Gone but not forgotten: "What's love got to do with it ?"- Romance comics - Steranko, Romita, Colan

As we enter February, the “commercially” sanctioned month of love I thought it would be as good a time as any to visit possibly the most maligned of all comic book genres – the romance comic. Although these comics were of little (if any) interest to most boys back in the day, the fact was that romance comics were huge with thousands of titles published between 1947 and 1977, despite this and seeing these comics in the spinner racks it never crossed my mind to even peek inside a romance comic let alone buy one. Well, that was up until around 2010 when I heard that these titles included art by many of comic’s greatest artists including John Romita Senior, John and Sal Buscema, Jim Steranko and Alex Toth. Arguably the most sought after of these titles from the 1970s period is the above issue of “Our Love Story” (#5 - June 1970 - cover by John Romita) which featured Jim Steranko’s only romance strip and art by John Buscema, Gene Colan and John Romita.

Above the excellent splash page to the first story in this issue by Stan Lee - "But he's not the boy for me!" by John Buscema and Frank Giacoia.

The second Stan Lee story in this issue is "But he's the boy I love!" with art by Gene Colan and John Romita.

Rounding of this issue is the excellently illustrated strip “My Heart broke in Hollywood!" by Jim Steranko.

Although I only have a handful of romance comics in my collection it seems that the letters pages did not wax lyrical over the content of the actual strips and the heroes latest battles, instead they focused on the more real life issues of the trials and tribulations of dating and young love.

My only other issue of a Marvel romance comic is the above #4 of "Our Love Story" (cover by John Romita from April 1970) with some great art by Gene Colan,Sal Buscema,Frank Giociao and Don Heck.

My third and only other romance comic is of DC's popular "Young Love" #73 (below) from April 1969. Although the art in this issue is not as impressive as the two Marvel titles above, it does feature an excellent story illustrated by the great Alex Toth.

Around the late 1970's romance comics seemed to vanish from the spinner racks just like the Western, humour and war comics that thrived at this time. While many romance comics seemed on the face of it to be drab soap opera dramas, I'm sure many (mostly) girls enjoyed them as pure escapism, perhaps that’s why they "disappeared" at a time when comics were becoming darker and had to be taken "seriously". Personally, as I read these comics (especially the Marvel issues) you could see the soap opera romance elements of these wonderfully fun tales being played out in titles like Spider-Man , Daredevil and many others superhero comics.