which ended up giving him time-based powers which effectively gave him superspeed (though he can't time-travel). With his new powers, Hunter decided that in order to make Wally a better hero, he must give Wally not only a great villain to face (which is why he took up the Reverse-Flash moniker), but also as much tragedy as possible. Hunter never outright tries to kill Wally, since this would defeat the purpose of why he does what he does, and Wally still feels responsible for Hunter's fall from grace.
• Green Lantern: Subverted in the storyline Wrath of the First Lantern with Sinestro and Hal Jordan. Hal asks Sinestro if they were ever truly friends. Sinestro responds with, "That's the tragedy of all this. We'll always be friends."
• Injustice: Gods Among Us: Batman and Superman used to be very close, enough so that Superman asked Batman to be his unborn son's godfather. Unfortunately, when the Joker broke him, Superman's increasingly-rapid fall down the slippery slope eventually culminated in Superman breaking Batman's back, ending the World's Finest once and for all.
• Ka-Zar: Ka-Zar had this relationship with Sauron's alter ego Karl Lykos, back before the latter had surrendered completely to the Sauron identity.
• The Mighty Thor: Thor and his adopted brother, Loki, of the Cain and Abel variety.
• My Little Pony: FIENDship Is Magic: In the Fiendship is Magic tie-in comics based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Sombra punishes his only childhood friend for what he saw as betrayal by making her home town vanish while she was away.
• The Sandman (1989): As seen in Endless Nights (which is set a long time before the main events), Dream and Desire of all people used to be quite close, with Dream referring to Desire as his favorite sibling. Then Desire meddled with one of Dream's love affairs, and it messed up their relationship ever since.
• Spider-Man:
  • Peter Parker and Harry Osborn. Their rivalry took place in the aftermath of the death of the original Green Goblin, Harry's father, and led to Harry going crazy and becoming the second Green Goblin. That a boobytrap set for Peter almost killed Harry's ex-girlfriend Mary Jane Watson probably was seen by him as a positive side-effect.
  • Untold Tales of Spider-Man: As shown in Amazing Fantasy #17, Peter was actually close friends with Liz, Jason, Sally, and Tiny when they were all children, but as they got older and they began showing different interests from him they gradually drifted apart, which finished happening around the time Flash started becoming the popular "cool" kid.
  • Depending on the Writer, this can also apply to Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius and Curt Connors. Both for their respective relationships with Peter and each other.
• Deadpool goes through this with Emily Preston. When she was killed on a mission, her consciousness was stored within Deadpool until she could get a new body, which is where their bond really started to form. Deadpool became very attached to her, and sub-consciously didn't want her to leave. After she goes into her robot body, she awakens to see that Deadpool has left. She's told he ran off, and they theorize he did such because he was upset about losing her after everything else he'd been through, and embarrassed that he could have hurt her. Throughout vol 3, they were very close, with Preston adopting Wade's daughter, Ellie. Once vol 4 started, things became more strained with them. As time wore on, Deadpool finds himself on the wrong side of a war in Secret Empire. He ends up killing SHIELD agent, Phil Coulson -on order from Captain America, who's been cosmic-cubed into a Hydra agent. The recent chapter shows a flashback where Preston and Deadpool are heading to Coulson's safe-house to find him. Preston, unaware of what happened, asks Wade why he needed to see Coulson the other night. Wade lies about the reason, and continues to lie and play dumb so that Preston doesn't know what he did. But, she founds out and punches Wade, telling him that Ellie also loved Coulson. Preston gives Wade a brutal beating and says she thought up a way to kill him due to him not being trustworthy, given his weak-mind -which she felt someone may control at some point. Deadpool blows them both up with a grenade and destroys Preston's LMD body. Before being destroyed, she tells Wade he will burn in Hell. Wade sadly agrees and rips out her power core. He stares down at her body sadly before boxing up the parts and shipping her somewhere. Preston admits to hating Wade in 2099, but also reveals that she forgave him because hatred destroys a person. So their friendship is restored sometime in the future, but it's broken at this point.
• This is a major plot thread of Sunny Rolls the Dice. Deb and Sunny, after still being Childhood Friends through the first two books, start to drift apart. Deb starts having interest in more "mature" and "groovy" with things like crushes on boys, fashion fads, makeup, and teen magazines. Meanwhile Sunny, with her love of comic books, still wants to dress up for Halloween (while Deb thinks they're Too Old to Trick-or-Treat) and finds fun in playing Dungeons & Dragons with her new friends Lev, Brian, and Arun. Deb initially plays but finds D&D boring; she calls it a game the "boys" play later when they're hanging out with new friend Regina, makes a weak excuse to skip one session, and drops out later on by saying she's too "old" to play games. Sunny briefly tries to stay connected to Deb and even quits D&D to try and hold on to her friendship, but reunites with the others at their awkward middle school dance where she has more fun with them than at the dance proper. The two finally go their separate ways when, instead of continuing to save her money to split a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans with Deb, Sunny buys the fighter figurine she wants, and Deb reacts with silence whe nshe sees this. Sunny embraces her geeky ways and returns to playing D&D.
• Superman:
  • How Luthor Met Superboy reveals Pre-Crisis Superman and Lex Luthor were friends when they were young. Then a lab accident occurred, which Superboy saved Lex from. Nonetheless, Lex blamed Superboy for the fire which destroyed his most important experiment, and the rest is history.
  • In Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, when Superman confronts Lex, he brings up their old friendship.
    Superman: We were friends once, Luthor... long ago. For a time, I hoped we could be friends again – Maybe we will be, someday – but in the meantime, we are enemies, because you chose lawlessness, and I chose law!
  • In War World, Martian Manhunter warned Superman that if he took another step closer to a crypt J'onn was tasked with guarding it might mean the end of their friendship. Superman didn’t listen and J'onn attacked him. Later Clark endeavored to retrieve an artifact stolen from that crypt in hopes of being forgiven by J'onn. His fellow Leaguer eventually did so.
    Martian Manhunter: I gave you fair warning, Superman — a good deal more warning than I would have given anyone else! I did so because you were my friend — but the bonds of friendship can only be stretched so far before they break!
  • At the start of New Krypton, Supergirl broke up with her childhood friend Thara Ak-Var when she was tricked into believing that Thara aided and abetted her murderer's father. In The Hunt for Reactron, they reconcile after a fashion, but their friendship was still strained for a while.
  • In the Post-Flashpoint continuity, Supergirl befriended Siobhan "Silver Banshee" Smythe shortly after arriving in Earth. However she broke it off when she thought Siobhan was using her. When they meet again during the events of Red Daughter of Krypton, they fought. Siobhan blamed herself for their friendship's end, but after a while Kara blamed herself for ruining it. In Crucible, Kara listens to Siobhan's music from afar as regretting their friendship's ending.
    Supergirl: "Someone playing music a mile away. I know that song! It's Siobhan's! At least I still have your music... Nothing's the same without you. Here I am trying to fit in on this planet, and I've lost the first friend I ever [made.]"
  • Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl gives two instances:
    • Supergirl regarded Luthor as a kind of father figure... until she learned that he murdered her baby cousin.
    • Likewise, Luthor and Hamilton's friendship broke off because Hamilton felt guilty for helping Luthor murder a baby and wanted to expose him.
  • Zigzagged in Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade. Linda and Lena are friends. When Lena finds out that Linda is Supergirl, she breaks their friendship off and tries to kill Linda. Then she loses her memory and they are friends again. Then she gets it back and goes back to want to kill Linda. At the end, she lets her hatred go. On Linda's side, though, she never stops considering Lena her friend.
    Supergirl: Lena... I'm still me! I'm your best friend!
    Lena: Not anymore... Not now that I know the truth! You're my enemy now. I have no choice but to destroy you!
  • Last Daughter of Krypton: Jor-El and Zor-El got along well with each other until Jor-El found out that his big brother was involved in the creation of the biological weapons of mass destruction known as the Worldkillers. Jor-El asked Zor-El to stop his experiments, and his brother responded by getting mad and refusing to talk to Jor-El and his family again.
  • Superman vs. Shazam!: When Captain Marvel is assailed by the Sandman Superman posing as the real Kal-El, Billy believes he must consider their friendship broken.
    Captain Marvel: Sorry about this, Superman! We were friends once—but not any more!
  • In The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor, Lena is so angry when she discovers that Supergirl kept her brother's identity from her that she breaks their friendship. At the end of the story, Supergirl wonders whether Lena will ever forgive her, but it is not revealed if she did.
    Lena Thorul: Now I know the secret you've been keeping from me—that Lex Luthor, one of the world's most monstrous criminals... is my brother! We were friends... I trusted you... But you betrayed me! Now get out of my sight, Supergirl... GET OUT!
• Swordquest Realworld: Peter and Alvin were best friends growing up, and almost became more than friends, but it was the 1980's and Alvin chose to become an Armored Closet Gay instead. Peter never forgave him for this, especially not after Alvin ended up publicly coming out of the closet years later in a cynical attempt to avoid getting kicked off of a reality TV show.
• The Transformers (IDW): The Big Bad Megatron started out as a miner, working alongside Impactor, who would later join the Autobots. At one point Impactor manages to buy himself an extension to his life by telling a marauding Megatron "Not more of your poetry," causing Megatron to back down rather than kill his old friend.
• Watchmen: Rorschach and Nite Owl II/Dan who were crime fighting buddies before the novel, now share a tense relationship. Rorschach even somewhat disdains Dan's lifestyle, but as the story progresses they partly rebond and face the Big Bad together.
• Wolverine:
  • As revealed in Origin, James Howlett's best friend growing up was the groundskeeper's son, Dog Logan, who was secretly his half-brother. However after everything that went down when they were teenagers, not to mention the fact that Dog hunted the now adult Logan down seeking revenge, which led to the accidental death of Wolverine's first love Rose, Dog Logan's hatred for Wolverine is very much reciprocated.
  • Wolverine and Sabretooth, for apparently over a hundred years. But then Wolvie got Creed's girlfriend killed, taking away his happy ending, and Creed swore to dedicate his life to making sure Logan would never get one of his own.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1987): Veronica Cale had one person, and one person only ouside of her deceased mother, that she cared about; her best friend Leslie Anderson. When Anderson starts to grow to like and befriend Wonder Woman and then uncovers Cale's fairly diabolical and pettily motivated plot Cale allows her to live, but threatens her into keeping her mouth shut and cuts her ties with Anderson by manipulating things so that if Cale's actions come to light all of the clues will lead back to Anderson as the mastermind instead.
  • The revamped Cheetah from Wonder Woman (Rebirth) was Diana's friend before being tricked into thinking Diana had betrayed her and led into the painful unwanted transformation which gives her her powers.
• X-Men:
  • Depending on the mythos of that universe — and Depending on the Writer — Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr (Professor X and Magneto, respectively) started out as best friends and bosom buddies, until they broke off because of differing opinions (Charles with the opinion that mutants and humanity are not enemies and Erik believing they are with mutants poised to become the dominant force).
  • In at least one universe, the 'bosom buddies' business caused (or at least helped) both of their respective marriages to break up. This has not helped the people who protest the Ho Yay between the two at all.
  • The Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy, thanks to Juggy's Heel–Face Turn.
  • Colossus and Magik. Especially after he sacrificed everything (including his humanity and the love of Kitty Pryde) to save her from evil by taking on the power of Juggernaut only to find that she encouraged him to become the Juggernaut because he still loved her and she wanted to show him what it was like being damned so he could understand her. At the end of Avengers vs. X-Men, Peter told Illana, "If I ever see you again, I will kill you." They have since made amends and are back to being a family.

---