Modern Romance

The last continually published romance comics faded away in the mid-70s (although Charlton released a few in the early 80s that were merely reprints -- and not very good ones at that), and the industry has never really returned to the genre.

Well, not exactly.

The autobiographical comic first became popular in the late 60s when underground cartoonists started publishing their own work or publishing it through small, up-and-coming houses (like Kitchen Sink, Last Gasp, and others). Artists like Spain, Robert Crumb, Art Spieglman, and later Dori Seda (and many more) wrote stories of love and disappointment, not too far removed from the love comics of the 50s.

Of course, you'd never see a man humping a woman's leg in True War Romance like you would in one of R. Crumb's strips, but you get the idea.

But since then, and as the underground creeped above the surface and molded into indie (or indy, I never know which is correct) comics like Joe Matt's Peepshow and Jamie Hernandez's Locas stories, there is more romance in comics than there has been in the past 30 years.

The stories, both underground and today, are much more layered than your typical Golden or Silver Age story and they're certainly more adult, but the same thing that has attracted me to the love comics of old has made me want to read these comics of today. I want to see if and how and why people fall in love with someone else and whether or not it will have a happy ending.