Wonder why the suffix "... Nurse in Love" is used for this series?
Well. when a character who's never appeared before can deduce what's going on, it's pretty damned blatant!
You have to ask, if Cynthia Doyle: Nurse in Love's feelings are that obvious to a person she's never seen before, why doesn't Doctor Benson realize how Nurse Doyle feels?
Because this is a soap opera in comic book form, that's why!
It's
not meant to be even a semi-serious feature about a female medical professional, like
Dr Pat!
This is, as most 1950s-1970s strips starring nurses were, a three-Kleenex romance comic!
Heck, before the book became Cynthia Doyle: Nurse in Love as of #66, it was Sweetheart Diaries, a romance anthology!
Cynthia appeared in a single story in the final issue, then the entire book was turned over to her!
Why?
As we pointed out in
an entry about City Surgeon,
in the early 1960s, one of the most-popular genres in pop culture was "medical drama"!
Spearheaded on TV by hunky prime-time physicians Dr Kildare and Ben Casey along with the related series The Nurses as well as daytime soap operas with hospital settings and paperback romance novels with covers featuring "studs in scrubs" with swooning nurses, comics hopped on the medical bandwagon!
Charlton , which couldn't afford the rights to comics based on any of the TV shows, launched numerous series featuring doctors and nurses including Dr Tom Brent: Young Intern, Nurse Betsy Crane, Young Interns, Sue & Sally Smith: Flying Nurses and, of course, this book!
(Oddly, there were never any cross-over stories between the various books!)
Written by Joe Gill, penciled by Dick Giordano and inked by Vince Colletta, this story from issue #69 (1963) came about halfway through the book's run.
BTW, if you're wondering why this story has a "Covid-19" classification, it's because Dr Stark is suffering from a fatal disease, and the surgery can only postpone his inevitable demise!
Note: there were never any comic series or books about male nurses!
There were several one-off tales, but the profession was considered "unmanly".
Next Week...
Another Tale of Disease, Debilitating Conditions and Desire!
You'll Cry Your Eyes Out If You Miss It!
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