REALISTIC ROMANCES "Thrill Crazy"

When bad girls become even worse...

...there will be hell to pay, as seen in this tale from Avon's Realistic Romances #16 (1954).

The entire issue is more a crime comic than a romance comic.

The other tale we've run from that issue featured both unrestrained necking and "reefer" aka "mary jane" aka (gasp) "pot"!

Trivia:

This story was from the second run of Realistic Romances which ran #15-#17.

The first series ran from #1-#8.

A third series from another publisher ran #1, then #8-#9!

So if you're looking to collect this title, there's no #10-#14, but two #1s and #8s!

Next week:

We haven't decided yet what it'll be, but we can guarantee that...

You'll Cry Your Eyes Out if You Miss It!

(Oh, you've heard that, eh?)

And now a word from out sponsor...

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DARLING ROMANCE "I Stole My Sister's Man"

It's time to get back to what this blog is really about...

...a story about a sleazy, sordid, and slutty sibling trying to steal her sister's guy!

(and it's from Archie Comics, no less!)

The success of Simon & Kirby's Young Romance unleashed a horde of romance comic imitators  including this decidedly non-Archie title from Archie Comics.

These pre-Comics Code series featured stories that rivaled the true confessions-style magazines for naughtiness and radio soap operas for ridiculous plot twists, as this tale from Darling Romance #1 (1949) demonstrates.

The unknown writer went under the pen-name "Mary Woods", but the art of Bill Fix (who did only romance stories during his short career in comics) is very distinctive...and he conveniently signed it!

Next week:

We haven't decided yet what it'll be, but we can guarantee that...

You'll Cry Your Eyes Out if You Miss It!

(Oh, you've heard that, eh?)

And now a word from out sponsor...

Visit our

True Love Comics Tales™

Comics Collectibles Shop

TIFFANY SINN "St Louis Stake Out"

The "CIA Sweetheart" is back (and on the cover, yet)...

Art by Dick Giordano

...and she's about to discover spy organizations don't place "employee relations" high on their list of priorities...

If you picked up the next issue of Charlton's Career Girl Romances, you didn't see "Three Shots of a Laser"!

Tiffany Sinn was MIA (Missing In Action)!

She re-surfaced several months later, in the back of Secret Agent #10 (1967) as shown HERE, with the plotline resolved by a flashback showing Tiffany shooting Rex's masked brother Al seconds after the end of this tale, and then, apparently, forgetting all about Rex!

Weird, eh?

Why the radical shift in storyline?

We'll never know, since there were no other Tiffany Sinn tales published...

This particular story from Career Girl Romances #39 (1967) was written by her co-creator Gary Friedrich and illustrated by Luis Domiguez, who, unfortunately, never had a high-profile ongoing series.

Instead he wandered all over the industry, doing almost 700 stories and covers in every genre imaginable...except super-heroes, which may explain why he's not better-known.

Western fans know him as the second, and longest-running, artist on the original Weird Western series of Jonah Hex.

I'd like to offer an extremely grateful "thank you" to reader ianintheuk for graciously providing the scans in this post!

Thank you, Ian.

It's pop culture fans like you who make this sort of sharing both fun and worthwhile.

Next week:

We haven't decided yet what it'll be, but we can guarantee that...

You'll Cry Your Eyes Out if You Miss It!

(You will! Really!)

And now a word from our sponsor...

Visit our

Heroines

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HARVEY "Harvey and Duke"

How close can you come to doing an Archie "imitator" without being sued?

...ask comics legend Stan Lee, who tried it...twice...and failed both times!

Stan "the Man" Lee will forever be enshrined in comics history as the co-creator of an astounding number of popular, long-running characters.
But Harvey wasn't one of them.
Despite taking all the established Archie tropes, reworking them slightly by making Harvey the "new kid in town", and adding Stan Goldberg's extremely Dan DeCarlo-esque art, Harvey was gone after only six issues from 1970-72!
At least it lasted longer than Stan's previous Archie clone, Homer Hooper, which went bye-bye after only four issues.

Next week:

The return of Tiffany Sinn: the "CIA Sweetheart" in a titanic tale of triumph and tragedy!

You'll Cry Your Eyes Out if You Miss It!

(Oh, you've heard that, eh?)