Nice Art By Al Hartley,
Jay Scott Pike And Bill Everett
From Issue #17 Of Girl Romances
Published In 1952.
Yet Even More Comic Book Fun From The Past With Other Strange Stuff Thrown In Just For The Heck Of It.
Thanks for posting the whole issue. The art was uniformly good, though I would say Everett was the standout.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I must admit the repeated 'females shouldn't have careers' angle does rub me the wrong way. The first story was particularly bad about that. The Everett story was more subtle in that regard, but the context of the whole issue mitigated against it. At least the jilted boyfriend in that story wasn't also stated to have become successful, so maybe the housewife wouldn't have been as happy with him as she thinks.
The first and second stories have almost identical plot structures. The second one doesn't have the overt love/career false dichotomy, but that happy ending is jarring. That she's in ecstasy that she doesn't have a romantic rival because it's the sister is OK, but the news is delivered by a boy whose dad died in the war leaving his single mother to bring him up alone. I know it's only a five-page story, but couldn't she have shown some sympathy for them?
The third story was OK, though the 'kept winking' line was over-the-top. Just one wink, surely, and it would have been all right if heroine had got it.
The Everett story did have the best writing, actually, and any sexism was at least less knee-jerk. It also isn't solely centered love versus career with a counterpoint being given by love versus security.
I was thinking that Hillman had more forward-thinking romance stories, but looking at Wikipedia it also says they published a right-wing political journal. Hmm...
Well, thanks for the Everett romance work, definitely the best of the lot, art- and story-wise. When you roll around to him again, how about some war work? I know he did a good one about Valley Forge and hope there's more like that one.
Oh, I know this was Atlas. I got the second volume of Fantagraphics Bernie Krigstein collections at one point and the romance stories were quite good, a number of which were from Hillman. Their crime stories in that collection were good, too.
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