The Untitled Comic Book Newsletter Vol. 31

A lot of Marvel Comics’ classic romantic couples don’t really interest me all that much, mostly because they’re too iconic and well-established. Like, Peter and MJ are supposed to be together. If they’re not, then they should be. If they are, then that’s fine. Even my well-established fondness for Daredevil doesn’t make me more invested in Matt and Karen, because they’re just supposed to be together… and also she died a long time ago. (Writer Chip Zdarsky did great stuff with Matt and Elektra, at the same time that Marco Checchetto introduced his Elektra redesign, a.k.a. the greatest costume design in comics history, but The Point of that duo is partially that they’re never “supposed to” work out.)

But one Marvel “ship” that I love is Angela and Sera from Angela: Asgard’s Assassin by Kieron Gillen, Marguerite Bennett, Phil Jimenez, and Stephanie Hans. It’s Angela’s first solo book from Marvel after the character initially debuted in Spawn comics (she was co-created by Todd McFarlane and someone who will go unnamed, which I wish I had remembered earlier), but some legal stuff led to her being brought into the Marvel universe. She was friends with the Guardians Of The Galaxy for a while, but at this point she’s been fully integrated into the regular canon.

Angela is the long-lost daughter of Odin, making her Thor and Loki’s sister, and she was kidnapped by the Angels of “Heven” as a child and raised to be their greatest warrior — meaning Angela represents the inclusion of vaguely Christian mythology in Marvel’s cosmic pantheon. (Have any of Marvel’s famous Christians met Angela? Not as far as I’m aware, because it seems like most readers don’t like her as much as I do and so she doesn’t get to do a whole lot, but you could make a fun Avengers team with her, Steve Rogers, Daredevil, Nightcrawler, and I guess Ghost Rider).

Anyway, in Heven, women are born to be Angels — mercenary monster-killers with wings and swords and glowing eyes. Men, who comprise just one percent of the population, are born to be Anchorites and are forced to live in dark seclusion, spending their entire lives praying for the Angels. Angela is an Angel, obviously, but Sera was born an Anchorite, and there’s a scene in issue 3 of Asgard’s Assassin where she tells Star-Lord about how she met Angela after a monster attacked a group of Anchorites: “There, in the temples, in the safe and stagnant dark, I prayed and I sang, and the incense choked me, and the darkness blinded me, and the hymns were bitter on my tongue. Until she came. Until Angela came to kill the monster.”

Sera helps Angela during her battle and asks to be taken away from the Anchorites, which Angela does, and the two go on to have various adventures — including, as Sera notes, finding “a way to make me myself” and dealing with “objections” (pointedly depicted as an angelic thing with wings). So there’s some stuff going on here, and — credit to the whole creative team — they don’t really beat you over the head with the idea that Sera is trans or that the religious and societal structure that she was born into forces people into little boxes based solely on the gender assigned at their birth.

Like Tailgate and Cyclonus from Transformers: MTMTE (which you’ll remember from a newsletter a couple of weeks ago), Sera and Angela are a classically archetypal romantic pairing. One is tough and rigid, the other is more personable and fun (not to mention the always-fun: One is good at swords, the other is good at magic), and they both love and respect the hell out of each other.

It’s a cute romance, and while I do wish there were years of more adventures for Sera and Angela, there is something nice about the fact that — a few story arcs after this — they do just get a quiet, happy ending that, as far as I’m aware, hasn’t really been touched. Also: They’re both good cards in Marvel Snap (though they’re not cards that have any particular synergistic benefit).

NEXT WEEK:
Another surprise, a.k.a. I haven’t decided yet.