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Return to Romance: The Strange Love Stories of Ogden Whitney
By turns amusing and disturbing, this collection of 1960s romance comic strips provides a provocative window into male-female power dynamics as conceived by one of mid-century America's foremost comic book artists.
Ogden Whitney was one of the unsung masters of American comics, a fluent draughtsman and inventive storyteller who tried his hand at everything from Westerns to superheroes to science fiction. He is perhaps best-remembered for creating the satirical superhero Herbie Popnecker, also known as the Fat Fury, but his romance comics of the late 1950s and 1960s may be even more unique. In Whitney's hands, the standard formula of meet-cute, minor complications, and final blissful kiss becomes something very different: an unsettling vision of midcentury American romance as a devastating power struggle, a form of intimate psychological warfare dressed up in pearls and flannel suits. From suburban lawns and offices to rocket labs and factories, his men and women scheme and clash, dominate and escape, drawn in a style of scrupulous blandness that only serves to emphasize the strangeness of the material. It is darkly hilarious, truly terrifying -- and yes, occasionally even a bit romantic.
Ogden Whitney was one of the unsung masters of American comics, a fluent draughtsman and inventive storyteller who tried his hand at everything from Westerns to superheroes to science fiction. He is perhaps best-remembered for creating the satirical superhero Herbie Popnecker, also known as the Fat Fury, but his romance comics of the late 1950s and 1960s may be even more unique. In Whitney's hands, the standard formula of meet-cute, minor complications, and final blissful kiss becomes something very different: an unsettling vision of midcentury American romance as a devastating power struggle, a form of intimate psychological warfare dressed up in pearls and flannel suits. From suburban lawns and offices to rocket labs and factories, his men and women scheme and clash, dominate and escape, drawn in a style of scrupulous blandness that only serves to emphasize the strangeness of the material. It is darkly hilarious, truly terrifying -- and yes, occasionally even a bit romantic.
112 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2019
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September 14, 2020
This is a bizarre and sad and campy/kitschy and hilarious collection of late fifties into early sixties comics stories drawn by Ogden Whitney and written by who knows? But the feel is part Mad Men and part late sixties enforcement of some kind of romantic code. Of course (maybe in part because of the Comics Code) there are no queer romances. This is about solidifying power with men in the shaping of gender identity, with women in an unquestioning position of blaming themselves for failing to meet such standards.
Here’s a few I found fascinating:
“Return to Romance” -Wherein a woman who has clearly “let herself go” in favor of being a great cook and housewife gets dumped by her (gorgeous) fashion photographer husband for a hot model. So she gets a makeover, goes to the gym, and fights to get him back! She never once blames him for dumping her; she only blames herself.
“I Want a Real Man” - A former boxer wants to stop being so macho, gets a job as a secretary and is bullied by other guys and his boss, who hires him because she secretly always loved him. She badgers him into knocking a guy out, to prove he is a “real man.” Normality restored!
“Beat Romance” -Published in 1959, this capitalizes on the Beat generation standards for women as strong and weird and unfeminine and teens in general as rebellious. When a guy houses a friend’s teen girl for her (!) we see she was not really a Beat (I mean, yuk!) or challenging the status quo for female adulthood, but really, In Love with this guy, she was just testing him. Normal restored, they kiss and “fall in love” (which is the code for romance, that they kiss)
“Courage and Kisses”- A woman has learned to appear courageous, the man she is interested in is actually fearful about a lot of things, even caterpillars. We need to reverse this to create normativity, and have him get the guts to rescue her. My hero!
A typically superb and so interesting New York Review Comics Production, and I have not read a bad one yet. We would not have this book were it not for the joint efforts of Frank Santoro and one of the key comics historians, Dan Nadel (who especially specializes in “fringe” or oddball or pulp figures such as Ogden Whitney). With a nice introduction by Liana Finck about why she loves these stories so much (in spite of their obvious offensiveness on so many levels).
Here’s a few I found fascinating:
“Return to Romance” -Wherein a woman who has clearly “let herself go” in favor of being a great cook and housewife gets dumped by her (gorgeous) fashion photographer husband for a hot model. So she gets a makeover, goes to the gym, and fights to get him back! She never once blames him for dumping her; she only blames herself.
“I Want a Real Man” - A former boxer wants to stop being so macho, gets a job as a secretary and is bullied by other guys and his boss, who hires him because she secretly always loved him. She badgers him into knocking a guy out, to prove he is a “real man.” Normality restored!
“Beat Romance” -Published in 1959, this capitalizes on the Beat generation standards for women as strong and weird and unfeminine and teens in general as rebellious. When a guy houses a friend’s teen girl for her (!) we see she was not really a Beat (I mean, yuk!) or challenging the status quo for female adulthood, but really, In Love with this guy, she was just testing him. Normal restored, they kiss and “fall in love” (which is the code for romance, that they kiss)
“Courage and Kisses”- A woman has learned to appear courageous, the man she is interested in is actually fearful about a lot of things, even caterpillars. We need to reverse this to create normativity, and have him get the guts to rescue her. My hero!
A typically superb and so interesting New York Review Comics Production, and I have not read a bad one yet. We would not have this book were it not for the joint efforts of Frank Santoro and one of the key comics historians, Dan Nadel (who especially specializes in “fringe” or oddball or pulp figures such as Ogden Whitney). With a nice introduction by Liana Finck about why she loves these stories so much (in spite of their obvious offensiveness on so many levels).
January 31, 2024
Yet another side of a nearly forgotten comics master
As a lifelong fan of comics—and someone who is active in efforts to preserve classic newspaper comic strips—I am pleased to see comics reaching the zenith of their popularity in global culture. The genre dominates the current list of highest-grossing films and these characters can be seen everyday from pre-schoolers' clothes and backpacks to adults' desk accessories and countless TV spinoffs.
However, this process of globalizing comics also is an ongoing evolution of these universes, keeping pace with contemporary values. This leaves behind some huge "black holes" in comics history—gaps that, in many cases, should be forgotten for many reasons, including racism. But not all forgotten bodies of comic work are worthless.
Anyone remember Herbie Popnecker, aka the Fat Fury?
I loved that very unlikely, odd-ball super hero when I was a kid in the early 1960s. I often found myself bullied for many reasons (because my father's work moved us around with some regularity, I was often the "new kid"). Anyone who is familiar with the Herbie series knows that there was, quite simply, nothing else like this series in American comics.
Over the years, I tried to follow the work of Herbie's co-creators but one of them, Richard E. Hughes, hid behind a pseudonym when working on Herbie and the other, Ogden Whitney, was pretty much a biographical black hole. That's true about Whitney, even today, after a number of leading professionals in the world of cartooning and comics have been campaigning on his behalf. In 2007, Whitney finally was honored with induction in the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame—even though we collectively know little about his seemingly troubled life. He died in 1975 at age 56, maybe (or maybe not) because of severe alcoholism and maybe (or maybe not) complicated by struggles with mental health.
What we know about Ogden Whitney was summed up in seven words by the highly respected comics scholar, journalist and curator Dan Nadel in another book I can highly recommend, Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries. In highlighting Whitney in that 2006 book, Nadel wrote:
"Whitney is a master of psychological distress."
All of us who are fascinated by Whitney's unusual work can speculate about how Whitney understood so much about "psychological distress." Back when I was an 8-year-old kid discovering Whitney's Herbie comics on a rack at the drugstore near my home, I wouldn't have understood those two words—but I certainly understood the gut-level impact.
So, that's a very long way of explaining why I am 5-star-raving and highly recommending this paperback edition of some of Whitney's best romance comics. When a friend told me about this 2019 book, a few weeks ago, my jaw dropped. "Ogden Whitney drew romance comics!?" I said and immediately ordered a copy.
Now, a cautionary note is essential here: These comics are loaded with sexist assumptions from the heyday of this all-but-forgotten genre of romance comics that exploded in popularity from just after World War II through the 1950s. Identifying the time period alone should alert you to the sexist assumptions, including the basic notion that life was not complete if a guy didn't find a gal—and a gal didn't do all she could to attract a good guy.
I also commend the Preface of this volume, written by the wonderfully creative New Yorker cartoonist Linda Finck. She wrestles with those sexist assumptions from that era and still argues that she "loves" what Whitney did with the genre.
If you do get a copy of this book, you can judge for yourself how you interpret these stories and can weigh the value you find in Whitney's work—but my own conclusion is: Like Dan Nadel, I see brilliant pops of "psychological distress" bursting from nearly every panel of Whitney's tales of romance. On every page, my mind was firing away into cultural tangents and I kept smiling, nodding my head and reading further. I read the whole book in about an hour, then read it again the next evening. A week later, I read it all again. Each time, I saw even more than in my first reading.
If you've read this far in this review, I hope you can see that my appreciation of comics is deeper than simply asking for a gripping tale that keeps me turning pages—and this book does succeed on that score, as well. I simply couldn't put it down without learning what Whitney had in store next.
What I really enjoy in my reading—whatever the genre—are stories that keep my own mind firing with creative connections in many different directions—and this new Whitney retrospective is a true popcorn popper of a book!
As a lifelong fan of comics—and someone who is active in efforts to preserve classic newspaper comic strips—I am pleased to see comics reaching the zenith of their popularity in global culture. The genre dominates the current list of highest-grossing films and these characters can be seen everyday from pre-schoolers' clothes and backpacks to adults' desk accessories and countless TV spinoffs.
However, this process of globalizing comics also is an ongoing evolution of these universes, keeping pace with contemporary values. This leaves behind some huge "black holes" in comics history—gaps that, in many cases, should be forgotten for many reasons, including racism. But not all forgotten bodies of comic work are worthless.
Anyone remember Herbie Popnecker, aka the Fat Fury?
I loved that very unlikely, odd-ball super hero when I was a kid in the early 1960s. I often found myself bullied for many reasons (because my father's work moved us around with some regularity, I was often the "new kid"). Anyone who is familiar with the Herbie series knows that there was, quite simply, nothing else like this series in American comics.
Over the years, I tried to follow the work of Herbie's co-creators but one of them, Richard E. Hughes, hid behind a pseudonym when working on Herbie and the other, Ogden Whitney, was pretty much a biographical black hole. That's true about Whitney, even today, after a number of leading professionals in the world of cartooning and comics have been campaigning on his behalf. In 2007, Whitney finally was honored with induction in the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame—even though we collectively know little about his seemingly troubled life. He died in 1975 at age 56, maybe (or maybe not) because of severe alcoholism and maybe (or maybe not) complicated by struggles with mental health.
What we know about Ogden Whitney was summed up in seven words by the highly respected comics scholar, journalist and curator Dan Nadel in another book I can highly recommend, Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries. In highlighting Whitney in that 2006 book, Nadel wrote:
"Whitney is a master of psychological distress."
All of us who are fascinated by Whitney's unusual work can speculate about how Whitney understood so much about "psychological distress." Back when I was an 8-year-old kid discovering Whitney's Herbie comics on a rack at the drugstore near my home, I wouldn't have understood those two words—but I certainly understood the gut-level impact.
So, that's a very long way of explaining why I am 5-star-raving and highly recommending this paperback edition of some of Whitney's best romance comics. When a friend told me about this 2019 book, a few weeks ago, my jaw dropped. "Ogden Whitney drew romance comics!?" I said and immediately ordered a copy.
Now, a cautionary note is essential here: These comics are loaded with sexist assumptions from the heyday of this all-but-forgotten genre of romance comics that exploded in popularity from just after World War II through the 1950s. Identifying the time period alone should alert you to the sexist assumptions, including the basic notion that life was not complete if a guy didn't find a gal—and a gal didn't do all she could to attract a good guy.
I also commend the Preface of this volume, written by the wonderfully creative New Yorker cartoonist Linda Finck. She wrestles with those sexist assumptions from that era and still argues that she "loves" what Whitney did with the genre.
If you do get a copy of this book, you can judge for yourself how you interpret these stories and can weigh the value you find in Whitney's work—but my own conclusion is: Like Dan Nadel, I see brilliant pops of "psychological distress" bursting from nearly every panel of Whitney's tales of romance. On every page, my mind was firing away into cultural tangents and I kept smiling, nodding my head and reading further. I read the whole book in about an hour, then read it again the next evening. A week later, I read it all again. Each time, I saw even more than in my first reading.
If you've read this far in this review, I hope you can see that my appreciation of comics is deeper than simply asking for a gripping tale that keeps me turning pages—and this book does succeed on that score, as well. I simply couldn't put it down without learning what Whitney had in store next.
What I really enjoy in my reading—whatever the genre—are stories that keep my own mind firing with creative connections in many different directions—and this new Whitney retrospective is a true popcorn popper of a book!
November 7, 2019
As with most comics of the period (the late 1950s / early 1960s), the writers of the stories are anonymous, so it is unknown to what extent Whitney contributed to the scripts, if at all. One theme common to several stories is a role reversal of men taking on "feminine" roles or behavior and women in turn exhibiting "masculine" behavior; but normalcy is always (re)established in the end; presumably all of these comics were published with the Comic Code Authority seal of approval, without which distribution would have been too limited for commercial viability. With its simplified settings, the art sometimes borders on the generic, though individual touches are in evidence, particularly with those characters in "misfit" roles; the pre-makeover housewife of the first story could be Herbie Popnecker in drag.
A story-by-story summary follows.
A story-by-story summary follows.
August 16, 2020
This is definitely one of the more interesting collections of mid-century romance comics I've read. Ogden Whitney's work manages to both play up the campy, how-to aspects of the genre while at the same time subverting them - one of his heroines has her PhD in nuclear physics and two others head up major fashion houses/department stores. And yet the goal of all of the characters is to get married and live blissfully domestic lives; in fact, one woman's deal-breaker moment with a would-be suitor is when he says that he expects her to keep working after they're married.
If you're looking for an idea of what mid-century romance comics were all about, this isn't the place to start. But if you already know and want to see what a talented creator could do with the formula, then this is the book for you.
If you're looking for an idea of what mid-century romance comics were all about, this isn't the place to start. But if you already know and want to see what a talented creator could do with the formula, then this is the book for you.
October 18, 2019
Fans of kitsch, comics, feminism, and popular culture/sociology/anthropology will find much to enjoy and be appalled by in Whitney's representations of mid-century heterosexual love. Think of it as the sort of thing Tammy Pierce's mother (of Esther Pearl Watson's "Unlovable") would've eaten up.
November 2, 2020
From the blurb: “In Whitney’s hands, the standard formula of meet-cute, minor complications, and final blissful kiss becomes something very different: an unsettling vision of midcentury American romance as a devastating power struggle, a form of intimate psychological warfare dressed up in pearls and flannel suits.”
A whole lot of retrospective reframing going on there. Nothing subversive is contained in these pages that I can see, nothing ‘strange’ (as the subtitle would have it). Whitney was challenging neither the form of 1960s romance comics nor their message. If anything, it’s patriarchal propaganda. All the women here are defined only by the reaction they elicit from the men they meet. And every single one of the nine strips ends with a ‘final blissful kiss’.
Here’s a sample story: a pretty but ‘brainless’ girl falls in love with the charismatic owner of a manufacturing plant. He is impressed by her home cooking. The fledgling romance is interrupted by the arrival an old flame. While the man is distracted, his workers vote to strike over being forced to do overtime. Thankfully, the rejected girl is able to convince the union of their duty to work longer hours in order to ‘save America’. The workers cheer and the rebellion is quashed. Moved, the plant’s owner dumps the newcomer and takes the pretty girl into his arms.
Of interest as a cultural artefact of mid-twentieth century America but absolutely not “touching and empowering and human”, as Whitney’s hackwork is described in the introduction. Quite the opposite.
A whole lot of retrospective reframing going on there. Nothing subversive is contained in these pages that I can see, nothing ‘strange’ (as the subtitle would have it). Whitney was challenging neither the form of 1960s romance comics nor their message. If anything, it’s patriarchal propaganda. All the women here are defined only by the reaction they elicit from the men they meet. And every single one of the nine strips ends with a ‘final blissful kiss’.
Here’s a sample story: a pretty but ‘brainless’ girl falls in love with the charismatic owner of a manufacturing plant. He is impressed by her home cooking. The fledgling romance is interrupted by the arrival an old flame. While the man is distracted, his workers vote to strike over being forced to do overtime. Thankfully, the rejected girl is able to convince the union of their duty to work longer hours in order to ‘save America’. The workers cheer and the rebellion is quashed. Moved, the plant’s owner dumps the newcomer and takes the pretty girl into his arms.
Of interest as a cultural artefact of mid-twentieth century America but absolutely not “touching and empowering and human”, as Whitney’s hackwork is described in the introduction. Quite the opposite.
July 3, 2020
3.5 stars. I don't know what to do with this. It's subversive and absurd and almost feels like propaganda in a really odd way. These are comics of the 50s and 60s (something I know nothing about - which probably doesn't help me properly appreciate this collection). The gender roles are so much - larger than the characters and often larger than the story itself. There's the woman who is so brave and courageous she can't get a man because no man wants to be with a woman who makes him feel like a sissy. The wife who, appallingly, lets herself go and her husband leaves her. But when she drops some weight, dresses better, and gets her hair done she wins him back (that's a happy ending). There's psychological warfare in romance and struggles for the upper hand. I don't know if these seemed extreme when they were published, but the weirdness of it is also what kept me reading.
August 31, 2025
When I was a kid, ACG comics were the comics you settled for if there were no new Marvels or DCs. It seemed like everything they published was drawn by a guy named Ogden Whitney. I didn't read their romance comics but, in between Charles Burns volumes, this looked like a good library pull.
Not so much romantic as psycho-dramatic, the stories collected here are twisted tales of people behaving badly, emotions not quite recognizable as human, and even a touch of Ed Wood Jr-style sexology in a couple of cases. Some of the stories are predictably sexist but others turn the very concept inside out. A perfect fit, in some ways, with Mr Burns.
Not so much romantic as psycho-dramatic, the stories collected here are twisted tales of people behaving badly, emotions not quite recognizable as human, and even a touch of Ed Wood Jr-style sexology in a couple of cases. Some of the stories are predictably sexist but others turn the very concept inside out. A perfect fit, in some ways, with Mr Burns.
July 18, 2020
ridiculous but fun- old romance comics from the late 50s and early 60s
August 31, 2020
kitschy, a fun piece of historical romance comics
Read
April 29, 2021Ogden Whitney is probably as close to an outsider artist as you could find in the medium of romance comics. His stories contain bizarre leaps of logic and storytelling so incident-dense that within the span of a few panels a protagonist will suffer a nervous breakdown, recover for years in a mental hospital, and emerge with a new identity. What's truly fascinating is how these stories view gender, and how much they trouble the binary between sexism and proto-feminism. These stories are bound by the laws of gender roles; in Whitney's world, they are as ironclad as the laws of physics. Women must be pretty and good at keeping house, and by doing so they will land a handsome, stable man, thus fulfilling their existence. But while these rules ostensibly put men in a position of power, the stories themselves function solely on the actions of their female characters. Men operate sort of like automatons, and these gender roles are the programming that they blindly follow, driving them toward the prettiest, nicest, most popular girl in their vicinity. The women in these comics are the only ones who seem aware enough of those roles to articulate them, and their role is sort of like the player in the old computer game Lemmings, setting obstacles and guiderails along a man's predetermined path to guide him to her, whether that involves changing herself to redirect his attention, changing their surroundings to direct him toward her, or, in one case, changing him so he can become the type of person who pursues her. As a male reader, it's a fascinating and unfortunately rare opportunity to see yourself become the object of an undeniably gendered gaze, and this collection as a whole troubles the modern idea that narrative agency and representation for the marginalized necessarily goes hand-in-hand with progression.
May 21, 2021
I've been a fan of Ogden Whitney's Herbie comics since I was a kid - the adventures of a deadpan, overweight nigh-omnipotent little boy with an array of multi-flavored lollipops that give him the power sufficient to defeat all manner of monsters and villains. Well, it turns out Whitney's romance comics are a thousand times weirder than that. They bear the same relation to real-life relationships as Herbie bears to real-life children - there's something nearly alien about the way they chew up stereotypical tropes and images and spit them back out as something deliriously strange. These stories of love, courtship and just desserts made me tense with anxiety - "Real people don't DO that!" I nearly shrieked while reading every one, while marveling at how Whitney's hyper-square art style perfectly matches the uncanny quality of the stories themselves. I want to read more of them, but I'm also kind of afraid to...
January 8, 2026
just read it and ehh 3/5 read even less.
The drawing was amazing and I liked how after a point in each story I would just let the comics guide me through the course of it. Very flimsy.
But ehhh mysogony, it wasnt cute how most women were objectified. But then again very American.
I've to give points on accuracy. The exact portrayal of America in the Twentieth century.
I loved how it was coloured.
My favourite among them has to be the 'Red hair boy and The Pug Nose girl' one.
On the side note, I liked hypocrisy. And I find it creeping its way in every thing I read lately. Perhaps it's self reflection.
Like in the first one, 'Return to Romance' title. Man treats his woman like shit. Nerd gets a glow up and he's head over heels again.
And the courage and kisses one.
Some of these stories laid the base for every other American movie.
Apart from that, I loved the wrestler one. Lmao, big hunk gets bullied by women.
And man tried, he still drew the woman. Awwww?
The drawing was amazing and I liked how after a point in each story I would just let the comics guide me through the course of it. Very flimsy.
But ehhh mysogony, it wasnt cute how most women were objectified. But then again very American.
I've to give points on accuracy. The exact portrayal of America in the Twentieth century.
I loved how it was coloured.
My favourite among them has to be the 'Red hair boy and The Pug Nose girl' one.
On the side note, I liked hypocrisy. And I find it creeping its way in every thing I read lately. Perhaps it's self reflection.
Like in the first one, 'Return to Romance' title. Man treats his woman like shit. Nerd gets a glow up and he's head over heels again.
And the courage and kisses one.
Some of these stories laid the base for every other American movie.
Apart from that, I loved the wrestler one. Lmao, big hunk gets bullied by women.
And man tried, he still drew the woman. Awwww?
June 8, 2020
If you are a woman who was born in the 50's, then you've read True Romance comic books and here at last is a collection of them direct from 1959-1964. It was so much fun to revisit my childhood through these comic books and to see them from a perspective of a person of my age. No wonder my ideas of love and romance, already skewed by the ridiculous movies of the time, got even more ridiculous influenced by these comic books. The funniest of them shows the "beat generation" as represented by men with beards, newsboy caps on backwards, and glasses. These people were supposed to be "beatniks", precursors to hippies. They were the villains of that particular series. Other bad characters were women who worked at the expense of their romances and men who were taken in by trashy but attractive girls. Ah, love!
September 1, 2020
Ummmm what can I say? This is the campiest, corniest comic I’ve ever read. I was entertained, but the stories were oh so ridiculous! However, this was one of a bundle of books I received from New York review of comics, so when I finished reading, and my eyeballs had stopped rolling, I read all the supplemental notes. And, of course, I learned a lot.
Romance comics were big in the late 1940s-mid 1950s. Total sales of nearly a billion copies! These stories were published about a decade after that peak.
After the first story, I wondered if I would give this a 1 star rating and spew my total dislike. But guess what? After reading all of them and the additional notes, I recommend the book. It will take you out of the pandemic/political/angst ridden life you might be experiencing. And that is something!
Buddy read with Ryan. Which makes it so much more fun!
Romance comics were big in the late 1940s-mid 1950s. Total sales of nearly a billion copies! These stories were published about a decade after that peak.
After the first story, I wondered if I would give this a 1 star rating and spew my total dislike. But guess what? After reading all of them and the additional notes, I recommend the book. It will take you out of the pandemic/political/angst ridden life you might be experiencing. And that is something!
Buddy read with Ryan. Which makes it so much more fun!
April 29, 2024
It's amazing when you discover how big the romance comic genre used to be. A lot of titles ran hundreds of issues, yet almost none of it has been preserved. I have been to many comic shops and conventions and I can't recall ever seeing one for sale, even in the twenty five cent bins. It was just dropped and forgotten. There are barely any for sale even online.
So I'm glad to read these relics of the past by Ogden Whitney, the creator of the surreal Herbie comic. They are old fashioned and camp by todays standard, but they were meant to be taken at face value at the time. Ogden's art combined with the old style coloring make a unique blend of realistic, yet strangely off kilter material. I loved it.
So I'm glad to read these relics of the past by Ogden Whitney, the creator of the surreal Herbie comic. They are old fashioned and camp by todays standard, but they were meant to be taken at face value at the time. Ogden's art combined with the old style coloring make a unique blend of realistic, yet strangely off kilter material. I loved it.
March 19, 2020
I am not really sure what to make of these comics. I think reading an anthology like this should probably be reserved for historians of comics or people really interested in the genre during the time period of the early 1960's. In that regard, these are interesting. The plots manage to be all exactly the same and also wildly different and outlandish at the same time. I enjoyed reading this book as I had no idea romance comics ever existed, but more for the window into what comics once were like as opposed to an amazing reading experience.
October 26, 2022
3.5 stars.
Not what I expect from romance comics (which may indicate I just don't read enough of them, of course). In one story, a woman tells a friend about her experience choosing between a spendthrift wheeler-dealer and a duller, more sensible guy — but it's the wheeler-dealer who wins her. A female scientist and a male coworker discover they've been hating each other since childhood. A coldhearted businesswoman discovers her scheme for success has led to real romance. And so on.
Hardly revolutionary, but I enjoyed them.
Not what I expect from romance comics (which may indicate I just don't read enough of them, of course). In one story, a woman tells a friend about her experience choosing between a spendthrift wheeler-dealer and a duller, more sensible guy — but it's the wheeler-dealer who wins her. A female scientist and a male coworker discover they've been hating each other since childhood. A coldhearted businesswoman discovers her scheme for success has led to real romance. And so on.
Hardly revolutionary, but I enjoyed them.
January 14, 2025
I don't love the comics in this book as well as the Simon and Kirby ones. Almost without exception these are all stories if terrible people in terrible relationships. But they're still entertaining as hell
October 23, 2023
I laughed a lot, but I think almost all of it was "oh my god, that's ridiculous" laughter.
Read
July 7, 2025not your typical comic romance writer. fun stuff.
November 5, 2025
A shrine to doomed desire where love always tastes faintly of poison.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews