Like Taking Candy From a Baby

eBay specifically and the Internet in general has changed collecting -- I'm sure that is undeniable. What was once a wild-goose chase lasting for years and years has, in many instances, become a mere click away. Now, when I want to find a gravy boat for our Franciscan Starburst dinnerware, I don't have to go from flea market to antique shop to thrift store. I can more easily fire up the computer and there are several available for me to purchase.

Obviously, that's a boon if I need said gravy boat pronto. But as the holidays are still months away and a buying recepticle for fowl juices is not a life-or-death situation, I still have the option of trying out the old fashioned way of non-electronic searches and going to said flea markets and antique malls. For many, myself included, the hunt is as fun as the acquisition.

There's also the cost to consider. While that gravy boat may run you $40 on eBay or $60 from a dealer in Prescott, Arizona, there's a chance I could find it for $5 at Al's Antique Alley or at the local Salvation Army.

The same goes for comic books. It took me years to complete my Marvel Daredevil collection, and after I finally got issue #2 (the last piece of the puzzle) after starting to search for the run a decade before, I was elated. In those days, I found the older issues by one of three methods.

One, I could go to local comic shops. This proved to be fruitful in the beginning, but as the issues I searched for were the more rare and expensive ones, the comic shops either didn't have them in stock or, if they were, they were out of my meagre price range. (Beachead Comics, which was in the city next to the one where I grew up, is a good example of that. They always seemed to have nice comics to buy, but they were so overpriced, I found myself often leaving with nothing when they had things in stock that were on my want list.)

My second option was the infrequent comic conventions that found their way into the Lehigh Valley. Unable to make my way to Philadelphia or New York on my own, I would have to wait to see if Jubilee Comic Conventions, who usually held theirs in Maryland, Virginia, and southern New Jersey, would grace the Allentown Holiday Inn ballroom with their twice-yearly presence. There was always plenty of things to buy there -- good prices, too -- but they only had them every six months and, near the end, every year. My passion for collecting couldn't stand the wait.

The last option was the Comic Buyer's Guide, now a monthly magazine, but up until a few years ago a weekly, newspaper for comic book news, reviews, columns, and, best yet, sales. Each Thursday, I'd get my copy in the mail, and before reading any of the editorial content, I'd scour the ads looking for those books to fill in the holes of my collection. If I found something I wanted, I'd quickly call the seller, reserving it if it was still available, and then running off to the post office to get a money order. I subscribed to the CBG for years, only briefly giving it up while I was in college and had no money to buy anything but newer, must-have books.

Between the three of those things, I was able to get a lot of cool old comics, and I was very content in the three-pronged search.

That all changed with eBay. Before, I could go for months without seeing that last issue of Thor I needed to complete my Simonson run. Now, type in the search field, and 5 were right there, many at prices well below a store, convention dealer, or CBG advertizer. For me, a steady super-hero buyer who had little need for high-grade or pedigree copies, it was a godsend, and I think many people felt the same way.

But eBay also changed some things about what people bought and how much prices changed all due, I feel, to the anonymity of Internet shopping.

For a long time -- and this is something I noticed as both a collector and retailer (I worked for comic shops and convention dealers) -- romance comics and super-heroine comics didn't sell. At all. (Except for those rare cases where there was some serious t&a or bondage or Matt Baker/Bill Ward art.) But copies of Wonder Woman sat in the bins. Mary Marvel sales were frigid. And My Romance copies collected dust.

My theory is, men don't want to be seen buying this stuff. A 40-year-old buying Wonder Woman? A 50-year-old perusing the romance comic section? Heaven forbid. But online, behind the comfort of a computer screen and a PO Box, people will buy anything. And sales of romance comics and women super-heroes exploded. What once sat for years unsold where whisked away to the nether regions of New Jersey, California, and South Dakota. If you search the Golden Age Wonder Woman listings on eBay, you'll see books go for closer or above guide.

Online, these books sell great. In store, however, they still sit.

Now this is just a theory, but one that was proven right this past weekend. The wife and I went and visited a friend in Omro, Wisconsin (a destination if I ever there was one), and there went to various antique-y places in search of cool things to buy. In Oshkosk, I stopped in a comic shop, and there found a small stack of romance comics, including an early My Own Romance, two copies of Teen-Age Romances (with Matt Baker cover and art, one of which is pictured above -- scan courtesy of the Grand Comics Database), a Prize Young Romance, and a couple of others. And they were cheap. Dirt cheap. Six comics, under $25. Put those same on eBay, and they're $50.

So what I'm saying is, things have changed because of the Internet and eBay. In many instances, you can get things for a nice discount over regular brick and mortar prices. But in some -- especially those niche things (which I include romance comics) -- you're actually paying a premium.

Have you noticed anything similar?

Online Love

About a year ago, I read about a Website called www.myromancestory.com which the site proclaims to be "Romance stories in a graphic novel format" and "All online in vibrant color pulsing to the beat of today's music. Escape into a fantasy experience that will excite your senses." They were being released by Arrow Publications, which you can read about here in their own words. I had never heard of them before, and there was nobody comic-book related associated with the company (that I could find), but I was, to say the least, interested. So I checked out a couple of their stories about 6 months ago -- they have 2 that are free, and you can either subscribe for a monthly fee ($4.99) and read all you want or purchase them individually for $1.99.

After reading the two free ones half a year ago (and another today), I've decided against taking the plunge into actually buying them.

You see, they're just not good. They are extremely wordy and the art is subpar, and save for Ron Randall (who I recognize as being a DC and Star Wars artist from years past), I've heard of nobody. Not that it's that important that these are name people -- everyone was an unknown at one time -- but these guys are unknown because... well... they're just not very good.

As bad as it is visually, it's even worse story-wise. The writers are nobody I've heard of (again, not that it's a big deal), but it doesn't seem like they're comic book writers. They're romance fiction writers. Gail Hamilton (one of the more prolific authors on the site) has written numerous romance novels. Cynthia Starr as well.

And I'm not saying that writers from one genre can't be good in another. It's just that the writer should actually make it seem like they're writing for that different style. These stories read like someone just plopped their prose story into comic book form, without real understanding of what comics are about. You don't shoot a movie from a comic book script. You don't draw a comic book from a novel.

The biggest problem, however, is how much they read like the worst romance comics of the past -- namely the sappy Charlton comics of old. They are filled with these silly whirlwind trips to all these exotic places, muscle-bound gents, and the escape from normal life. You can only read that so much. While much of the romance comics of the 50s had similar plotlines, the stories were actually much more down-to-earth and, while not exactly realistic, plausible.

My take is that if you're going to bring the romance comics genre back, you're going to have to do something new with it. Unfortunately, myromancestory.com falls well short.

Now where was I (redux)...

My wife and I (I almost typed, "the wife," but I remembered how much she hates that) bought a condo a month-and-half-ago, and in the preparation for doing so and all the hassle after, I'd nearly forgotten about romance comic books.

I know, I know. How can that be? you ask. Well, when the weight of a gigantic mortgage is looming ahead, you stop thinking about the wonders of 50s pulp and instead start dreaming of 50s wiring (when I think our place was last updated).

But now that things have calmed down and we've nearly finished unpacking (only slowed recently by the opressive heat), my mind again has returned to the wonderful world of love, the four-color variety.

In the months that I've been gone, however, not much else has changed. Manga is still the lone voice of love, Marvel released its reworkings of old romance comics (which I did not buy) and a romance trade paperback (ditto), and for the most part, the genre (and most non-super-hero ones) are still nearly forgotten.

It's a lonely plight, this love of romance comics.

I'll be posting more often again, with more covers, more interesting tidbits on comics history, and more links (if I can find them). I promise.

Love Is in the Air

Recently, there have been some articles on various comic news sites about comics from the 80s: specifically, Strikeforce: Morituri and Spider-Ham. It wasn't really surprising to me that the comment sections after both articles featured scores of people proclaiming how great these were, how much they missed them, how much they'd love to see something new. The crazy thing is (well, it's not so crazy) is that these series sold terribly. As I mentioned before, I worked in a comic shop during the time these were published, and they were always at or near the worst sellers Marvel had.

I honestly don't remember either series' storyline, although I think I read both. They were not, to me, memorable in the least.

Now I'm not saying that they weren't good, but neither really made me think twice when they were cancelled.

But people are going crazy about them. (One person said he can now die happy that they had a Spider-Ham cover. Do I sound that silly when talking about my own hobby?) I wonder where were these people when it was being published 20 years ago? Were they collecting comics? And, if so, were they buying the series? Because not many people were.

I mention this because I wonder if there was any outrage when DC stopped publishing their romance books in the late 70s. Were there letters to the editor? Were there young girls weeping at the newsstand when the next Young Love failed to arrive? Even the most popular comics of the 60s and 70s only got around 50 letters to the editor each month; I can only imagine if, by the time the romance comics began to die, anyone even cared.

I think the one thing that I (and possibly you, the reader) take for granted, however, is that we've all been reading comics for a long time. In my case, more than 20 years.

Nobody who wrote, drew, or published comics in the 40s-60s ever thought that they were doing so for people who had been reading them for two decades. They didn't think they needed much continuity in their stories; they didn't think that a hero's origin or powers or sidekick need be there every month, because you probably weren't reading the title 5 years ago when these things were introduced in the first place.

Yes, there were numbers on the comics, and they certainly made it seem like they had been around for a while, but very few readers actually cared what happened before. And most didn't read them long enough for it to matter if stories were retold or reprinted. People didn't know the difference.

How times have changed. (I sound like an old man, don't I?)

If I write an article for Newsarama about romance comics, how many people do you think will write, "Oh man, romance comics! They were awesome! If they start publishing them again, I could die happy!"

Edit This!

For the past several years, I've been a writer/editor. (Amazingly, this doesn't pay my bills. Can you believe it?) I work in the medical and pharmaceutical field, and in my job I take information that seems complicated (such as medical things are wont to do) and I try to edit and rewrite it to make it less complicated. It's all a very exciting thing.

Comic book editors, though, do something a little different. Today, editors are there to plan out the future of the titles they're given to work on, deciding such things as who will write and draw them, what the general direction of the stories may be, and controlling how those stories fit into the general "universe" in which they live (such as the DC and Marvel and Image universes). To me, this is much more exciting than doing research on cystic fibrosis.

Editors of the past, however, often did much more than just help out the storytellers. They would give the writers the story. So, Julius Schwartz would have some of his writers come in -- a John Broome or a Gardner Fox -- and he'd say, "I want a story about the Flash where he saves the world by making everything full of static electricity." The two would then hammer out a plot and Fox or Broome or whomever would go back to his house and type of the script. He'd return, and it would start all over again.

In other companies, the editor was much more hands off. Stan Lee at Timely/Atlas would gather scripts from his own group of writers, edit them as needed, and then keep them in a pile for when his artists came to the office to drop off work and pick up something new. Not so much control there. Of course, in Lee's situation, he was nearly always the only editor on staff, and he alone had to control dozens of titles.

DC (going back to Schwartz) had it much different. Editors would often control groups of titles. Mort Weisinger controlled the Superman titles in the 50s and 60s. Schwartz had his hand in all of the non Superman/Batman titles. Robert Kanigher had the war books and Wonder Woman. And so on.

The romance titles were shuttled about among different editors for a while, including Schwartz and Kanigher, until Phyllis Reed came on the scene in late 1957. There were few women in comics at the time, and even fewer working on romance comics, but Reed lasted for 5 years at DC, at a time when their line expanded with the influx of the Fawcett and Prize titles that came their way (Heart Throbs, Young Love, and Young Romance). This was also the time when, I think, the DC romance titles were at their peak. Artistically, with the likes of John Romita and John Rosenberger and Jay Scott Pike, the books looked tremendous. The stories were also really emotional -- not too cheesy or silly or immature.

I mentioned that she passed away not too long ago, and I did some research to try and see what she did before and after DC, but I couldn't come up with anything yet. While there was plenty of comics fandom going on at the time, unfortunately none had to do with romance comics, and her legacy, compared with Schwartz or Kanigher or Weisinger, seems to be lost.

A shame.

Why Must They Disagree With Me?

Comic Book Artist was (and is, whenever they decide to put out new issues) one of the best magazines about comics ever. Not as literary (and not full of Ken Smith) as The Comics Journal, it was the best of many different worlds -- comic history, current creators, interesting interviews, etc. When CBA left TwoMorrows (for some reason that I really don't know and don't want to) and moved to Top Shelf, TwoMorrows (also the publisher of the equally good Alter Ego and Jack Kirby Collector) replaced it with Back Issue.

Back Issue, edited by Michael Eury, focuses mostly on comics from the 70s and 80s, with plenty of interviews with their creators, and some "lost" art (usually from fans' sketchbooks). To me, it is the Wizard magazine for those over 30, and like Wizard, it is not very good. The articles are thin, the scholarship (if you can call it that) is weak, and it seems that in every issue I've read (about 4 of them) the questions that seem most important never get asked.

I hadn't bought or read an issue in about a year until I saw the ad in Previews for the most recent issue, #13. They were going to have an article on the death of romance comics.

I had to buy it. And I did.

The article, "The Terrible, Tragic (>Sob!<) Death of Romance (Comics!!)" (all punctuation theirs), was written by John Lustig, the Last Kiss creator. In its seven pages, Lustig illuminates why he (and others) think that romance comics stopped being published. There are numerous reasons he cites, many of which are backed up by romance comics fans or those in the industry. Some, like Dick Giordano or Michelle Nolan or Richard Howell, I've heard of. Others, I have no real clue about what makes them any more of an expert than my wife. (Boy, I sound real bitchy here, don't I?)

Anyway, the big reason Lustig says romance comics died was television.

Virtually everyone who was interviewed for this article blamed TV (at least in part) for the decline in comics readership in general and romance comics in particular. To find romance and sex all you had to do was turn on your TV. And if you watched some of the increasingly racy soap operas... you'd learn more than you could get out of any romance comic.

Why does everyone blame television for the demise of comics? Since the beginning of comics, there was competition. Radio, movies, TV -- it was always there. But somehow, in the mid-70s, it hurt romance comics.

Joe Gill, prolific writer for Charlton, said in the article, "Television changed all the values of the (subsequent) generations... enormously. They found out about sex and drugs. It was pretty sordid. And these harmless little comics had no place in their lives." That is an argument you hear every year: that kids and teens are getting too adult, that they're too mature, that they won't like things that their parents did or their parent's parent. Bull. You don't have to be a sociologist to know that people like the same types of things, regardless of the era, and that we are no less moral, less innocent, than those living in the 50s.

So while the "values" argument is bunk, what about TV itself? Well, while I'm not so sure that outside media help the sales of comics (the Spider-Man movie didn't really increase the sales of the Spider-Man comic), it didn't hurt it. In the 50s, Westerns on TV were huge. My mother loved them. Couldn't get enough of them. What was the most popular time for Western comics? Why, the 50s! So why didn't Westerns on TV ruin Western comics?

Who knows. But we know they didn't. So I don't see any evidence that soap operas on TV would make people less likely to buy romance comics.

Other reasons given in the article were the proliferation of Harlequin romance books in the 60s, underground comics, the demise of the newsstand, and romance in super-hero comics. Those reasons just don't fly with me.

By the 60s, when Harlequin romances were first flourishing, the romance comics readership was almost completely teens and younger. You could tell by the stories within the comics -- they focused on teenage girls or those just out of high school. They were not competing with Harlequin romances. It's almost like saying crime comics in the 50s were competing with Jim Thompson or David Goodis. That's not competition. It's the same genre, in a different medium, going after a different audience.

Undgerground comics were not competition. I don't know how else to say it, but Zap and its ilk did not make people less likely to buy Young Romance. How do I know? Because by the time that underground comics made their way out of the head shops and into "normal" society, romance comics' fate had already been sealed.

Demise of the newsstand? Nah. When did the direct market begin and when did it become viable? The former in the mid-70s and the latter in the late 70s. No romance comics then, people. Not a factor. (In fact, growing up in Bethlehem, PA, population 80k, I bought my comics at Matz's newsstand until 1985, when Dreamscape Comics opened up.)

Romance in super-hero comics? Well, they were there, that's for sure. Peter Parker's love troubles were often the key to the issues, but I'm not sure how that would've affected romance comics sales. For one, by the time the Marvel Age came around, romance comics were already in a severe tail-spin, with only 4 publishers even doing romance comics (Marvel, DC, Charlton, and ACG). For another, while girls were reading Marvel super-hero comics more than others, I can't see that a person reading romance comics would stop collecting them because you could find them in that month's Fantastic Four. Perhaps that would make them read FF as well, but I doubt if they would be at the expense of Secret Hearts.

Lustig does touch on our shared idea of the new creators of the 70s, who grew up on super-heroes, would be less likely to want to create romance comics, but he relegates that to end.

The article ends with a question: Could anything have saved romance?

Dick Giordano answers: "No, I think the time for romance comics was past and no amount of doctoring could change that."

Wow.

I can think of a lot of doctoring could've saved them. Just like I think things could've saved sci-fi comics or Westerns or any of the other genres that disappeared once the people in charge stopped caring about them and focused only on super-heroes.

It was a good shot by Lustig, but I think he took the easy way out. Why romance comics died in the mid-70s have more to do with why they became less popular in the late 50s than in the late 60s, but he skips that completely.

Not to worry, though. I'm on the job!

Now where was I...

It's been a hectic month. This new job... well, let's just say that I'm actually required to do work. The nerve of these people!

Anyway, a few snippets of things that I'll be expanding on in the next few days:

1) We have a winner for the romance comics contest. There were about a half-dozen entries, and I wrote everyone's names out on a small piece of paper, put them in a brown paper bag, and had a co-worker pick one out. The winner is Penny Kenny (who I have to e-mail and get her address to mail them). Congratulations, Penny. I hope that you'll have the time to write up a bit of a review in the near future of what you think.

2) Recently, former DC romance editor Phyllis Reed passed away. She edited the line from the late 50s to the early 60s, and oversaw some of the last great DC romance stories (and, as I stated elsewhere, my favorites). Yes, they were squeaky clean, and yes, they were very one-dimensional. But the art was terrific, the stories weren't dumb (just hokey -- a difference), and the packaging was top notch. One of the interesting things about DC's from that era is that you could always tell who the editor of the comic was just by looking at the indicia on the bottom of the first page. So, you could tell what Julie Schwartz edited or what Jack Schiff edited (although, they weren't always accurate). I'll try and do a little more research on Ms. Reed.

3) Back Issue magazine came out today with the "Why Romance Comics Went Away" article. Written by John Lustig (who you'll hear about later and who I've written about in the past), I glanced through it a bit at lunch, but there were so many things that I disagreed with, I'll want to spend a full post just taking it apart. There were a couple of things that jived with my own thoughts, but for the most part, a lot of the premise of his thesis is based on incorrect information.

4) Marvel Comics' latest solicitations came out yesterday, and there are numerous romance comics-related info. They're putting out a series of comics called "I (Heart) Marvel", which they describe thusly: "Sometimes, your favorite super heroes just need a little love. Help us pay homage to the romance comics of yesteryear with five two-fisted, love-centric one-shots in the Mighty Marvel Manner. They're all perfect to share with that special someone this Valentine's Day." Sigh... romance comics with super heroes. The titles are "Web of Romance," "Outlaw Love," "My Mutant Heart," and "Marvel AI" (which I take to be manga super-hero romance). I've spoken before about this need for everything not super heroes (especially from Marvel) to somehow involve super heroes and how they're completely missing the point. Marvel does not equal the big picture.

They're also beginnin a 5-issue series where they Lustig-ize old romance stories. Lustig-ize is a word I made up where new dialogue (obviously uber-hip) replaces the old, "tired" original. I hate this crap. I really do. I think it demeans what was done in the past, making the creators from the 40s, 50s, and 60s play the part of the fool. I'll get into this a lot more later...

Marvel also is putting out a 176-page trade paperback, "Marvel Romance" (who comes up with these titles?), where they reprint stories from "LOVE ROMANCE #89 and #101-104; MY LOVE #2, #14, #16 and #18-20; TEEN-AGE ROMANCE #77 and #84; OUR LOVE STORY #5; and PATSY WALKER #119." If you'll notice, all of these stories are from the 60s on, long past when Marvel was producing its best stuff. I realize it sounds like I bitch and moan at whatever Marvel does, but really, would it have been so difficult to publish something before super-heroes (all of these comic stories were from post-Marvel Universe)?

Anyway, I'll be writing more about all this.

And I'm sure glad to be back.