Showing posts with label Darling Magazines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Darling Magazines. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Love IS a BattleField DARLING LOVE "I Want My Soldier Boy"

Today's story is About War...

...in several different ways!
Yet this ad, which utilized the tale's splash page, doesn't give away any of them!
Let's read on...











We've presented stories about Korean and German war brides who faced difficulties adjusting to their new lives in America after marrying servicemen, but never a case involving the husband's parents being prejudiced against the new wife!
It's not as if she's a "foreigner/alien" (non-English-speaking ethnic as many war brides were), but British, the nationality most white Americans at that point were descended from!
In fact WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) were the dominant ethnicity in business and politics from America's founding until the 1960s!
Notes:
Darling Love and it's sister, Darling Romance each ran a full-page ad promoting a story in the other's book!
AFAIK, publisher Darling Magazines was the only company to do this.
We took the ad from Darling Romance #5 (which used the tale's splash) and combined it with the rest of the story from Darling Love #5 (1950).
BTW, Darling Magazines was an imprint of MLJ Publishing, aka Archie Comics, which had been doing genre-specific imprints since the 1940s.
In the 1960s, they imitated Marvel with a Mighty Comics line featuring their various superhero character revivals, and in the 70s-80s, they had Red Circle, which published horror and super-hero material!
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!
Support True Love Comics Tales
Visit Amazon and Buy...
Agonizing Love

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

DARLING LOVE "Second Hand Love"

This is not an early April Fools joke!
Did you know Archie Comics once published romance comics?
No, not like this!
Like this...
and this!
Like almost all comics publishers at the end of World War II, Archie (then MLJ Magazines) experienced a major drop in sales as action-oriented comics (and super-heroes in particular) fell out of favor with readers.
Luckily, one of their other characters, Archie (along with his supporting cast), proved extremely-popular, and quickly replaced the super-heroes in various titles like Pep Comics and Top-Notch Laugh Comics (which became Laugh Comics) as well as new solo titles for Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead and others.
In fact, the company was renamed Archie Comics in 1946!
But that didn't mean the company had abandoned non-Archie concepts!
Due to sales generated in 1949 by then-new romance titles like Young Love, Archie jumped into the brand-new (to comics) teen and young adult women with two titles, Darling Love and Darling Romance published under the Darling Magazines imprint!
Though most of the tales were of the usual breathless "true love" type, a few were stories surprisingly-mature (more in the vein of soap operas), such as this never-reprinted one from Darling Love #8 (1951)...

Illustrated by Harry Lucey (who was also one of the primary Archie artists at the time), the subjects include "older man/younger woman", "widower with child remarrying", and "inadvertent motherhood" 
The two comics were bi-monthly on alternating months and lasted only two years (1949-1951) before being forced out by a glut of romance comics flooding the newsstands as every other publisher entered the compeetition.
Neither series has ever been reprinted!
Next Week:
We're Not Yet Sure What We'll Present!
But We Can Guarantee that If You Miss It...
You'll Cry Your Eyes Out!
And now a word from our Sponsor...
Please Support True Love Comics!
Visit Amazon and Order...