Pregnancy in Comics

June 9th, 2004

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

While children are fairly common in comics, pregnancy has only rarely been shown. The following is an informal list of pregnancies that have been shown, or *may have been shown* in comics. The list is entirely from memory, and so ommissions and mistakes are probably quite common. I am striving for a list not of characters who have been pregnant, but whose pregnancy has been shown in comics.
I would appreciate any additions.
This list does deal primarily with super-hero comics because that is what I am most familiar with, but I welcome non-super-hero suggestions as well.

Heroes:
AQUAMAN
Dolphin and Garth (Tempest) recently had their son Cerridan. I missed a bunch of Aquaman, so I don’t know if they ever showed the pregnancy.

FANTASTIC FOUR
Sue Richards lost her first pregnancy, but then had Franklin with her second. A magical/time-stream induced third pregnancy recently gave the Richards a daughter, Valeria.
Lyja Storm, as I recall, was pregnant and gave birth to an egg(?)

INCREDIBLE HULK
Betty Banner was pregnant, but miscarried.

FLASH
Iris was pregnant with twins at the time that the silver age Flash (Barry Allen) died.
Linda West lost twins recently in the current Flash.

INFINITY INC.
Hippolyta Hall was pregnant a *long* time, and ultimately gave birth to Daniel.

ANIMAL MAN
Annie was pregnant and gave birth in the last issues of the series.

JSA
Hawkgirl was pregnant as a teenager, but this was presented after the fact, so probably shouldn’t be on this list.

STARMAN
Jack fathered children with the Mist (see below) and his significant other, Sadie.

LOSH (1)
Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad) and Irma Ranz (Saturn Girl) had twins. Now, twins are the usual on Winath, Garth’s home planet; however, Irma come from Titan. Plus are the twins fraternal or paternal? Both have been shown on Winath in the series.

LOSH (2)
In the “five years later” Legion, Night Girl was not only married to Cosmic Boy, but also pregnant.
Also Laurel Gand had a child.

LOSH (3)
Apparition (Tinya Wazzo) and Ultra Boy (Jo Nah - you talk about bad puns, his name was ‘Jo Nah’ and he was swallowed by an outer space whale) have married and had a child (Cub).

L.E.G.I.O.N.
Stealth had a child by Vril Dox.

AVENGERS
Wasn’t Ms. Marvel impregnated by some extraterrestrial being at one point?

TEAM TITANS
Donna Troy was pregnant at the beginning of this series.
Wasn’t Mirage pregnant at the end?

X-MEN
Madelynne was pregnant with Scott Summer’s child (and gave birth to him) in the X-Men.

Villains:
Punch & Jewlee
They showed up in Hawk & Dove toting a toddler, but I don’t know if the pregnancy was ever mentioned or shown in Suicide Squad or elsewhere.

Chesire
Gave birth to Lianne, fathered by Speedy/Arsenal (Roy Harper), but I don’t know if the pregnancy was shown.

Mist
Had a child by Jack (Starman). Do not recall if the pregnancy was shown.

Non-Super-Hero:
STRANGERS in PARADISE: Francine recently miscarried.

9 Responses to “ Pregnancy in Comics ”

  1. Shane
    June 9th, 2004 at 11:08 pm

    “Wasn’t Ms. Marvel impregnated by some extraterrestrial being at one point?”

    Kang’s son I believe. I think it was all resolved in the recent Kurt Busiek run in which Kang took over the world.

  2. Laura Gjovaag
    June 9th, 2004 at 11:26 pm

    Dolphin’s pregnancy was indeed shown. Mera’s, on the other hand, happened pretty much all off-screen.

  3. Ken Lowery
    June 9th, 2004 at 11:29 pm

    Good heavens there’s a lot of miscarrying going on. Guess it makes for easy drama, eh?

  4. Matt Rossi
    June 10th, 2004 at 6:52 am

    Actually, it’s even worse than Shane indicated. Ms. Marvel was impregnated originally by Immortus’ son, who used the devices of Limbo to draw her to him, make her fall in love with him, and then implanted himself into her via some freaky Limbo technology. She then was sent back to Avengers mansion where she gave birth in an extremely short amount of time and the baby was Marcus, Immortus’ son (the one who impregnated her, remember) and then the baby, too, grew up rather remarkably quickly while time itself went ape because Marcus, concieved and born in Limbo, was a being out of time and his mere presence, not to mention the twisted nature of his self-conception into our world and the rapid time displacement, was shattering causality. Eventually Marcus agreed to go back to Limbo but pledged his love for Ms Marvel and asked her to come with him to Limbo, which she agreed to do and the Avengers let her (this was later pointed out to have been a really dumb move.) Now, since Immortus and Kang were once considered to be the same man at different points in his life (but now Immortus and Kang are divergances of each other made by the Infinity Crystal) that makes Kang’s son a divergance of Immortus’ son, so technically it wasn’t the guy calling himself the Scarlet Centurion in Busiek’s recent run who impregnated Carol Danvers/Ms Marvel/Warhawk, but rather an alternate version of him. I’ve simplified this immensely.

    I believe the issue of Avengers where this all happened was #200.

  5. Marc Laporte
    June 10th, 2004 at 10:02 am

    Beautiful Dreamer showed up pregnant and gave birth in early issues of the JM DeMatties-written Mister Miracle series.

  6. Scott
    June 10th, 2004 at 11:15 am

    Pepper (Potts) Hogan miscarried in Iron Man abit 1-2 years ago. Another miscarriage to be added to the list…
    Spoiler (now Robin) was pregnant in the earlier issues of Robin. Gave the baby up for adoption.
    And Crystal (of the Inhumans) was pregnant too. This one earns a “d’oh!” because I alluded to it in an earlier post.

  7. Shane
    June 10th, 2004 at 2:08 pm

    Matt Rossi- Thanks man there is no way in hell I was going to look all that up and try to explain it. I knew there was more to it than what I had said though. Whew.

  8. J. Kevin Carrier
    June 10th, 2004 at 6:30 pm

    I think you have Sue Richards’ pregnancies reversed: Franklin was first, in the Lee/Kirby era. The miscarriage happened during Byrne’s run in the ’80s.

    Man-Bat’s wife, Francine, was pregnant and gave birth to a daughter back in the 1970s.

    Crystal of the Inhumans had a baby in an issue of Fantastic Four.

    We got to see the Scarlet Witch’s pregnancy unfold in real time in the 12-issue Vision and Scarlet Witch miniseries. Although her twin boys were later retconned out of existence.

    Carmilla Frost found out she was pregnant in an old Killraven graphic novel… I don’t know if she ever did give birth.

    Melissa Siren was pregnant through most of the second story-arc in the old Sabre series. The issue where she gives birth was considered controversial at the time, although it’s not really all that explicit.

    Another controversial (and much more graphic) pregnancy and birth was Liz Moran giving birth to Winter in Miracleman.

  9. Matt Rossi
    June 11th, 2004 at 3:23 pm

    Shane, the worst part is that I can close my eyes and see pages of that comic now. I have no idea where I was last Friday. God help me.

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