Thanks! Glad you are enjoying it. I'm certainly finding these issues very interesting to read!

This is fascinating. I shall definitely be reading with interest.

I may not be contributing much, as my knowledge of romance does not extend much beyond the occasional hilarious (and probably unintended) innuendo on covers. But don't take lack of response as lack of interest.

I'd like to say this is what they were going for, but I don't think it was. The guy just seems to be a donkey butt. 

This is one of the comics that really made me fall in love with the romance genre to begin with, no pun intended. I saw this incredible cover and I knew I had to own it. Someone asked me recently why I read romance comics. The answer I gave is that, when the stories are good, they're romantic and even moving. And when they're bad, they're often hilariously campy. Either way, they are almost always entertaining (well, almost - some SA DC in particular get very formulaic).

And sometimes, the stories are both at the same time.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Young Love #104:






This is the first of the issues I've looked at where the Vietnam aspect of the story isn't highlighted on the cover. And with a release date of March 15, 1973, it's also the latest of them (so far). The timing is interesting. The U.S. signed the Paris Peace Accords in January, 1973, which stipulated a withdrawal of American troops within 60 days. This withdrawal was completed in March, 1973, the same time this issue came out.

The story inside is the third story archetype I've identified, which is a wounded vet falls in love with a caretaker who nurses him back to health and helps him love again. It's also an example of another overlapping story type which would go on to become a cliche across all media in the 70's and 80's, as it's about a vet suffering from PTSD. From John Rambo to Vega$ to The A-Team to Spencer: For Hire and Magnum P.I>, American TV and movies were full of emotionally affected Vietnam vets. Though this was maybe more common in action settings, as it also gave a good reason for them to have a particular set of skills, it carried over into all sorts of other genres, including romance comics here.

The story: Lee is a Vietnam vet who tries to drown his problems in a sea of female flesh. But these encounters only leave him even colder inside. He heads to a countryside lodge and meets a woman who captures his imagination. Despite his best efforts, though, she doesn't seem into him. Finally, after a few encounters, he almost drowns in the lake while trying to swim to her. She rescues him from the seaweed, saving his life. He thinks this is a sign they should be together, but she sees it as something else - a sign from god! That's because she's a nun! She was doubting her calling, though, and was at the lodge taking a break to decide whether to go through with her vows. Her answered prayer at being able to save him, though, convinces her to take the cloth for good. She leaves him in the capable hands of the lodge receptionist, who has been throwing herself at the distracted Lee for the whole issue. THE END!

This story is unusual for a few reasons, and not just because it's about a nun. First, it's a full length story, instead of a short 5-8 pager like the others. Second, it's told from the man's point of view instead of the woman's. Usually these stories are about how the women want and need love and connection, but here, Sister Teresa is looking for a connection to god, and it's Lee who needs the emotional love connection.





This is by Robert Kanigher, and he establishes right on the first page that Lee's emotional problems stem from his time in Vietnam, with artist John Rosenberger even comparing the physicality of war and romance in the opening sequence:





Despite the campy cover and some lurid scenes - like a guy attacking the nun in the woods with a knife - this is actually a pretty interesting (and early) portrayal of Vietnam vets struggling to acclimate to civilian life on their return. Kanigher, of course, spent many years writing war books for DC, including the great Sgt. Rock series, as well as Enemy Ace, The Losers, Unknown Soldier, and Haunted Tank. Those, for me, are his best work, and in his best stories he frequently examines the human cost of war. So in that sense, it's not unusual for him to write this type of story; but for a romance comic, it's definitely a different sort of thing.

This is a good one! The folks at Sequential Crush have written up a longer examination of this one if you're interested; I borrowed a couple of their scans, as I don't currently have access to my copy of this issue.





Next time, we'll take a look at another story that deals with vets and PTSD, but in a different, and much more meta way, because even by 1977, it had already become a bit of a storytelling cliche. 

Or even older. There are plenty of impressment songs from the Age of Sail. The man has been drafted into naval service (or kidnapped off to the Crimean Front) by a "press gang" remunerated based on how many warm bodies it can round up. He'll be gone for months, years, or forever, likely with no news sent home should he die. Or perhaps he's volunteered on a commercial vessel of uncertain prospects. Will his woman wait around until he returns? Judy Collins wrote and recorded one example of this sort of tale in 1965:





The novel and film Barry Lyndon show the social-climbing protagonist shacking up for a time with a woman whose husband was away at war. The recent hit Broadway musical Hamilton also has a plot point about Aaron Burr's affair with Theodosia Prevost while her husband, a British officer, was off fighting the colonists.

Charlton didn't credit its writers until later (maybe never in the romance books) but the odds are good that some or all of the Charlton stories mentioned were written by Joe Gill. He was on staff at Charlton, writing scripts all day every day for decades.

Minor correction: Judy Collins did not write "Early, Early in the Spring". It's a traditional English folk ballad that dates from the mid-to-late 17th Century, almost 300 years before Collins was born.