Love is a Prison YOUNG LOVE "Love Behind Bars! II" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Innocent Protagonist...

...actually, this scene is about to happen...sort of!

Stephanie freaks out as she's about to meet her incarcerated boyfriend Vic as he is released from prison!
Returning home, she hastily packs, leaves a note for her parents, and boards a bus for New York City!
En route, she chats with her seatmate, a friendly old man who warns her of the perils of the Big City.
When Steph arrives at Manhattan's Port Authority bus terminal, she's shocked to discover the geezer had pickpocketed her, leaving her without money, credit cards, or ID!
When a pimp, seeing the distraught young woman, attempts to pick her up, he driven away by an elderly couple who claim they're from the "Travelers' Protection Agency" who bring her to their building, a hotel/halfway house for wayward girls...

Boy, when the Comics Code Authority loosened up the guidelines in 1971...they really loosened them!

A pimp, a cathouse/bordello with its' mistress (with her aide), and a hot-to-trot "john"!
Not exactly a typical day in a DC comic, eh?
So, in a somewhat-truncated ending, Vic's totally-innocent (and his conviction expunged), and Steph's released without even being booked (thus no arrest record)?

Don't ya just love a happy ending?

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Love is a Prison YOUNG LOVE "Love Behind Bars! II" Part 1

We Have Already Seen...

Watch now, as previous creatives writer Robert Kanigher and inker Vince Colletta, along with new penciler Ric Estrada continue the story a year later in DC's Young Love #124 (1977)...

Does this adorable elderly couple truly know "what's best" for her?

So how does she end up here?

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Love is a Prison YOUNG LOVE "Love Behind Bars!"

It starts off the way the previous "Love is a Prison" stories did...

...but you'll never see the ending that's coming!

It took a full year after this cover-featured tale by writer Robert Kanigher, penciler Art Saff, and inker Vince Colletta appeared in DC's Young Love #119 (1975-76), but there was a resolution to the story, as shown in this ad from Young Love #123 (1977)... 

You, Dear Reader, Won't Have to Wait a Year...or Even a Month to Find Out What Happens!

Just Be Here Tomorrow!

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Anything BUT Archie (sort of) A DATE WITH JUDY "Beach Fun with Cousin Roger" / SWING WITH SCOOTER "Cousin Roger's Hang-Up!"

This is the tale of a story that started out as "Anything BUT Archie"...

...but turned into...well..Archie when it was (sorta) reprinted!

Confused?

Don't worry, it'll all be made clear...

A Date with Judy began as a long-running (1941-1950) radio series with a female protagonist which became a TV series from 1951 to 1953.
During that period, it spun-off both a b-movie in 1948 and a DC teen humor comic book beginning in 1947 that this story was taken from.
This particular tale, illustrated by Bob Oksner, was from the final issue (#79) in 1960.
(Yes, the comic outlasted its' source by over half a decade!)
In 1969, DC's teen humor line was struggling, and, instead of doing new material for an oversized summer special, they took old, licensed material that would otherwise never be reprinted because they no longer owned the rights, and redrew the characters' heads, making them into the current crop of DC-owned characters!
So the earlier story starring Judy with her cousin and her boyfriend Oogie became a Scooter story with his girlfriend Cookie and her cousin, also named Roger!

You'll note neither Roger nor the cop were re-drawn by Henry Scarpelli for this re-worked story from DC's Swing with Scooter #20 (1969).

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1940s-1970s

An Illustrated History

YOUNG ROMANCE "Full Hands, Empty Heart" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Art by Bob Oksner and Frank Giacoia

...Nurse Phyllis Carter and Doctor Allan Tate bond over working together in the ER, and a romance develops between the medical professionals.
But it's a romance with a complication the medical professionals never thought they'd have to deal with...

Wait.
The doctor she's working with has just been murdered in front of her!
Even if she wasn't romantically-involoved with him...
They can't let her sit down and rest?
She's clearly in shock!
I wouldn't want her near patients in her present condition!
Plus, the police won't want to talk to her as a witness to the murder?
Speaking of that...has anybody restrained Johnny?
Written by Robert Kanigher, penciled by John Rosenberger and inked by Vince Colletta, this cover-featured story from DC's Young Romance #194 (1973) tries to jam a legitimate moral into the last few panels instead of giving it an extra page to play out in a more coherent manner.
Editor/writer Robert Kanigher was the most vocal proponent of racial equality in the DC editorial "Old Guard" of the 1950s-70s, scripting numerous anti-racist stories as well as introducing several Black characters into the DC Comics universe including...

...Nubia, the second ongoing character to bear the Wonder Woman title, as well as scripting this somewhat infamous Lois Lane story...

Though he meant well, Kanigher was rather heavy-handed, sometimes sacrificing plot logic (like the ending of "Full Hands, Empty Heart") to make a moral point.

Note: On some pages Phyllis (and other Black characters') skin is gray/purple and on some it's brown.
That's because on the pages showing her as gray, the color separators used the wrong combination of yellow, red (magenta) and blue (cyan) screens.
When the story was reprinted in Simon & Schuster's Heart Throbs: Best of DC Romance Comics (1979) trade paperback, the only editorial change was to correct the Black skin tones.

All the other coloring remained the same.

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