Superficially at least. Several generations of women were deeply imprinted by the form and content of romance comics, and that's something that isn't easily thrown off (I'm surprised there hasn't been a self-help book devoted to deprogramming their pernicious influence on women's expectations). There's also the winners-write-the-history-books syndrome.
"Ninety-nine percent of the books on comics have been written by men, and they simply don't care about a field that was mostly of interest to women," points out underground-comic pioneer Trina Robbins, who has worked to correct this imbalance, and even tried to revive romance comics in 1987 with the short-lived Renegade Romance. "Many men have a very negative take on girl stuff, judging it by their superhero-comic standards, and therefore finding fault with the art, which is of course notorious for its lack of fight scenes."
As women have gained prominence as auteurs in the world of comics, the legacy of romance comics — from direct parody to subtle structural influence — has played a pivotal role. Even confessional comics by male artists — Joe Matt's grueling Peep Show springs to mind — owe a clear, if unacknowledged, debt to the romance genre. Other evidence pops up as well: Tony Hendra's reconstitution of Roy Lichtenstein's romance-comic panel paintings into a narrative in Brad '61, and Jeanne Martinet's 2001 replacement of the text from classic romance stories with more jaded contemporary lingo in Truer Than True Romance: Classic Love Comics Retold! Trina Robbins devoted a quarter of her excellent historical survey From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of Comics From Teens to Zines to the rise and fall of the genre.
But for the true love you have to dig a little deeper. While there have been several collections over the years — a very nice full-color paperback titled Heart Throbs: The Best of DC Romance Comics, Eclipse Books' recent Real Love, a fine 1988 collection of Simon and Kirby's early work, and a reissue facsimile of DC's Young Romance #1 — they seem to go through just one printing. The only current collection I could find was a two-volume set of EC's brief stab at romance, part of Gemstone Publishing's project to reprint the entire EC catalog. EC is best remembered for being the scapegoat of Dr. (Seduction of the Innocent) Wertham's feverish, self-aggrandizing attack on the lurid gore of titles like Tales From the Crypt and the subsequent Senate hearings that resulted in the Comics Code, as well as the disappearance of all EC comics except for its satirical humor magazine, Mad. Its entire romance output — Modern Love #18, plus a few issues of A Moon, a Girl . . . Romance and Saddle Romances — offers abundant pleasures. Unfortunately, it doesn't include the one-shot story Lucky Fights It Through, which was Madmastermind Harvey Kurtzman's first work for EC — a cowboy romance story warning of the ravages of syphilis!
Otherwise, to get the genuine article you still have to go to the discard bins. Which these days means eBay. Original love comics often go for as little as 50 cents a pop, though art by Frazetta or pristine condition can make prices soar. The best deal is when you can get a stack of coverless comics. Although the covers are usually the most powerful single visual component, the total lack of collector value they leave behind means you can get quantities of classic stories for pennies. While you're online, there's also a tremendous archive of whole comics at www.jennymiller.com/romancecomics, scanned and stored by one Jenny Miller as part of her "Humanities Computing" course at the University of Maryland. As you can see, appreciation for this once-proud tradition is a piecemeal affair patched together by amateur enthusiasts who've been passing the torch for a quarter-century since romance comics died.
But as long as the flame of belief burns brightly in our hearts, born of pain and joy, it is certain that our passion will find its true place in the world and live happily ever after.
The End.
The best and certainly most prolific of the romance artists (as in every Atlas cover + 2 or 3 stories from 1954-1960 then probably half of all the later Marvel & DC romance) was Vince Colletta. Also Matt Baker drew many romance stories. Glaring omissions from a very good article.
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