ADVENTURES IN ROMANCE "Heels Over Head In Love"

With Labor Day coming up, it's time to ease into Autumn...

...with a story from the short-lived (and never reprinted) St John's Adventures in Romance #1 (1949)!

Written by the prolific Dana Dutch, about whom very little is known, except his extensive list of  comic scripts.
Interestingly, out of 206 identified scripts, over 200 were romance stories, with a smattering of superhero and high adventure!

Illustrated by the versatile Frank Bolle, who's still active in the field today!

Here's his website!

Next week:
We Don't Yet Know What We'll Present!
But We Guarantee That...

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

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Romance Without Tears
featuring comics stories written by Dana Dutch! 

A MOON, A GIRL...ROMANCE "Summer Love"

Before EC Comics became (in)famous for doing horror and sci-fi comics...

...they covered every genre in comics, including romance!

They just didn't do all of them as well as horror and sci-fi...

Illustrated by "Ghastly" Graham Ingels, this tacky tale from EC's A Moon, A Girl...Romance #11 (1949) is, perhaps, the perfect example of why EC is not known for its' romance comics.

To be fair, that's not quite accurate...EC's post-horror comics title Confessions Illustrated was a first-rate romance b/w graphic magazine (not comic), targeted at the late-teen/young adult audience!

But it didn't sell, and, like the rest of the Picto-Fiction line is incredibly hard to find today!

Next Week:

We don't know yet what we'll present, but we can guarantee...

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

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EC Complete Picto-Fiction Library

(includes all 3 issues of Confessions Illustrated [including the never-published final issue]

Note: The Confessions Illustrated volume is unavailable separately from the Picto-Fiction set, but the whole set is well-worth it!)

MARVEL ROMANCE REDUX "I Was a Beach Blanket Barbarian!"

Five years after DC did the snarky Truer than True Romance trade paperback...

..which took old romance comics and rewrote them,.Marvel did a mini-series based on the same concept...except it was written entirely by males!
(The DC book was rewritten by a female writer.)
Here's what they did with yesterday's tale.with an interesting combination of both the Jack Kirby/Vince Colletta original and the John Romita Sr-modified/updated version..

Re-written by John Lustig, who had experience doing similar re-writes of Charlton's First Kiss series as Last Kiss.
You can check them out HERE!

Next Week...

We Don't Yet Know What We'll Present, But We DO Know...

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

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Marvel Romance Redux

TEEN-AGE ROMANCE / OUR LOVE STORY "Summer Must End!"

We're only at the middle of August, not quite at the end of Summer......

Cover art by Jack Kirby and George Klein

...but this tale by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Vince Colletta just screamed to be told (and not for the reason you think)!

PSST!

Wanna know a secret?

This story, which we're presenting from Atlas' Teen-Age Romance #84 (1961) later appeared in Marvel's Our Love Story #9 (1971) in an extremely-modified form!

The art in Our Love Story was retouched by art director John Romita Sr to "update" the hairstyles and some of the fashions, including the swimsuits...

"Why did they do that?" you may ask...

With sales falling on most non-superhero genres in the late 1960s (including Western and war as well as romance), this "updated reprinting" became a common practice on romance comics until the genre all-but died out in the late 1970s.

Publishers would do a new 6-12 page lead story and use retouched reprints to fill out the book.

Editors felt that:

a) the plots were relatively timeless.

b) updating the art was cheaper than totally-redrawing the story. 

c) the artists were better-utilized doing stuff that sold better (like superheroes).

d) the audience for romance comics, unlike superhero comics, totally-changed every 5-6 years anyway, and wouldn't notice the "old" plots.
But this wasn't the last time the story would be modified.
As you'll see tomorrow, Marvel could modify more than just the art!

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Beach Read TO WED THE DEVIL Epilogue

And now, after all this supernatural mishigas...

...the lovely ingenue, Sarah Shulman and the studly hero, Jerome Moore will be joined in wedded bliss!

I guess writer Len Wein and artist Tony DeZuniga felt the only way to get all that exposition in only three pages was to do them as an illustrated text piece!

BTW: look closely at the cover.

The border illustrations are art from the Epilogue re-used, but as color line art!

Speaking of the cover...note the insert painting is extremely "muddy"

Considering it's an original done specifically for the comic by noted paperback (particularly gothic romance) cover artist Jerome Podwil, it's a shame the technology of the time, despite innovative production manager Jack Adler's best effort, couldn't do better!
I presume the cost of doing a full-color separation put it out of the question, so he tried his best with a black and white half-tone with flat color added.

Here's the actual painting (scanned from the original)!

It's the only time Podwill, with numerous pulp and paperback art credits, did any work in comic books!

Perhaps he was disappointed with how it turned out?

One other note:

This is the only time I've ever seen a Jewish heroine in a gothic romance story.

Nothing is made of that aspect throughout the tale (nor should it have).

And the Epilogue's rendering of the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony is underplayed, though it's curious that the location for the cermony is referred to as a chapel, rather than a temple.

The only time I've ever seen a Jewish religious building referred to as a "chapel" was as part of a funeral home!

Next Week:

We Return to Our Usual Weekly Wednesday Post!

But Remember...

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

And now a word from our sponsor...

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Showcase Presents

Secrets of Sinister House

...which reprints the four issues of Sinister House of Secret Love (including this one), but in black and white!

Beach Read TO WED THE DEVIL Chapter 5 "Marriage of Fear"

We Have Already Seen...

...comely ingenue Sarah Shulman has apparently been seduced by the elegant, handsome, and sinister Baron Dumont, whom she is to wed so his wealth can prevent her banker father from being imprisoned for embezzlement!
More accepting of her fate, the innocent girl returns to her room... 

You may wonder, how did Sarah's uncle and his friend save her and Justin?

Well, they're not exactly amateurs at this sort of thing!

The demon-fighting duo previously-appeared a couple of months earlier in DC's House of Secrets #89 (1971).

Considering how, without knowing who they were, their appearance at the climax of this tale is somewhat "out of left field", a footnote earlier in the tale would've been welcome!
It's probable that editor Joe Orlando felt audiences for straight supernatural comics and gothic romance comics wouldn't overlap, but still, a little "cross pollination" of audiences wouldn't have been out of place...

BTW, you can read that awesome adventure HERE!

But you really must return...

Tomorrow

...for our story's Happy Ending!

You'll Cry if You Miss It!

(and You'll Cry if You Attend the Wedding!

I Always Do!)

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Gothic Tales of Haunted Love