Category Archives: Romance

IN LOVE #5, 1955, published by Charlton. One of the titles taken over from Mainline and featuring left-over work from the ill-fated Simon&Kirby publishing venture, with just a cover with S&K art on this one. It’s kind of interesting that this is promising 10 complete (presumably very short) stories, since the tagline for the Mainline IN LOVE was “Book Length Love Novel”, with the covers made out to look like prose romance novels. I wonder if there was a long story meant for this cover (whether by S&K or not) that was unused or appeared in another Charlton book.

Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta provide the cover for this Marvel romance comic. I really like the movie poster style on this one, with just a hint of what the actual story might be about. A nice change from the exposition and blurb heavy usual style. This is one of my favourite of the roughly two dozen romance covers Kirby did at Marvel.

Update from the comments, the background figure is actually taken from Kirby’s cover to LR #85, and it’s not clear if the foreground figures are original or modified from a Kirby drawing or from elsewhere. Let us know what you think.

Published 1961

Another romance image of the classic design (couple in the foreground, jealous potential rival in the background), this one published by Harvey. Very attractive girl (though maybe redrawn a bit?  Or heavily inked?), and there seems to be a bit of young Reed Richards in the face of the guy in the foreground.

Published 1956

A pretty decent image from this Harvey romance comic, but I have to say that a lot of the Harvey covers are very low-key compared to the covers for the Prize comics (when they weren’t using photo covers). Often the most interesting thing is the background character, like the jeweller sensing an upcoming sale on this one.

Published 1956

Class barriers and conflicts were one of the big themes of romance comics. Kirby did that well, with a lot of good visual shorthand no doubt based on his own experiences, with some great work on the background characters. Also of course the usual sexy and stylish main characters.

Inks by Chris Rule.

Published 1959