Our friend Gary Sassaman is back with another installment of Tales From My Spinner Rack…another penetrating look at comics of his (and my) youth. This time, he takes a look at a short-lived line of romance comics that Marvel tried in the late sixties.
They had great artwork but — and this is me giving my opinion, not necessarily Gary's — they also had the same kind of sappy, shallow scripts that had pretty much destroyed the genre by then. Marvel — actually, a handful of people who wrote and drew their comics — had once revolutionized super-hero comics to great success, injecting more action and personality. But they didn't apply that approach to love comics…as proven by the fact that the books sold poorly.
Worse, their response to the weak sales was not to make the comics more modern but less. They, like DC when their romance line was dying, took old stories from the fifties and early sixties and reprinted them with sloppily-retouched hair styles and wardrobe. It's like someone said, "Gee, this stuff isn't selling because it's out-of-date. Let's try making it more out-of-date!"
I'm not sure the Comics Code, which was then in antiquated force, would have permitted really modern, realistic romance stories but I can't imagine a worse approach than what both companies did. And I'm thinking I shouldn't hijack this intro for Gary's fine video with my views.
Speaking of Gary: On Saturday afternoon at WonderCon next monthj, he'll be presenting a live edition of Tales From My Spinner Rack focusing on The Fantastic Four and I'll be his guest discussing what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did with that trend-setting comic in the sixties. I'll be doing other panels at WonderCon but again, this is an intro to Gary's video so I'll just shut up and embed…