>Do you think there’s any legitimacy in my annoyance at the small number of lasting relationships in the MU? Or is Romance a casualty of the long-term medium?>

I think lasting relationships are an inevitable casualty of long-term serial storytelling. Just look at any soap opera–how many times are the relationships of those characters tested, shattered, and recombined?

The reason, of course, is that happy endings are fun for a moment, and then they’re boring to most readers. The pursuit is constantly of greater interest than the conquest.

I think we could stand to have more and greater emphasis on romance in our books as a general rule. But I also think that the best way to get there would be to create new relationships rather than constantly going back to the old ones–especially if a lot of time has passed.

For example, Gambit and Rogue was one of the hottest relationships in comics at a certain point. But over time, it got tired, the characters changed, and they separated in order to try to spark new things. There’s always going to be a certain nostalgia to doing a Gambit & Rogue story, but I don’t know that dancing that dance again gives you anything other than nostalgia. It almost feels unhealthy, you know?

I’d rather see a new Gambit relationship and a new Rogue relationship that could inspire the same level of reader interest as that one did in days past.