Amorous Education VARSITY "Follow That Girl!"

We Close Out Amorous Education  for 2026 with...Harvey Kurtzman???

Before landing at EC Comics, Harvey was freelancing everywhere, including an ongoing gig at this college-themed magazine where his two-pager about campus mating rituals appeared in 1949!

Next Week

We Prove Love Can be Scary  in Our Annual Halloween HeartBreak  Blogathon!

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

Amorous Education MEET MISS PEPPER "My Dearest..."

Not every  romance comic story set in school involved student/student or even student/teacher "interaction"...

...in a couple of series, it was teacher/teacher "relationships"!

Written and illustrated by Joe Kubert and Bob Bean (nobody's certain as to who did what on which page or even panel), this never-reprinted story from St john's Meet Miss Pepper (1954) was ripped-off...I mean derived...from the then-popular CBS radio and TV series Our Miss Brooks!

Note: In the 1950s, it wasn't unusual for a series to begin as a radio show, then carry over to the then-new medium of television, sometimes running in both formats simultaneously as this series did!
It was popular enough to warrant a b-movie with the tv show cast (done as the series ended it's run) which tied up the show's plotlines ending with Miss Brooks and Mr Boynton engaged!

There was a one-shot Our Miss Brooks comic from Dell (the biggest producer of radio/movie/tv tie-in comics), but, for whatever reason, it didn't lead to an ongoing series!

As you can see from this intro page to the Our Miss Brooks comic, Miss Pepper followed the format and characters of Miss Brooks almost to a "T", with one major exception...Miss Brooks chased after hunky teacher Mr Boynton, while Miss Pepper was chased by hunky teacher Mr Phizz!
The comic played the romance humorously, much like other teen humor books.

Meet Miss Pepper lasted only two, never-reprinted, issues, then Miss Pepper disappeared (except for occasional excerpts in history/reference books) forever from print.

Next Week:
We Continue with Stories Combining School and Sex!
And Yes, You'll Cry Your Eyes Out If You Miss It!

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Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane
Volume 1: Super Crush
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Amorous Education MY DATE COMICS "Unusual Dates as told to Jean Anne Marten: Story of Fran Pickett"

Though It Was, Technically, a Teen Humor Comic...

...Hillman's My Date was sort of a lead-in to the first serious romance comics Young Romance and Young Love!

Conceived and produced as a competitor to the escapades of Archie and the hormonally-driven Riverdale crowd, My Date featured a lot of work by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, though they were still assembling their Simon & Kirby Studio at that point.
Unlike Young Romance and Young Love, which the S&K Studio "packaged" (editing/scripting/art/pre-press production) for Prize Comics, and began a couple of months after My Date hit the stands, their work on My Date was edited by one of Hillman Comics' in-house staff, Ed Cronin.
But, it's believed that they felt comics were ready for a more serious book about romance, similar to the numerous pulp and slick-stock prose magazines of the era popular with teen-age and young adult women, resulting in Young Romance, which was also young adult-oriented!
This particular story, part of the anthology feature My Date, supposedly-about readers' letters adapted into graphic form, which ran through all four issues of the series, was illustrated by Dan Barry, a journeyman who later freelanced for a lot of different publishers before moving over to steady work on syndicated newspaper strips.
The writer is, sadly, unknown.

Next Week:
We'll Present Another Amorous Education Adventure!
You'll Cry Your Eyes Out if You Miss It!

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A History of American Romance Comics
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Amorous Education CO-ED ROMANCES "Education for Love"

Cupid returns to the classroom...

...as we spend the rest of September with hormonally-driven college and high school students!

Art by Al Camy.
The writer is unknown.
PL's Co-Ed Romances (and its' "sister book" Love Life) only had a single issue each in 1951.

PL Publishing is noted as the only comics company with more than a single title to last only 6 months before going belly-up!
They published eight books, ranging from romance to sci-fi to Western to crime to jungle heroine to horror!
None ran more than three issues.

Next Week:

We Continue with Stories Combining School and Sex!
And Yes, You'll Cry Your Eyes Out If You Miss It!

And Now a Word from Our Sponsor...
Support True Love Comics Tales
Visit Amazon and Buy...

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane
Volume 1: Super Crush
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Amorous Education FIRST LOVE ILLUSTRATED "I Joined a Teen-Age Sex Club!"

As Students Prepare to Return to Class

...we thought we'd provide some reference about campus life that couldn't be reprinted until more than a half-century after its' appearance in Harvey's First Love Illustrated #13 (1951)!

Though Harvey had heavily-modified other romance comics stories when they were reprinted after the Comics Code Authority began regulating content in 1954 (as we showed HERE and HERE), this one was apparently so controversial, that no amount of changes could make it acceptible to the Code administrators, so it remained hidden from the reading public until 2016, when, with the repressive Code finally defunct, it could be reprinted!
BTW, if it looks familiar to long-time readers, that's because we ran the b/w original art for the complete story a couple of years ago HERE!

We Don't Yet Know What We'll Re-Present!
But, We Guarantee That...
You'll Cry Your Eyes Out If You Miss It!
And Now a Word From Our Sponsor (who happens to be us!)
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Weird Love Volume 3
I Joined a Teen-Age Sex Club!
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Prom Night: Dream or Nightmare? JETTA OF THE 21st CENTURY "Jet Jaunt"

It's Prime Time for Prom time...Even If It's in the Future...as Seen from the 1950s!

(We didn't skip the 1950s, just moved it down the line)

But, in teen humor comic books (even set in the future), things never go smoothly!

 

OK, maybe it's just as well that we of the real 21st Century still don't have flying cars...

As you might have guessed, Archie artist Dan DeCarlo was the illustrator for this tale from Standard Comics' Jetta of the 21st Century #5 (1952), which was actually her first issue!

(Issues 1-4 were a romance comic called Today's Romance!)

Next week:

Our Final Prom Story, Set in the Swinging '70s! And we can guarantee that...

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

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

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Dan DeCarlo's Jetta

Amourous Education TEEN-AGE ROMANCE "We Can't Marry Yet"

Though "Instant Gratification" is a Way of Life Today...

...it wasn't always so, as this never-reprinted story from Atlas' Teen-Age Romance #70 (1961) proves!

Edited/plotted by Stan Lee, scripted by Larry Lieber, penciled by Dick Giordano, and inked by Vince Colletta, this well-told tale of gratification deferred benefits from an especially-good coloring job by a (sadly) unknown colorist who was obviously "feeling" the material!

Next Week:

We're Not Yet Sure What We'll Present!

But We Can Guarantee That...

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

Amourous Education HI-SCHOOL ROMANCE "A Kiss to Remember"

We Conclude Amourous Education for 2024 with...

...a tale which practically defines "wholesome"!
Not like that "Teen-Age Sex Club" tale we ran a couple of weeks ago!

With the names of both the writers and illustrators lost to the mists of time, this story from Harvey's Hi-School Romance #4 (1950) seems like a "new direction" during a period when romance comics were more oriented to older teens and even young women who followed romance magazines and radio soap operas!

Next Week:

We Haven't Decided What We'll Present...Yet!

But We Can Guarantee...

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

And now a word from our sponsor..

Support True Love Comics Tales!

Visit Amazon and Order...

Love on the Racks

A History of American Romance Comics
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