Fake Nostalgia Is the Best

I love romance comics, but I don't think of myself as a particularly romantic guy. Sure, I can be sappy at times and there's nothing better than two people really falling in love, but romance comics aren't really about love and romance as much as they're about heartache and pain.

And rarely in romance comics is the heartache and pain justified -- it usually ends up being some silly "Three's Company"-esque mixup, where the boyfriend really wasn't cheating on you, he was only hugging his second cousin.

Anyway, I was thinking why I liked romance comics, if not for my own notions of love and passion and whatnot. I think it comes down to this -- I love the era of when romance comics were popular (the 50s), and I love the way that the writers and artists got it all wrong.

I wasn't around in the 50s (heck, I wasn't born until the early 70s), but from reading and research, you realize that the 50s was not this idyllic time of 3-month vacations at a cabin in the country or steady boyfriends who were always gentlemen. It wasn't so much different than now -- just without the iPods.

It reminds me of a story my mother tells about her dating life. She once dated a boy who was the prototypical gentleman when he came to pick her up from her parents' house. He sat and spoke with my grandparents, was kind, cordial, intelligent. They loved him, and weren't bashful about telling my mother that he'd make a wonderful husband.

Of course, once the door to the house closed behind them and my mother got into his car, he couldn't keep his hands off her.

"He pawed me nonstop from when we left the house to when he dropped me off," my mother said.

Certainly not the gentleman my grandparents wanted in their family.

I think this isn't much different than today -- pawing still is the favorite pasttime of boys throughout the nation -- but you really didn't see much of that in comics. Most of the times when the boys kissed the girls (even though she protested), such protests quickly melted away into love.

Somehow I can't see a story in Love Confessions being, "My Boyfriend Was All Hands".