No Crying Here, People!

About a year ago, Fantagraphics released a book reprinting about a dozen St. John romance comics called Romance Without Tears. It is one of the few books that reprint romance stories exclusively (the other two are True Love, which reprinted various early Simon & Kirby stories, and Heart Throbs, which reprinted stories by DC); both are long out of print.

This is a very solid book, and I'm impressed with its scholarship (a well-researched introduction and accurate artist attributions) and its format. The stories are scanned directly from the original comics, so the art isn't crystal clear. But they are very readable -- along the lines of having a 50-year-old comic.

It's highly recommended.

A few thoughts on this book (specifically) and romance comics (in general).

The editor, John Benson, writes an interesting introduction, where he talks a lot about the writer of these stories, a man named Dana Dutch, someone whom I never heard of before. (That's not uncommon, however, as finding out the writer of old comics is no easy task -- they were hardly, if ever, listed.) Benson really admired Dutch's style, and he goes to great length comparing how the St. John stories have a much stronger protagonist than other comics of the time, and that the conclusion of these stories doesn't always revolve around the woman either a) getting the man of her dreams and being happy or b) not getting the man and walking away in tears, alone, not a whole woman.

I'm not sure if I agree wholehartedly with this assessment, as Benson seems to be selling some of the other writers short. Were there many stories whose basis is all on the woman trying to attain the "ideal" of the perfect 50s housewife and if this ideal isn't reached, it is only because of the failure of the woman? Of course. Was it as widespread as he states? I don't think so. (He writes, "At some companies, there was not a single story in which the heroine didn't feel overwhelming guilt.")

But it will make me look at that more closely, to see how often this occurred.

I do agree with him that the Dutch-written stories are more mature, but I think most of the earliest romance comics had a similar bent. The shift to telling stories about teen-agers instead of those in the early-20s or already married started to happen around '52 or '53, and many of the early romance comics had the women in positions to not just fall for the right fellow but to also want to marry them. (I wasn't able to find it when I looked yesterday, but I have a St. John issue -- Pictorial Romances #20 -- that has a story about a brothel! That's certainly pretty mature!)

One of the most popular artists of St. John' (and others) was Matt Baker, and he does the art in 11 of the book's 15 stories. Someone should really do a biography on him, as he stands out as a very important person in the history of comics. First of, he was one of the few (and possibly only) black artists working in comics then (and really, up until the 90s, there was only a handful of African-Americans working in comic). Also, at his peak, he was drawing some of the sexiest women in comics, whether it was in romance titles for St. John or Atlas or the Phantom Lady for Fox. By the mid-50s, however, it seems his career wasn't all it had been, and he was working in the Vince Colletta studios, churning out page after page, much of which lacked the spark of his early work. He died very young (in 1957 at age 34).

And Archer St. John, the founder and publisher, is an interesting character, whose story is briefly mentioned in the introduction, and he merits a more thorough biography (and if he's had one already, I can't find it anywhere).

I'm somewhat disappointed in the exclusion of Ric Estrada from Romance Without Tears. His art, while not as glamorous as Baker's, is solid, and his women were drawn very well. (Estrada also drew some of the last romance comics for DC in the late 70s.) The only thing I could think of this omission is that he didn't draw Dutch's stories, and instead worked with a different writer.

Benson and Fantagraphics have put together a terrific book, with solid examples from some of the best comics, not just romance comics, of the late 40s/early 50s. Go out and buy yourself a copy, won't you?