This is Wedding Bells Are Ringin', a month-long examination of notable comic book weddings, since this is June, after all, and that's a time for weddings. I let you all vote and you voted for this feature to spotlight real AND fake weddings. I've decided, then, to only go with weddings that actually ended with marriages, whether dreams or not (in other words, everything but called off weddings).
Today, we look at the wedding of Absorbing Man and Titania in Avengers Unplugged #4 by Glenn Herdling, John Statema and Scott Koblish.
Avengers Unplugged was part of Marvel's 99 cents line of comics, which is best known today for its Untold Tales of Spider-Man series by Kurt Busiek and Pat Olliffe that was freakin' brilliant. Avengers Unplugged was...less so. That series has, to this day, one of the most slapdash comic books I've ever read from Marvel (I've written about it a lot over the years, but not for a number of years, so I guess I'll feature it soon for a How Can I Explain? installment).
Anyhow, Avengers Unplugged #4 opens with She-Hulk rushing to work when she sees Titania rushing into a banquet hall in a wedding dress. She-Hulk chases after her and runs right into a bunch of super-villains who have come together to celebrate the wedding of Titania and Absorbing Man.
The villains then punch She-Hulk out of the building (of course her clothes are shredded in the process, since this was the 1990s)...
There is a great character bit between the Wrecker and Absorbing Man where they discuss the impending nuptials, with Wrecker confused as to how Absorbing Man could go straight just for a woman...
Despite seeing Titania in a wedding dress, She-Hulk decides that this must be some sort of super villain convention, so she alerts the Avengers and they head to the banquet hall and start attacking the villains they discover...
(Hercules is surprisingly cool about the fact that Bulldozer and Piledriver almost killed him during the Under Siege storyline)
The Vision interrupts the ceremony and he, too, somehow doesn't get that it is a wedding...
In a clever bit, the Absorbing Man uses the diamond ring that he got for Titania to absorb the abilities of diamond...
but when his diamond ball and chain shatters, the crooks all try to grab the free diamonds. Absorbing Man then takes Thunderball's ball and chain as a wedding present...
Note the cameo of Peter David, who had just recently performed the wedding of Rick Jones and Marlo Chandler in the pages of Incredible Hulk. For a cameo that seems like it was intended to be a sweet nod to David, he's kind of drawn as a caricature, which is odd.
After a number of fights outside the hall, the Avengers finally burst in and are embarassed to realize that this was not, in fact, a super villain convention...
They sheepishly walk away and the wedding is completed, with Absorbing Man, though, deciding not to go straight because he doesn't want to be like the Avengers...
If any one has suggestions for a future wedding spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com