I don’t like love triangles, but if one exists, friendship will always be my favourite way of resolving it.

It happens frequently in comics/related media with my favourite hero: Nightwing, AKA Dick Grayson. He joked in the tie in comics for the Young Justice cartoon that his superpower is remaining friends with all his exes, and that’s something that has been consistently true throughout DC. He  remained friends with both Starfire and Batgirl after their relationships ended.

What’s unique about comics is that it is very rare for any character to only exist for one purpose. Comics are written by multiple people, so while there might be some characters that only appear in passing in one title, almost inevitably, they’ll be elaborated on by a different writer. There are very few characters without at least someone that likes them getting a chance to write something they’re in. That’s great for readers, because it means that even if a character is poorly written and has their entire personality/story arc revolving around a love interest 99 percent of the time, the remaining 1 percent of the time, they won’t be. That’s very much the case for Kory and Babs.

Koriand’r and Barbara have been Dick’s primary love interests for decades, but they don’t compete with each other for his affection. They’re fully fleshed out characters outside of their relationships with him. They’ve both had their own titles, however shortlived. They’ve had their own stories. I don’t know if they themselves are friends – I don’t think I’ve read anything featuring the both of them together – but they certainly aren’t rivals.

That Young Justice tie in comic I mentioned, Rocket and Zatanna were both interested in him, but they were absolutely friends with no jealousy over him. In the Doctor Who reboot, we had Rose and Martha both in love with the Doctor. When they met, though, after a slightly shaky start, they were friendly and complimentary to each other. This is a startlingly rare occurence. Oftentimes what happens is the odd one out gets a  different love interest, and the friendship occurs after. In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Annabeth and Rachel didn’t become friends – or even friendly – until Rachel agreed to become the Oracle, thus elimating the possibility of her dating anyone. In Scrubs, while the rivalry was mostly played for laughs, J.D. and Sean, as well as Elliot and Kim, didn’t become friends until Sean and Kim started dating in a classic case of Pair the Spares. The two competitors becoming friends before one or both of them is removed from the competition? Much rarer.

When it comes down to it, I don’t like love triangles, so my favourite method of resolution is bound to be the one where said triangle is unobtrusive, where it can be mistaken for consecutive rather than concurrent love interests, where you can argue that it’s not even a triangle so much as just a character having multiple love interests or multiple characters being interested in the same one.

Part One
Part Two