Love on the Racks: A History of American Romance Comics [Hardcover]
Michelle Nolan
Michelle Nolan (Author)

Product Details
Hardcover: 246 pages
Publisher: McFarland (April 9, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786435194
ISBN-13: 978-0786435197

amazon.com review:

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
For the better part of three decades romance comics were an American institution. Nearly 6,000 romance comics were published between 1947 and 1977, and there was a time when one of every five comics sold in the U.S. was a romance comic. This is the first book devoted entirely to the rarely studied world of romance comics. The text includes information on several types of romance comics and their creators, plus the history, numbers, and publishing frequency of dozens of romance titles. The author examines several significant periods in the development of the romance genre, including the origins of Archie Comics and other teen romance publications, the romance comic "boom and bust" of the 1950s, and the genre's sudden disappearance when fantasy and superhero comics began to dominate mainstream comics in the late 1970s.
About the Author
Michelle Nolan has been a newspaper and magazine feature writer for more than 40 years, working with such periodicals as Comics Buyer's Guide and Comic Book Marketplace. She lives in Bellingham, Washington.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0786435194/?tag=imwan-20

It's remarkable how little romance magazines and books get talked about, given how vast a proportion of the publishing industry they have made up for so long. They just don't get no respect! I wouldn't say they deserve any, either, but they are a huge and, one suspects (and fears) socially influential phenomenon that bears study.

All of which is to say I'd be interested to read that book sometime.

Its strange that both Romance and Western comics were so popular, but for some reason the history is so undocumented. Super-heroes, crime, horror - no problem finding info on these genres. I wonder why this is?

Wow -- nice rack!

Maybe superheroes just attract more people with obsessive personalities--people who have to have complete collections, and want to know all the behind-the-scenes stuff, and have everything documented and classified. Whereas romance and western readers just read to enjoy and don't think about the stories afterwards.

Probably correct, which sucks since I want to learn more about Western comics

Western movies and TV shows were still big when I was a kid. Every kid had a cowboy hat, six-guns and belt/holster, and possibly boots. Up until the Hanna Barbera boom of superhero shows, we only had the syndicated Superman show and Adam West's Batman. The rest of the TV schedule was littered with western programs.

Has anybody ever written anything about western comics? I've never seen anything except occasional articles about individual comics.

All I know about pulp westerns is that Max Brand was actually a would-be epic poet who made his living writing westerns while he tried to do what he considered his real work. And that western writer Noel Loomis was known as "Hot Lead" because he supposedly typed his stories straight into a Linotype machine so they'd be all ready to print.

One reason why Western and Romance comics have not been documented as much as, say, superheroes, is that they often were stand-alone stories, in fact most romance stuff was stand-alone stories.

Yeah, but there's a ton of info on pre-code horror and crime books out there, and they were the same. Westerns were more popular than bother other genres. My last comics order had 1950s Westerns by John Buscema and Joe Kubert, among others. It sucks that this isn't documented. I found 'em by accident, browsing the comic store's website.

Good point. Plus, within a given sub-genre they tend to be essentially the same story.

I have a thing for Romance comics. I tend to buy them up out of the dollar bin when I see them. They are a type of comic book that has disappeared off the face of the earth.

At HeroesCon this past june, I bought a 1951 Atlas comic called True Secrets for $3 (issue no. 11).

I also bought the Marvel Romance trade when it came out -- ostensibly for my wife ( and she loved it). I wish Marvel would put out more of its old romance comics in archival form. (That goes for Patsy Walker and Millie the Model, too. While I'm at it, I want Archie Archives going back to the original PEP. But I digress).

I think the good girl artist Matt Baker has been written about, perhaps in Alter Ego?

Recently I read that every fifth book published now is a type of romance. Which I can easily believe, based on what I see in trade publications and our book donations. Evidently at one time the proportion of comics in that genre was similar. But nobody in recent decades has succeeded with them, or even tried. I'm not sure there are even all that many romance manga imported.

Looking at a two-month period for Charlton in 1973 (most books were bi-monthly, so a two-month view works better):

* 7 cartoon licenses (four of 'em Flinstones-related)
* 5 horror anthologies
* 8 romance anthologies
* 2 super-hero
* 1 war
* 1 western

One of the very few romance comics I've ever seen was a Charlton title called "Haunted Love" that would've been published around that time. Two birds with one stone, I guess.

Yeah, there was a brief fling for gothic romance comics, but none of them sold well. DC did a couple, Charlton did one ... I think Marvel did one as well.

God! I own the one on the left! The story is a blatant rip off of Jane Eyre. They also swiped from O. Henry and many others.

The artists and writers were rarely credited and I would try to figure out who they were. Art, of course, was easier than writing.

I've got three issues of Haunted Love in my to-read pile, including the one pictured.

"Sinister House of Secret Love"? They were trying too hard with that title! The cover looks a little strained too.

That's not the "Haunted Love" cover I recall seeing, but it looks like it could have been the same artist.

That's the late, great Tom Sutton.