Love on the Racks

Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4766-7530-5
Verlag: McFarland

Buch, Englisch, 246 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 178 mm x 254 mm, Gewicht: 417 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nolan, Michelle

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Preface 1
- Introduction 3
- 1. Pulp Love and True Confessions: What Came Before Romance Comics 7
- 2. Twixt Teens and Tears: How Teen Humor and Girls’ Comics Provided a Bridge to Romance 14
- 3. Young Romance in Bloom: How Love Came to the Comic Books 29
- 4. Love Conquers All: The Record Growth of Romance Comics in 1949 43
- 5. The Love Glut: The Romance Boom and Bust of 1950 62
- 6. Writers of the Purple Page: A Short-Lived Flirtation with Western Romance 86
- 7. You Can’t Keep a Good Girl (or Guy) Down: Before the Comics Code—How Romance Comics Rebounded in the 1950s 100
- 8. Minor-League Lovers: One-Shot Wonders and Other Short-Lived Flirtations 127
- Between pages 150 and 151 are 8 color plates containing 15 photographs
- 9. Cut That Cleavage! Before and After the Comics Code Authority 151
- 10. The Bland Leading the Bland: When Tears Began to Flow Freely 178
- 11. Hippies, Harpies and Heroines: National Comics Takes Charge in the 1960s and ’70s 193
- 12. Where Love Has Gone: The End of Young Romance and Young Love 206
- Appendix: Catalog of American Romance Comics
- (BY DAN STEVENSON, MICHELLE NOLAN AND JIM VADEBONCOEUR, JR.) 211
- Bibliography 221
- General Index 223
- Title and Character Index 226

Über Autor(innen)

Michelle Nolan has been a newspaper and magazine feature writer for more than 50 years. She received an Inkpot Award for her work as a comics and pop cultural historian and entrepreneur. She has published more than 10,000 stories and columns. Her other book for McFarland is Ball Tales: A Study of Baseball, Basketball and Football Fiction from the 1930s to the 1960s. She lives in Bellingham, Washington.