WHAT KILLED ROMANCE COMICS (EXPANDED)?

What killed romance comics? I wish all questions were as easy to answer. It's pretty obvious that what killed love comics were.....good realistic artists.  Expert draughtsmen like Neal Adams, simply couldn't master the surreal, grotesque world of twisted love.  Good draughtsmen took over the romance comics and drove the readers away.

I know what you're thinking...Jack Kirby (above) was a good draughtsman and he did a great job on the romance comics, so where does he fit in? The answer is that Kirby was the rare exception who had the imagination of a bad draughtsman combined with the technical skill of a good one.  Less imaginative,  realistic draughtsmen like the artists at D.C. simply couldn't get down and dirty enough to imagine the bizarre poses that romance requires.

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.

Above, a story about a girl who has to choose between a handsome normal guy and a loathsome hippie. With a subject like that it should have been a great cover, but the editor handed it over to a technical artist who had no soul. You see the result.

Here (above) a less skilled but more imaginative artist does a better job. The giant wicked city woman looms over her tiny boyfriend and lays it on him that she's slept with every man in town. The man should have been red-faced, but that was impossible given the position of his hands. Undaunted, the resourceful colorist instead made the man's hands red...and it works. Technical artists never do fun things like that.

  How do you like the "Man Starved" cover above? The figures are pretty stiff but the tryst is solemnized by the unnatural, stylized neck poses, the poker chip moon,  and the devil car watching on the bottom right. Only a lesser artist would have thought of cool stuff like this!

Boy, artists were fond of those wonky neck poses (above)! In real life the girl's neck might be broken by a pose like this this, but it works. The man's hand is goofy too, but it fits with the weird heads and horror comics color. You accept it as a stylistic flourish. 

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 often shocking. You can't imagine how people so different could even procreate. Only an imaginative lesser draughtsman would be bold enough to take the trouble to comment on this.  

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 features are just the opposite...they're pinched and cramped on a thin, vertical strip on the front of his face. You see incongruities like this all the time in real life, but only the lesser draughtsman is brave enough to comment on it. 

I wonder if sci-fi artist Fletcher Hanks (above) ever tried his hand at romance comics?

Imagine a story where a big, angry boyfriend discovers another guy trying to muscle in on his girl. Fletcher Hanks would have aced it, and created a comic classic.

Many thanks to Romans for the comment that identified this artist.  

NEXT POST ON MONDAY MORNING,  MAY 30TH!

REVIEW OF "BRIGHT STAR"

That's a musical number above, from the film "Bright Star" which was well reviewed when it came out in 2009, but which was afterward completely forgotten. I'll have more to say about the music in a minute.

The film's about my favorite poet of the Romantic Era, John Keats, and his never consummated love for Fanny Brawne. Reviewers liked the film, though some thought it was weak on story and was only saved by the performances. Some lamented that it never touched very seriously on Keats' poetry. They're right on both counts...well, half right...but if you liked films like "Shakespeare in Love," then you have to see it nevertheless.

I like a good love story, not only because I believe in the philosophy that underpins romantic love (discussed in previous posts), but because when these stories are done right they stimulate your thinking about everything else. To be in love is to live in a state of hyper awareness, when even the cracks in the sidewalk seem to have deep meaning. It's nice to be reminded of a time when we were fully alive, no matter how torturous it might have been in some respects.



To get back to the film's music: The top video is from the film and is a vocal adaption of Mozart's Serenade in B Flat, K361.  For comparison, here's (immediately above) an original, instrumental version of the same music. The vocal version stands up pretty well, I think.

In the film Fanny tells Keats that she doesn't like poetry because she can never understand what poems mean. Keats gives a great answer, one which applies to visual art (examples by Van Gogh above) as well as poetry: 

"The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake...to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not 'work the lake out.' It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery."


Woooow! Well said! I think of what Keats said when I look at drawings by Van Gogh. No doubt they're about the beauty of the natural world, but they're also about the power of lines and the awesome human mind that can manipulate them so expressively. To borrow from Keats: you luxuriate in the lines...in the sensation of the flow of them, and of the dynamic spaces between them. 

VISIT WITH ROMANCE NOVELIST, REBECCA BRANDYTHISTLE

MS. CHEEZWHIZ: "Hello, ladies! This is Velveeda Cheesewhiz, Roving Editor for Theory Corner for Women! I'm so thrilled, because today I get to interview the queen of the best-selling romance novel... a woman with over twenty million books in print, and more movie deals than you could shake a stick at....REBECCA BRANDYTHISTLE!"

CHEESEWHIZ: Finding her home was no easy task. She's located in a part of town where the street signs are covered in grafitti, and the main occupation of the inhabitants appears to be begging.

CHEESEWHIZ: "Anyway, the children were helpful. 'The writer lady? She's up on the hill,' they shouted, 'She's up on the hill!' "

CHEESEWHIZ: "And they were right."

CHEESEWHIZ: "The road ended at the base of a beautiful garden. I parked and walked along a winding path which was studded with flowers and alive with fluttering butterflies.

CHEESEWHIZ: "Finally, through a break in the trees, looking past the shrubs and preening swans, I caught a glimpse of the house. Breathtaking! At the door a butler said I was expected and showed me into a sumptuous living room."

REBECCA BRANDYTHISTLE: (Leaps out from behind a curtain) "BOO!"

CHEESEWHIZ: "Oh, my Gosh!"

BRANDYTHISTLE: "Hee hee! Sorry! I just couldn't resist it!"

BRANDYTHISTLE: "Please, have a seat! Would you like some tea? How about a nice cup of Jasmine stirred with ginger leaves and spider silk? No? Well, let me show you the house, then."

BRANDYTHISTLE: "That piano used to belong to Liberace. They say you can get AIDS just by looking at it, but that's silly."

BRANDYTHISTLE: "Here's one of the bedrooms! Gee, the bed needs a few more pillows."

BRANDYTHISTLE: "Here's my 'wild place.' I get some of my best thinking done here."

BRANDYTHISTLE: "This is my dog Fluffy's room. Hmmmm. Fluffy's roses are wilting. I'll have to get him some more."

DOWNSTAIRS: They return to the living room and Cheesewhiz impulsively glances out the window.

CHEESEWHIZ: "I still haven't seen this part of the grounds yet. I'll bet it's..... GOOD LORD!!!!!! There's nothing out there but desolation! I've never seen anything like it! What happened!?"

BRANDYTHISTLE: "Yeah, it is kinda' bleak, isn't it? I had to spray to get rid of some noisy neighbors.

BRANDYTHISTLE: "But don't worry, the plants'll be back in a few months. The chemical only effects humans. Huh? What's that, on the floor!?"

BRANDYTHISTLE: "It's one of my books! Would you like me to read something? You'll be able to tell your friends that you got a personal reading from Rebecca Brandythistle!"

CHEESEWHIZ: "Why, yes! I'd be delighted!"

BRANDYTHISTLE: "Hee hee! Okay, here's a good passage. It's one of my favorites!"

BRANDYTHISTLE: "It was the time of the French Revolution! In order to escape from the handsome royalist officer, Nichole, the idealistic, perky, red-haired revolutionary, has just jumped off a cliff into the base of a waterfall."

BRANDYTHISTLE (READING): "Nearly distraught with fear, Jean Paul swam to the spot among the reeds where he saw Nichole's hair floating in the water. He hauled her out of the water, shaking her, flooded with relief when he discovered that she was still very much alive."

BRANDYTHISTLE: " 'Damn you girl! I thought you were dead! Dead!' he raged. He carried her to the cave behind the waterfall, despite her flailing. She punched and bit, struggled and kicked."

BRANDYTHISTLE: "As Jean Paul set her down, he meant to tie her up so she wouldn't escape again...but the instant he set his eyes on her naked loveliness, his intent changed. 'Dear Lord,' he whispered! Like Eve before the Fall you are!' "



BRANDYTHISTLE: "His calloused hands gently roamed her curves, and excitement numbed her thinking. Still, Nichole's fingers crept toward the dagger hidden in her furs..."

BRANDYTHISTLE: "....even as he expertly roused her senses to a fever pitch she'd never before experienced. 'Nichole,' he whispered, drawing her shivering body against his warmth...his urgent need! Her fingers tightened on the knife..."

BRANYTHISTLE: "Okay! That's enough heat, even for me! I can't take any more!"



GARDENER: "I'm sorry to interrupt, Miss Brandythistle, but is this how you want the crew to wear the shirts you gave them?

BRANDYTHISTLE: "The shirts? Goodness, no! They're supposed to be torn! You gotta rip them to shreds! Let them hang down! And...um...I don't know how to tell you this, but the pants...they're too...um...too...too..."

GARDENER: "Too tight?"

BRANDYTHISTLE: "Tight!!!??? Heavens, no! They're too LOOSE!!!! Don't you read my books!? Get the tailor to tighten them up!"

BRANDYTHISTLE: "Oh, dear...I'm afraid it's time for me to go. I have to take Fluffy out to have his fur braided. I hope you got everything you needed.'

CHEESEWHIZ: "More than enough! Thank you very much!"

BRANDYTHISTLE: "And remember:It's not the face behind the heart, but the heart behind the face. No, that's not it...It's not the body behind...not the heart behind...not...well, you know what I mean!"

Postscript: Thanks to John for the cool name, "Velveeda Cheesewhiz."

WHAT WOULD TRULY ROMANTIC VALENTINES LOOK LIKE?

You know, it's funny....modern girls all think they're above this sort of thing....but they're not. The models in the picture may look plastic, the writing may come off as insincere or cliched, but the card is effective nevertheless.

People respond to elevated speech, to words that conjure up a romantic ideal. It doesn't matter that people don't talk that way in real life. That's precisely why we like it.

Romance is too important to be spoken about in the same language that we use to buy aspirin.

Johnny Depp (above) demonstrates how to seduce with with words alone.

For the curmudgeons out there, here's (above) some valentine vitriol.

A THEORY CORNER EDITORIAL

To Theory Corner Men:

Men, let's face it. We've been selfish. We never talk to women the way they want to be talked to, the way they CRAVE to be talked to. They want their men to hold their hands and talk to them Don Juan de Marco-style, like this:

"There are some women...fine featured...a certain texture to the hair, a curve to the ears that sweeps like an eternal nautilus...these women have fingers with the same sensitivity as their feet...and when you touch their knuckles it's like pressing your hands around their knees..and touching this tender, fleshy part of their fingers is the same as brushing your hands around their thighs...and..."

OK, it sounds hokey to us but women eat this stuff up. And if they like it so much, why not give it to them? Consider that one half the world (men) has it in their power to make the other half of the world (women) substantially happier without spending a single cent. What a huge improvement for such a small effort!

I hear you say that that modern women would never fall for something this corny. NOT TRUE!

I've tried this on my family and female friends and it worked 100% of the time! I don't mean I tried to seduce them, just the opposite. I bragged before hand that I could get a reaction from them, whether they liked it or not, with over-the-top purple prose, then I read the dialogue hesitatingly from a dog-eared piece of paper in the presence of other people. Even under these circumstances, even with the most skeptical of women, after only a couple of minutes they were all reduced to shell-shocked puddles. Don't take my word for it, try it yourself and improve the world.

BTW, the picture is by the young Robert Crumb.

ME BABBLING ABOUT ROMANCE AGAIN

Half the artists who frequent this site are probably in San Diego for the comic convention. Good! I'm in the mood to write something really, really off-topic...something that absolutely no artist will want to read! Here goes....

TWO OBSERVATIONS ABOUT ROMANCE

First off, the picture above relates to my second point and has no relation to the kind of romance I'm writing about in this paragraph. Here I'm writing about the Romantic Era which may have started with Rousseau but reached its height in the 19th century. Now the odd thing is that the Romantic movement quickly split in two. It meant something totally different in England than it did on the continent. In England it was primarily a literary movement. It influenced poetry and stories and gave us novels like "Frankenstein." On the continent it was mainly a philosophical movement and it produced anti-Enlightenment philosophers like Nietzche and Mussolini.

English Romanticism favored people like Byron and Colleridge. Continental Romanticism favored Napoleon. Even the people who fought Napoleon openly admired him. He was informed by reason but he was said to have transcended it through his will. Continental literature of the period was full of references to will and the philosophers codified it. I love what the English did with Romanticism; I can't even begin to understand the continental variety.

Here's the second observation about romance. This time I'm talking about romance in the sense of a man and a woman falling in love. My guess is that romance is one of the factors responsible for the concept of human rights and liberty. Lots of institutions give lip service to supporting love and families but I get the feeling that every institution actually feels threatend by them. People who are passionately in love have their own agenda and they're willing to die for it. It's amazing that the medieval troubadors would have sided with this anti-social behavior. Eventually they persuaded society to support lovers at the expense of the weakening of the state. Interesting, huh?

Thanks to Steve Worth for the French postcard. Also, I hope Blogger will publish the paragraphs in type that's all the same size, as it is in the window I'm writing it in.