Weird Love Vol 6: So This is LOVE! (Graphic Novel) (Romance)

By Various Original Artists. Clizia Gussoni & Craig Yoe (Editors) Rebecca Sevrin (Introduction)

Published: IDW (February 7, 2018).

Hardcover, 160 pages
 
 

         When I was younger the bullshit phrase, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” was bandied about by the insipid film Love Story. I wasn’t actually born when it came out, but my mother (may her evil soul rot in Hell) was a romantic drivel junkie, absorbing as much of the garbage as she could, diving from one Harlequin romance and romantic comedy to the next like a dope fiend after a fix.

It’s ironic, considering how much a series of train wrecks all of her personal relations turn out to be. No one was good enough, no one had achieved enough (even though she was a lowly civil servant), the “right guy” was just around the corner. “What’s wrong with all the men?” she’d whine. “They aren’t trying to woo me.” Or the romance began great, the stars glistened in her eyes, but then it was revealed that her new love was just an ordinary guy, not a goddamn living Ken doll, and her interest waned. “I’m just not feeling it anymore, you know?” Then she would lay about, wondering what was wrong with everyone else that she was alone.

Where did this come from? What was the genesis? The great ten-cent plague. Comic books. Specifically romance comics targeted at girls. Extinct today, this genre of the medium made their debut in the early 1950s, and were created by the great duo of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. The pair who pretty much seemed have created each new trend in the comic industry beginning with Captain America. Well, after superheroes faded, the pioneered westerns then came up with romance. And they hit! Romance comics were a staple for close to twenty years in the industry. But how did the romance stories play out? Well that brings us to the point of this book.

Granted I may be reading more into this tome than I should, but it’s difficult not to when you read story after story of romantic entanglements and love-at-first-sights which inevitably end in a marriage proposal. “Oh Mike, I will. SIGH.” It is perhaps the genius behind the editor’s selection of reprints in this book. The stories are simply offered up without comment. This was how romantic love was presented to teenage girls back in the day.

What was once considered mushy trash, can now be studied with ironic detachment. And there is plenty to pick through. The constant teacher-student romances, the political differences leading to complications, the stand-outs (done for both sexes) who dress too flashy for a person to date seriously, and so, so, so many misunderstandings leading to break-ups and then heartfelt reconciliations. Or you might focus on the attempts to sway pre-teens with “modern” lingo that is “hip” and “ray” and “outta sight”. 

For me, the book cultivates a naive look at love, adding to the illusion that the past was a “simpler time”. Most of the comics are culled from the defunct comics companies Charlton (always the weak sister in the industry), Avon, and ACG, whose work has fallen into public domain. Most of their work is looked on as “less than” by old time aficionados and with good reason, but this book provided me with plenty of laughs and was ultimately satisfying.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.