Number 2468: Into the catacombs you dirty rat!

“A Lovely Night in Paris” is far from lovely. It is a horror story where a woman gets kidnapped by some little red monsters and taken deep into the catacombs of Paris. It is a love story in the making, as a handsome gendarme follows her and her captors underground.

Joe Gill wrote the story, and Tom Sutton drew it. Despite the artwork seeming rushed it is very dynamic: deep shadows, monsters, a beautiful woman and a brave gendarme.

And it has a bondage cover. I am only a bit surprised that the Comics Code let that go by. It had been 20 years since all of the foofaraw over comic books brought on the Code. At some point in the '70s the Code started to lighten up by approving comics they would not have approved in the past. Comic book buyers were getting older, and I have also heard the Code became relaxed because of television, and how much sex, violence and swearing was allowed by TV network censors. By then nobody in the larger outside world cared what happened in comic books.

Back to this comic book. The story is from Ghostly Haunts and was originally published in 1974 by Charlton. This edition was published in 1978 by a promotional company called Modern Comics. I read they were reprinted to be sold three to a bag. In the '70s I bought some Modern Comics one at a time (no bag) from an F.W. Woolworth store. Woolworth is now out of business, as is Modern, but I assume one had nothing to do with the other.

From Ghostly Haunts #41 (1978 reprint of 1974 issue):

Number 938


...and featuring Sonny Bono as Burt the ghostly ex-lover...


Looking at this story makes me realize how long ago 1973 really was, and yet seems so recent, still vivid to me. Maybe it was the sideburns or the turtleneck sweaters, maybe the bell bottom trousers, the wide lapels...man, have we ever approached the coolness of that time since? (That's a joke, son...)

Frank Bolle, the artist on this story for issue #2 of Charlton's Haunted Love, had the look of 1973 down well. Bolle had a clean ink line, and looked like he drew from photographs. The audience for whom the comic was intended, mostly pre-teen or teenage girls, wouldn't be fooled if he had faked it. I wasn't part of the intended readership, but Haunted Love was one of my guilty pleasures in 1973. I was so embarrassed about buying any comic book with "love" in the title that I always hid it in the middle of the stack of comics I bought.

Bolle was born in 1924, and his work pops up many places over several decades of the history of comics. He has his own website, if you want to see other illustrative work he's done. The story is written by Charlton scripter Joe Gill.