Supergirl dated a whole host of at least nominally normal fellows. Her bad luck with men was kind of one of her hallmarks, on the occasions she had her own title.
But yes, the major factor in whether a female super hero dates a normal guy or not seems to be whether or not she's the lead in her own series. Go back to the Golden Age when you actually had (at least compared to today) lots of female characters leading their own strips (usually in anthology titles) and pretty much all of them had normal human male love interests.
Hopping from one Chris to another
What they've said here about Author Avatar is true, i remember Terry Long was accused by fanboys of being one of Wolfman/Perez just because he married the beautiful and lovely Donna.
And that thing about women not being into men who are economically/socially lower than them is at least true in some extent. I've met many girls/young women who had promising carreers, good time in college and all that, but they suddenly meet a guy that despite being some attraction between them, he's just not on her same level. He's a neet, or he flunked school, or he's just not motivated to do anything with his life. And most people around her circle tell her to leave him, that he'll only drag her down and fuck any chance she'd have of living a decent life. So, goodbye college, hello unexpected babies, living at end's meet, etc etc. So I can see why people would be adamant of seeing Wonder Woman or Supergirl dating one of these guys.
As for WITCH, that's something different I think. Outside of their guardian duties the girls live quite ordinary teenage lives (in fact more ordinary than usual, considering they don't do hard party or the like, though I'm guessing that's due to Disney censoring a few things to make it more kid-friendly), and it's kinda normal at that age to be into boys and maybe date the one cute band member of your school or the like. It's innocent, but the comic never makes it that it'll be a long-lasting relationship with marriage and so. They don't explicitly mention it, but they don't treat it as the big "true love happily ever after" romance that you'd find on the Disney films. (It's even deconstructive in a way, since the two couples who "act" like their romance is a grand epic usually end in breakup or are always in big drama (Cornelia and Caleb, Will and Matt). In a way the comics portray teenage romance quite well I think. It feels special, yes, but once it ends life goes on, and it's not the end of the world.
John Silver is master husbando.
That and Terry just looked like a creeper. C'mon. That beard? The leisure suits? The age gap certainly didn't help that perception either (even if Donna was a consenting adult).
He was, I think, supposed to be about 9 years older than Donna (28 when she was 19). In the issues leading up to her wedding, they did have Donna meet Terry's ex, who did have some catty things to say about their age difference, but nothing more substantial was ever done with it. There were also some sub-plots about Terry being unmotivated to do the writing necessary to keep his tenure (he was a college professor) which caused a minor degree of friction between him and Donna, but nothing much was ever done with it. Wolfman frequently completely abandoned sub-plots.
He was never portrayed as a "creeper;" his fashion sense was always in-line with the era (when he first appeared in the early 80's, leisure suits and gold chains were still common; he dropped them pretty quick, though). He and Donna always had a stable, loving relationship...until they didn't, towards the end of Wolfman's run, when he needed them not to for plot purposes (and even then, it was editor-mandated; Wolfman has said he would have much rather left them happy and together). For most of Wolfman's run, whenever Terry showed up, he was kind of the Titans' Den Father.
edited 6th Nov '16 11:35:37 AM by Robbery
Eh, people have never much cared for Superman with Lois Lane all that often.
Why they always want him with Wonder Woman.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Gonna have to strongly disagree with that. More often than not SM/WW is thoroughly maligned.
Yeah Lois is the iconic Superman love interest. The reception to Superman/WW was mixed enough that DC killed off that Superman and brought in another version from a different universe.
I don't think it's so much that people don't like Superman/Lois so much as they frequently get bored with it. A lot of writers (not just in comics, but in film too) say that it's difficult to write characters in a happy marriage. There was a screenwriter once who said that characters falling in love is interesting, and characters falling out of love is interesting, but characters in love is boring.
Point taken.
I will point out that the majority of "heroes with normal women" thing is also limited to the characters created in the Sixties and earlier. As you approach the modern era, male superheroes increasingly date female superheroines—perhaps because there's actually more than Wonder Woman.
Nightwing and Starfire/Batgirl Green Arrow/Black Canary
And so on.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Also, since the 60's, most superhero comics have steadily focused less on the hero/heroine's civilian life. In team books especially (which for awhile there is where most superheroes were encountered) it was difficult to take room to show the heroes in their regular lives, if they even had regular lives (Wolverine for instance, while he had a life outside the X-Men, could not really be said to have a "normal" life). Civilian life seems to be becoming a thing again for superheroes in general though, so that's all to the good.
The Totally Spies aren't really comic book characters.
W.I.T.C.H. However was a comic book though so good catch.