The Charlton books got a little weird toward the end.

^^^^oh, lordy. I am gonna need that book, too.

Pardon my Swiss cheesy memory, I know some members on this board can fill in the actual details. but there was a great series of informative articles on Romance comics back in the 1980s in the CBGB fanzine. They had a female regular columnist (don't remember her name) and she wrote up great essays on the genre's origin as well as a publisher-by-publisher review. What was fascinating was how pervasive the genre developed in the early 50s. We usually equate the marketplace at that time awash with horror, crime, western or other subject matters. But according to what (Ahh. I just remembered her last name) Nolan compiled, Romance comics was the largest genre with over 33% of the comics dealing with that subject. She called it 'The Love Glut" which might be in the title of the book that she wrote that compiled and expanded on those articles. It might be available in your library system or on Amazon. Its considered the best research book on the matter and a fun read as well

God, I love those old DC romance comics.  Like mrjupiter said, the art was superb. Reminds me that a few years ago I picked up Heart Throbs #98 (1965) for a few bucks. The big treat for me was the issue's first story--it was illustrated by none other than Gene Colan! You haven't lived until you've seen his romance art. You know all those crazy panel divisions, the large nearly full-page panels of a face relating events that are shown in the panel's background, the use of blacks and shadows, the expressionistic line work? It's all here! It's pure Colan and it's amazing.

The Book was Love on the Racks...



-M

Falling in Love #137

October, 1972




Story One: Holly is a professional tennis player. She's also a heartless harridan, who loves and leaves with no regard for anyone's feelings. One day, she sets her sights on Dean, who seems to be into Lisa. Holly makes it her business to win Dean away from Lisa. Still, Lisa hangs around. So Holly takes things to the next level: during a match against each other, she crushes Lisa, easily defeating her.

Lisa is young and naive and, apparently, a giant weenie, because she's so embarrassed about losing that she quits the sport! Dean then reams out Holly, saying that Holly should have taken it easy on Lisa instead of destroying her confidence. Because that's how professional athletics works. Dean says he can't possibly love someone so mean as Holly, so he dumps her.

Naturally, Holly feels terrible and realizes she's a terrible person. So, also naturally, she quits tennis herself, talks Lisa into playing again, and becomes Lisa's coach. Dean is impressed by the new Holly and asks Holly to marry him! THE END!!

Story Two: Janet and Ross have been dating forever, and just assume they're going to get married and whatever. But Janet is bored to tears. So she suggests they go their separate ways for the summer and take vacations apart. Ross thinks this is a dumb idea, but okay. Janet meets a dude named Kent and they have a whirlwind romance. But when she mentions getting serious, he runs for the hills. Janet's like, oh well, whatever, I still have Ross on the back burner. So she goes back to Ross - only he's had his own summer fling with some other chick! Turns out he was bored senseless by their relationship too. He literally says the words "I just wanted some excitement before I settled down." Yet, for some reason, neither sees their mutual boredom as a red flag; instead, they both decide this means they are really meant for each other, and they get back together. I think this is how and why couples eventually discovered polyamory. Ross, Janet, good damn luck to you both, because this is not going to work out. Morons. THE END!!

Story Three: This is a keeper right here. Glory is a wicked smart college student, but she keeps driving men away because she's so smart and they all feel emasculated by dating a woman with a brain. She studies how other girls pretend to find guys interesting in order to get laid. After graduating and getting a job at the United Nations, she decides to put this new knowledge into practice. She begins playing dumb with everyone, and gets tons of dates. But now she's bored. Finally, she meets a guy who's really interesting. It seems to go well at first, but then he breaks up with her. Why? because she's too dumb and compliant for him! Glory's like, WTF?! So she goes into hyper-intelligent mode, switching her brain back on to prove to the dude that she's not a dumb bunny. The guy is like, holy crap! So he immediately proposes with this somewhat unfortunate phrasing: "I want to marry you because of your mind!" Pause. New word balloon. "And because I love you." Like, oh yeah, also I love you and stuff. But mostly, check out that sweet brain! But she's totally fine with someone wanting to hump her brain. THE END!!


Notes: The tennis story is eight kinds of screwed up. Of all the a-hole things Holly does in the story, the one thing she does that isn't wrong at all is to defeat Lisa in a competitive match. Yet everyone acts like she's a witch for being so "mean." They're professionals, for god's sake! Tell Serena she's being too mean to her opponents by not letting up on them. Give me a frigging break. Dean is way, way out of line reaming Holly out for this, especially since he's a sportswriter; not only should he know better, but it's a conflict of interest in the first place for him to be dating either of them, and in the second place, he's a total tool!

There are several interesting text features this issue. First, there's a test to see if you're a nice girl. Turns out, I am. The gist of the questionnaire is that you really shouldn't emotionally manipulate your boyfriend. That's bad form. The second text feature is from our old pal Carol Andrews. This time she doesn't even bother dispensing advice. Instead, she prints a giant letter from a girl who is in love with a guy from the other side of the tracks; she wants to marry him, but her family will disown her if she does. So what does Carol have to say? Well, she crowdsources the advice! Yes, she asks readers to give their opinions, with the best opinion winning $5! Jesus, lady, way to not even try! And then there's a third feature, with is an old school text story about a fat girl who loses weight and becomes hot. She starts getting lots of dates, but they don't work out, so she decides to date a fat guy in hopes of getting him to lose weight so he can be hot too. Not really sure what to say about that. Yeah. Huh. Let's pretend that never happened.

GCD's credits for this issue:

A great COVER by Nick Cardy.
Story One: Win Mortimer and Vince Coletta
Story Two: holy cow, they have a writing credit! It's Jack Oleck, with art by the great Kurt Schaffengerger, and the not so great Vince Coletta on inks
Story Three: Vinne C. on inks again, but no credit for the penciller. Which is too bad, because it's a very interesting job. I'd swear I've seen this penciller before, but who or where I don't know

My Grade: B-. Great cover, and the final story and weird text features make up for two kinda boring other stories.

I guess you can divide the Romance Comics genre into 3 parts

Pre Code-Started by Simon and Kirby. Never knowing what to expect since the stories might involve violence, drugs, somewhat mature themes, bra and panty panels to attract a male audience

Post Code-Sanitized stories that were forever stuck with 1950s wholesome values even through the 70s

And then there were these