COOKIE "Do Your Christmas Shopping Early"

How do you make some extra cash for Christmas?

If you're a teenager named "Cookie", it's usually the hard way...

I've found almost NO Christmas-specific romance comic stories!
Heck, I had to go through a stack of British comics to find last-year's tale (click HERE)

So I went with this teen humor strip from Cookie #10 (1947), written and illustrated by Dan Gordon, who was a writer-animator-director for the Fleischer Studios (Superman, Popeye), then went into comics, finally returning to animation at Hanna-Barbera where he co-created (among others) The Flintstones!
Note: Archie Comics has a huge number of Christmas-themed stories featuring Archie and Betty & Veronica!
I'm looking to find a couple of the earliest ones that would still be Public Domain to use here!
Wish me luck!

Next Week:

We don't know what we'll publish...yet!

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

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Amorous Education SEDUCTION "Second Stringer"

What could be more autumnal than college football?

Perhaps a romance between a girl and two guys...a college football star and a college bookstore employee?

Scripted by Steve Jones and illustrated by Sandy Carruthers, this never-reprinted tale from Malibu's one-shot anthology Seduction (1991) takes a classic romance comics trope and updates it for a more modern sensibility!

You may note the art isn't as "polished" as most of the work we've presented.

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, there was a boom in b/w comics, and publishers were desperate for material, so some artists who were not-quite-ready-for-primetime got a once in a lifetime break.

One of them was Sandy Carruthers, who co-created a comic series that would produce a far more famous movie/tv franchise...Men in Black!

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Heart Throbs

Best of DC Romance Comics

Amorous Education MEET MISS BLISS "Hello"

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

...in at least one series, it was teacher/teacher "relationships"!

Written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Al Hartley, this never-reprinted intro tale from Atlas' Meet Miss Bliss (1955) 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 Bliss 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 Bliss was chased by hunky teacher Mr Grant!
The comic played the romance humorously, much like other teen humor books.

Meet Miss Bliss lasted only four issues, then Miss Bliss became a supporting character in the better-selling Patsy and Hedy comic book!

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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Amorous Education HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL DIARY "Forbidden Subject"

Think college romances are tricky to deal with?

High school presents equally-difficult problems for hormonally-driven teens...

This fairly-saccharine, never-reprinted tale from Charlton's High School Confidential Diary #2 (1960) was scripted by Joe Gill, penciled by Joe Sinnott and inked by Vince Colletta.

The Comics Code Authority took a lot of the excitement out of what was a pretty exciting genre which previously was aimed at a late teen/early adult female audience!
Take a look at 1940s and 1950s stories we've run to see what I mean!

By the time the Code was revised and "loosened" in the early 1970s, it was too late for the all-but deceased romance genre!

Next Week:
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And Yes, You'll Cry Your Eyes Out If You Miss It!

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Amorous Education SORORITY SECRETS "Secret!"

Halloween's over, so it's time to return to class...

...where students are diligently-applying themselves to the subject at hand!

Moral: if you don't like someone, blackmail them with a lie (but only if there's nothing truthful that's really juicy).

Ironically, that's exactly the sort of thing we see on prime-time soaps today, almost 70 years later!

This never-reprinted tale from Toby's Sorority Secrets #1 (1954) shows the styles of several noted Golden Age artists.

Among the talents listed as working on the book (but not as to which stories they did) are; Bernard Baily, Ben Brown, David Gantz, and John Rosenberger.

This particular story shows both Baily and Rosenberger's work in certain panels, so we'll go with them as the illustrators.

The writer, though, is unknown.

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...
Please Support True Love Comics Tales
Visit Amazon and Buy...

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane
Volume 1: Super Crush