Tomorrow will be the 70th anniversary of my grandparents' wedding. (Happy anniversary, Dink and Buddy!) They're both dead now, but that doesn't stop anniversaries. Time keeps marching on whether we do or not.

I can't say as I regularly read wedding announcements. In 2016, do they still report on what type of flower the bride wore with her alligator accessories?

(And for the record, yes, "J.W." stood for "James Walter." I think it's a pretty good name.)

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I've been sick for the past few days (the first time I've been ill in 2014 — it had been a good run!), and I can tell I must have a fever because last night I dreamed that I attended comedian Seth Meyers' wedding.

I was in charge of the coat check, which was strange because 1) it was a summer wedding and 2) even in my dream I didn't personally know Seth Meyers. Of course, I was probably the logical choice for the position, seeing as how the wedding was being held in my grandmother's house.

I have to say that Dream-Seth isn't quite the fun-loving jokester you see on TV, but in his defense he was very stressed out by his wedding. He was particularly concerned that the caterers had screwed up the reception desert, something he called "crown cakes," which looked and tasted like Moon Pies. (Also in Seth's defense, I've been to more than one wedding that served Moon Pies at the reception.)

The weirdest part of all of this was that I never saw the bride's face. Perhaps this is because although Meyers mentions her frequently, he has never had her on his show. In my dream, she kept her wedding veil down. I should say that even without a face, she was much nicer than Seth.

I do hope that I feel better soon. I don't enjoy weddings in real life. I don't want to be dreaming about them anymore, even if the groom promises to make me a guest on his late night talk show if I'll just hurry up and retrieve the car keys he left in his coat.

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The latest "scandal" among comic book fanboys was last week's announcement that the creators of the Batwoman comic were resigning over DC's editorial decision that the title character cannot get married. The question at hand is whether the character's sexuality has anything to do with the decision. For the record, Batwoman is gay.

DC Comics made headlines a few years ago when they debuted this reimagined Batwoman (not to be confused with any of the Batgirls). Therefore, many people assumed that DC's decision not to allow Batwoman to marry was an editorial comment about the moral permissibility of gay marriage. Personally, I don't think that's the case. Why create and hype a lesbian character if you are opposed to lesbian marriage?

Of course, DC isn't a person but a company. It's possible that the decision makers in charge have been replaced (or changed their minds) since the introducing the character in 2006. However, this editorial decision sounds more like a side-effect of the growing influence of the marketing department than any moral/political stance.

Once upon a time, DC told stories in which the characters were allowed to grow. Superman could fall in love. Robin could grow up. Green Lantern could become a villain. However, now the licensing revenue for the characters' costumes are more important than the stories that spawned them. Marketing worries that kids who grew up reading that Barry Allen is the secret identity of the Flash might not buy their children Flash action figures modeled on the Flash's successor, Wally West. So goodbye character development, hello creative stagnation.

DC co-publisher Dan DiDio has tried to justify the decision by saying that all DC characters are required to focus on heroics at the cost of their personal lives. Apparently, so far as DC is concerned, you can't be a hero and enjoy it. These days there's no enjoyment in reading a DC comic book, either.

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Saturday, I attended the wedding of another "old" friend. Ken is yet another fellow who I first met via the Comic Company in about 1996 when he was self-publishing his comic, Steviebear. Eventually Ken would become my manager at the Comic Company. Together we attempted to keep the store alive the owners decided to sell their stock and property, but that never quite worked out.

Anyway, it seems like he finally found the right girl in Robin. Ken is a champion procrastinator, leaving Robin to plan everything for the wedding. (Which, honestly, is probably the way that Robin likes it. She knew what she was getting into when she decided to marry the guy.) To everyone's great surprise, that led to this:

Yes, those are their actual wedding rings. And, yes, they do reference dialogue from the love scene in The Empire Strikes Back. I don't know if that is true love, but it certainly is something unusual.

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I heard via someone who saw it on Facebook that my brother got married. Apparently Facebook has some value after all.

If you would have told me in November that my brother would get married before the end of the year without telling me or anyone else in our family, I would have called you fucking crazy. Shows what I know.

Congratulations, Trey and Melissa. I hope that the two of you will live happily ever after.

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This past weekend I attended another wedding. More than attended, actually, as I was in the wedding party. The older I get, the more I wonder what's the point of having friends if they are going to keep dragging me into their rituals?

Chad and Meagan were married in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Chattahoochee National Forest. The wedding itself was held at an elevation of about 2100 feet on Snake Mountain. (The name made my brother nervous, as he was frequently looking over his shoulder for an appearance by Skeletor.) This is the second time I attended a mountain wedding, once in the Sierra Nevada and now on the southern end of the Appalachian. I suppose everyone I know wants to start their marriage with their head literally in the clouds.

Blue Ridge, GA is a strange place, more Tennessee than Georgia country. It seems that everyone calls their home a "cabin" and maintains a gravel road in order that they might still drive during frequent winter freezings. At least the people seemed nice enough, especially when compared to their neighbors in Tennessee.

Trey and I had a good time on the drive up, especially after we spotted that bear statue that looked very unhappy to be chained to an American flag. (There's an allegory in that, somewhere.) And everyone had a great time at the bachelor party I organized. We drank Coke and played video games until the groom hurt his elbow playing Foosball. Never tell me I don't know how to party!

Thank goodness it's all over. Here's hoping no one else I know ever ties the knot; I'm getting too old for this shit.

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Wedding accomplished. I think I attended the wedding without embarrassing myself or my brother or my friends too much. There were a lot of comments to the effect of "that's Walter for you" and "Walter never changes," but fortunately no "arrrrgh, not Walter!" (At least none that I overheard.) Most of my foibles were politely ignored, though at one point my brother joked that "there's medicine now for your condition." (At least I think he was joking.) I suspect that there's a reason that I'm always invited to weddings, but never asked to participate in the bachelor or wedding parties. Like weddings themselves, I'm sure that Walter is much more tolerable in small doses, few and far between.

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Tomorrow I will attend the wedding of a fellow I've known for more than a few years. In fact, I owe him for getting me a job at a comic book store in the 1990s. I sure did love that job.

For the record, my first day on the job was Keith's last. I guess he was supposed to be training me, but instead he only taught me that running a comic book shop was so easy, you could spend the whole day playing Star Wars: Rebellion on the store computer. His "work" was interrupted when he decided that a stereotypically ethnic customer was shoplifting packs of collectible card games. When confronted, the suspect put his hand in his coat, as though going for a gun. Keith kept his head -- which is not Keith's defining personality trait -- and thanks to the timely intervention of customer Cliff Krapp, who employed an unusual strategy of "respect"-ing potential shoplifters, was able to recover the merchandise and remove the potential offender with no further incident. (Where was I? I was on the phone with the police crouching safely behind the largest, heaviest piece of furniture in the building. Safety first!)

Anyway, so now Keith is joining a different, much more exclusive club. While it won't offer him the same great discount on comic books, I presume it offers other benefits. There's no way those benefits are as great as cheap comic books, but I figure I owe him the benefit of the doubt. Best of luck, buddy.

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Most tombstones show the date of death. Many tombstones record the date of birth. But there aren't too many tombstones showing a third date.

This tombstone for Jennie Hardaway McBride, found in Newnan's historic Oak Hill cemetery, demanded a little research. And not because there are no oaks or hills anywhere in sight.

It turns out that "Jennie" isn't even Mrs. McBride's real name. Before she was Mrs. "Jennie" McBride, wife of Newnan merchant and Scotch-Irish society member William Cardwell McBride, she was Virgina Rebecca Hardaway, daughter of Isora Burch. In 1903, Isora Burch organized the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, named in honor of her great-grandmother, Sarah Dickinson Simms. Jennie would eventually succeed her mother as regent for the DAR Sarah Dickinson chapter. But that doesn't solve the question of why she has three dates on her tombstone.

The death certificate for "Mrs. W. C. McBride" of 14 Robinson Street in Newnan, Ga, lists the cause of death at age 50 as "acute uremia." The internet tells me that uremia is typically caused by kidney failure. In this case it wasn't a surprise to anyone when she died; the certificate notes that she was diagnosed with "uremia" six months before it killed her. However, that still doesn't account for the third date on the tombstone.

The father of Mrs. McBride was Robert Henry Hardaway, descendant of a boy "kidnapped" onto a ship bound for America in 1685. It turns out that daddy also has 3 unusual dates on his grave: "December Twelfth, 1837, - 1869, February 11, 1905." Robert Hardaway was born in 1837 and died in 1905. So what did he do between those two dates? He stayed busy. For one thing, Hardaway was a Confederate States Army soldier in Company B of the 1st Georgia Calvary. For a time afterwards, he was a member of the Georgia State General Assembly. And he was also a partner in the merchant firm Hardaway & Hunter in Newnan where he met Isora Burch and was married on December 12, 1869! Ah, ha!

The historical record states that Jennie R. Hardaway was married on April 18, 1894. Mystery solved. At least two generations of the Hardaway family of Newnan liked to put their wedding dates on their tombstones. Who knows why, exactly, but if I had to guess, I'd suppose they died a little those days. They don't call spouses "balls and chains" for nothing. Marriage: it's a life sentence.

[For the record, Jennie Hardaway McBride shares a common ancestor with my mother. Sarah Dickinson Simms, Mrs. McBride's 2nd great-grandmother, was my mother's 4th great-grandmother, making her my 5th great-grandmother. What can I say? Newnan's kind of a small town.]

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Every comics blog has mentioned it. ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox consider it newsworthy. Highbrow magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly have devoted column space to it. Even The Times of India has reported the story that Archie Andrews is planning a wedding. The Toronto Globe and Mail has told me that where I stand on the Betty vs. Veronica debate describes my political proclivities. And, of course, wedding planning sites such as weddingbells.ca and onewed.com are very excited. Me? Not so much.

This smells to me of a sales gimmick. Not that Archie really needs one. His Double Digest sells well enough in toy stores, drug stores checkout aisles, and direct mailings to sit alongside X-Men comic books sold in more distinguished "direct market" outlets. Archie has, for the 68 years of his existence, played the roll of empty-headed teenager perpetually enrolled at Riverdale High. His biggest problems have always been which flavor malted to buy and how high to cuff his jeans. That's his niche, and it's why reader flock to his stories.

Marriage would mean a whole new paradigm for Archie: supporting a family, fretting about house payments, and struggling with his golf game. Change of this nature is not the sort of thing that the Archie audience (or the American audience, for that matter) typically wants when they tune in for fun and frolicking high school stories. Personally, I can think of only one instance where a a long-running, fitful courtship/love triangle has sorted itself out and maintained audience interest: Superman and Lois Lane.

Superman and Lois Lane were married in 1997 following 60 years of courtship. Superman's problems have always been more mature than Archie's: saving Metropolis from organized crime, preventing volcanic eruptions from obliterating villages, and traveling through time to repair the course of history are not even in the same class as remembering to keep your fly zipped after a bathroom break during the spring formal. Marriage is exactly the sort of real-world danger that confronts a Superman but is avoided by an Archie. If a man who can trim the hedges with heat-vision, listen to how his wife's day went from 20 miles away, and bring an entire milking factory home on his way home from the office still has a hard time keeping his rocky relationship with his wife afloat, what hope does Archie have?

Archie has more in common with Spider-Man than Superman, and Spidey's marriage to Mary Jane Watson was such a dead-end for stories that Marvel spent decades trying to separate the two, eventually resolving the problem by having the Devil annul their marriage. Could Archie end up one day performing satanic rituals to undo the terrible decision he's made? Could be. Stranger things have happened.

[Sorry for the delay on this post. Internet was down. Again. It's a very inasupicious beginning for Superman Month.]

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