Amadeus and Delphyne’s love story, Pt. 1

In our continuing series (and by that I mean the second one), we’ll once again explore two supporting characters’ romantic adventures.  And I love these two.  Amadeus Cho, the seventh smartest person on the planet and the sixteen year-old sidekick of Hercules, will fall madly in love with Delphyne Gorgon, a green-skinned Amazonian warrior with snakes for hair.  You can feel the passion between the two just with my words alone.  But if you’re not convinced, here’s excerpts from Incredible Hercules #121-128 and #138-141, written by Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente and drawn by Clayton Henry, Salva Espin, Rodney Buchemi, Takeshi Miyazawa, & Dietrich Smith; as well as Heroic Age: Prince of Power #1-4, written by Pak & Van Lente and drawn by Reilly Brown, Zach Howard, & Adam Archer.

Much like Bill and Kelda, our two lovers are recent creations, featuring Amadeus’ first appearance in 2006 compared to Delphyne’s in 2008 which you’re going to witness today.  Some backstory from a few years back: Amadeus led a group of Hulk supporters through the streets of New York City (including Hercules) during the Marvel event World War Hulk, and once Hulk’s defeated — he was the (sorta) bad guy after all — the Incredible Hulk series changed to Incredible Hercules as the starring god and Amadeus travel the country.  And you have to absolutely read it.  Every single issue.  Every single word and picture.  I cannot stress enough how absolutely wonderful the Incredible Hercules run is, so much so that the series alone propelled Hercules to my top three Marvel superheroes (after Spider-Man and Daredevil).  Sadly, Hercules isn’t the focus of this week, but please catch up with some of my previous articles if you’d like.

We begin with the capture of Amadeus Cho.  I’m skipping the whole kidnapping event.  Y’see, the princess of the Amazonians desires Amadeus for procreation, because I guess Korean teenagers are her fetish or something.  The princess’ second-in-command Delphyne Gorgon shows him around his new love nest.  Also, and much more importantly, she needs to enlighten our protagonist about this upcoming Amazonian ritual.

Just a typical high school love story.  Another boy gets captured against his will to be the love slave of a bossy warrior princess only to be fatally murdered the second he hits his refractory period. Haven’t we seen this so many times before?

So we don’t have to be a genius to realize that Princess Artume is totally using Amadeus to solve some complex puzzle and has absolutely zero intention of sleeping with him.  The maiming part’s probably still on though.  But even for the seventh smartest person in the world, a sixteen year-old presented with that sort of prize will overlook some obvious logical clues.  Sadly, I don’t think he’s into the sort of foreplay she enjoys:

And with Artume’s betrayal sets into motion another traitor emerges — and the focus of this article.

First, Hercules totally still lives.  Second, I know that’s a wildly fast courtship, but when you have a young imprisoned genius together with a violent snake woman, how could sparks not fly?  Look, if your disbelief can’t be suspended, please understand that Delphyne’s a fictional gorgon monster wearing a kilt and fishnets.  That should be your main concern.  But story-wise, you know when henchmen hook up with the supervillain’s future paramour/murder victim?

I cut out the waving scene, but we all know that the motivations of supervillains rarely require any real motivations.  Oh, before we continue, have you been wondering what’s up with Hercules?  I mean, with Amadeus in jail, he’s left to battle the Amazonian forces solo (well, and Namor’s cousin Namora).  Let’s check in for a moment:

Atlas used the Washington Monument like a baseball bat to smack Hercules across the National Mall.  Have you read Incredible Hercules yet?  You’re missing out if you haven’t.  Anyway, back to our main story.

What soon follows is an issue-long fake alternative reality as Artume rules as president, Amadeus as her second-in-command, and a failed relationship between the genius and gorgon.  You can buy the book for all that, but as we flash back to actual reality, it does end like this:

Luckily for Amadeus, this is only the first part of our story, though that doesn’t make heartbreak any easier.  Even in the Marvel universe, one’s first crush takes a while to overcome — especially when she’s the Amazonian queen who’ll now disembowel Amadeus if they ever share the throes of passion.

On Wednesday, their reunion!