Reading Midnighter’s solo series again and it’s really irking me that no one can consistently write his relationship with Apollo. Like, depending on who’s writing he either barely tolerates the man/holds him in contempt or they’re madly in love. Oh, and that’s when they bothered to show him at all; I understand his solo title was an action book but seeing Midnighter with his husband and daughter would have been a nice character building exercise for everyone.

It’s sad because what little demonstrated, in canon history we have for Appllo and Midnighter shows two people who care for each other very much. They survived Henry Bendix together and lived, hard, on the streets for five years. They got married and adopted a kid. They show great concern when the other is injured in missions. None of that points to Midnighter barely tolerating Apollo.

It’s also annoying that Apollo keeps getting cast as the (badly stereotyped) woman in their relationship. He’s the feminine one, the weak one, the damsel in distress, the stupid one. None of that was anywhere in Ellis’ initial run of these characters. Apollo was the nice one, the one people could talk to. Being less of a bastard than Midnighter doesn’t make him a dumb girl; he’s still Superman without the qualms about killing. It just made him more human.

It irritated me then and it’s irritating me now how badly these two (and, really, the rest of Authority) were handled after Ellis left the book. It did eventually get better but for awhile there …