“Superstition Made Me Afraid to Love” is from Harvey Comics’ First Love Illustrated #3 (1949). (Those of you who read IDW’s Weird Love will recognize it as being reprinted in issue #13.) Comic art expert Jim Vadeboncoeur attributes the artwork to Tom Gill, who later got real lucky and landed the account to draw the Lone Ranger for Dell Comics.
I don't know what to think of this story. I'm repelled by one person's using a misrepresentation to take advantage of the concern that another has for his or her well-being. Still, it would seem that Jinx's life would be better for having pushed aside fear based in unreason.
ReplyDeleteThe art is here inconsistent in how people are drawn; they change appearance from one panel to another. Robert is utterly transmorphed in going from 4:4 to 4:7. I hope that Vadeboncœur's work became better regulated with time. In any case, it was interesting to note the influence of Caniff here-and-there through-out the story.
Black cats still have an especially hard time finding homes. I'm not a cat person, but one of the cats whom I have loved was a black cat with preternaturally green eyes.
I love Yoe's Weird Love and highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteIt's your regular romance story, where the woman is held up from her true love by some outside influence. The art, though, don't know why, it rubs me the wrong way. I'd be interested to see how he did in the Lone Ranger comic. The art is really stilted and wacky in a number of places. It even looks a bit cartoon-y in places, and I don't think that works for romance comics.
Hi Pappy! I've always wondered whether the girls/women who read romance comics in the 40s and 50s really bought into these stories...were girls then really as pathetic as the women in the comics (especially considering there were only about 5 or 6 different romance storylines recycled over and over?)
ReplyDeleteDaniel, Tom Gill was another artist who had assistants. Some of the inconsistencies might be because different artists were working on it. I believe they put out a lot of pages, especially when they did the Lone Ranger.
ReplyDeleteBrian, see the link to the Lone Ranger I included in the comment to Daniel.
ReplyDeleteLooking back on some of my old romances, I can see at least one of them as Disney animation, but mostly what I remember of past love affairs resemble Tex Avery cartoons.
Brad S., I think the love comics continued the formula presented in movies, radio, romance novels and pulp magazines. My main objection to them is the happy ever after endings. Life just doesn't work like that, and the sooner young people are disabused of such absurd notions the better. In my experience, at my age with almost 49 years of marriage behind me, I can say, "a relationship is the hardest job anyone will ever have. It demands constant work." --Preachin' Pappy
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