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Although the high-water mark for romance comics at Marvel passed decades ago, there remains a beating heart (and a burning of loins) inside the House of Ideas... and it's green, and has a backup brain in his butt. He is Doop.

Originally created in the dawn of the 21st century as simply the cameraman for the celebrity superhero team best known as the X-Statix, Doop quickly snuck into the spotlight (or the spotlight found him) as this endearing lothario who, in many ways, is the quintessential modern mutant.

Every week Popverse embraces its Marvel fandom with a unvarnished, super-saccharine take on a Marvel moment we love in our series, Marvel-ous. This week, it's Doop's love life.

Sex, lies, and videographers: The Doop story

Prior to his life as an X-Men, Doop was a documentary filmmaker - but it's his own life during that period that sounds like a documentary - or better yet, a reality show. During those years, Doop has revealed he was sexually active - living even back then outside the antiquated social norms of loving only men or only women, by not limiting himself to romance with one gender (or even two).

Unintentionally it seems, Doop quietly became Marvel Comics' most prominent pansexual and non-binary character - and not with a 'wink' or an off-the-page reference, but in the comics. In 2014, writer Peter Milligan underlined it, highlighted it, and bedazzled it, saying Doop "ignored the questions, whether he was male, female, straight, gay." 

And like many of us who don't fit the societal norms of the past (or the sex assigned to us at birth), Doop is unlike his parents or anyone in his line. How? It was revealed a few years back that he comes from a race of asexual hermaphrodites, and that the Papa Doop he was told about growing up was in fact his mother, Mama Doop.

The many loves of Doop

Doop has it all - confidence, humor, and is easy on the eyes (hey, that's the way Mike Allred drew him!). He said to have had a torrid romance with Madonna, had a no-strings-attached relationship with the Shi'ar barbarian Warbird, and was even known to woo the flatscans of Westchester County when he was working at Xavier's School for Gifted Mutants.

In 2006's I ♥ Marvel: My Mutant Heart #1, we learn that Doop was the heart-palpitating paramour for a beautiful young woman who happened to be married - and it wasn't an open marriage. After being confronted by a grizzled detective hired by the husband to suss out if his wife is a philanderer, Doop does the honorable thing and ends the relationship with the woman - only to take up with the detective.

In terms of matters of the heart, Doop revealed a long-simmering love for Kitty Pryde, and even proposed to her with a ring and everything. Things didn't work out, but in his own Doop-ish way he was able to avoid having it sour the relationship.

If you want the sordid details on it all, you're going to be left wanting. Doop isn't one to kiss and tell - many of the relationships I've touched on are things mentioned only in passing by Doop. But in much the same way as he is referred to as "living in the margins of the X-Men," Doop is equally really living in the background of your comic books.

Find yourself in the Marvel U with our MCU watch order, best Marvel Comics list, all of the MCU movies ranked, and our weekly column on all things Marvel - Marvel Matters.