I know what you're thinking...Jack Kirby (above) was a good artist and he was one of the inventors of romance comics. True enough, and he did a good job. But Kirby was the rare exception that proves the rule. Cheerful, wholesome, family men like the artists at D.C. simply couldn't get down and dirty enough.
BTW: How do you like the Kirby drawing above? I like the way the man with blocky fingers wraps his arm around the girl with the webbed claws. Amazingly, their faces seem to occupy the same space.
Here (above) a lesser artist tackles the same subject. In real life the girl's neck would be broken by this pose, but it works. The pose on the man's hand is a bit off, but it appears to have been scratched by bears so we forgive the mistake.
Is this guy (above) kissing a cardboard cutout? What are those ginger root thingies on her arms? And why is she posed like that? I don't know, but it works for me. This is the kind of artist who belongs in the romance biz.
The girl (above) puts her tiny little arms around her giant behemoth of a boyfriend, who appears to be sucking on her forehead. The artist is on to something here. The real life size difference between men and women is shocking. You can't imagine how people so different could even procreate. It's an interesting observation, but only the lesser artists take the trouble to comment on it.
Here (above) the girl has the usual tiny arms, awkward perspective cheats, and fish fingers. That's okay, I'm used to it.
What I'm not used to is the way their faces fit on their skulls, The girl's face is extremely wide, and wraps around the whole front of her head. The boy's face is just the opposite...it's pinched and crammed into a thin, vertical strip. You see incongruities like that in real life but only the lesser artist is brave enough to comment on it.
Like I said, good artists killed romance comics. Good artists are too predictable, too wedded to stereotypes to portray the kind of quirky love that romance media demands.
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