Elaine has a good thing going with Paul, but she makes the mistake girls make in love comics: she falls back in love with her original beau, Dud. When I was in a U.S. Army artillery battery, we called a howitzer projectile that did not explode a dud. A person can be a dud, also. This dud, Dud, wants Elaine back. Elaine falls for his smooth words and slick demeanor. In a love comic girls invariably screw up a current relationship for an old one. Think, Elaine! Why did you break up with Dud in the first place? Uh-huh. I thought so. You know deep in your heart that Paul is the guy for you, and Dud will just repeat what he did to make you leave him originally.
Also, Pappy’s rules for love includes an admonition against pencil-thin mustaches. You see a guy with a meticulously trimmed mustache and you know he is trouble.
From Love Letters #11 (1951). Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr gives credit for the artwork to John Forte for pencils, and Bill Ward for inks. We get a lingerie panel in the story, which is a clue Ward worked on it.
In Paul's position, I would have exposed Dud to prevent Elaine from being exploited by him. But I wouldn't have engaged in deception, and I wouldn't have wanted to be reunited with Elaine. It's not that I would think her soiled or that I would regard her as having somehow betrayed me; but she really didn't love Paul. She merely admired him; he didn't represent what she wanted, as did her misperception of Dud.
ReplyDeleteLila was a piece-of-work herself, accepting a date with Paul yet being infuriated by Dud's two-timing. But I've repeatedly seen hypocrisy of that sort in tbe real world.
It's remarkable that pencil mustaches were once fashionable in America, in-so-far as most men could not possibly grow them; they are almost always drawn with make-up (like the eyebrows of some women). Still, they could be found on the faces of some of Hollywood's heroes into the late '40s. I'm curious as to just when thin mustaches became exclusively associated in popular American imagination with fops, villains, and deviants.
OK, honestly, Paul is just as much an jerk as Dud! There's no reason to go about with the fanfare of the reveal! And how much money did he spend to get that investigated? And who is the guy that doesn't like to lose?
ReplyDeleteElaine isn't coming off any better, either. "The heard is a strange thing" or words to that effect. No, she was going to marry you and broke it off for an old flame at the last minute.
I think this romance comic would have had a better ending if they all died in a plane crash!