Five years after Truer than True Romance...
...Marvel did a mini-series based on the same concept...except it was written entirely by men!
Re-written by John Lustig, who had experience doing similar re-writes of Charlton's First Kiss series as Last Kiss.
The original version of this tale was the cover-featured story in Atlas' Teen-Age Romance #84 (1961)...
This was the original splash page...
...but the Marvel Romance Redux appearance wasn't the first reworking of this story!
When the tale was reprinted in Marvel's Our Love Story #9 (1971), it wasn't rewritten...it was redrawn!
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.You can read both the earlier versions 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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