The Four Color Media Monitor: Once, early romance comics upheld positive values

The Conversation wrote about the history of romance comics, including Joe Simon/Jack Kirby's own contribution, Young Romance, and the brief success they had in the late 40s to late 60s before the superhero revival gradually led to their loss of interest and influence. And they tell here, interestingly enough:

While most scholars have argued that romance comics tend to reinforce conservative values – making marriage the ultimate goal for women and placing family and middle-class stability on a pedestal – the real pleasure of reading these books came from the mildly scandalous behavior of their characters and the untoward plots that the narratives were ostensibly warning against. With titles like “I Was a Pick-Up!,” “The Farmer’s Wife” and “The Plight of the Suspicious Bridegroom,” “Young Romance” and its sister titles quickly sold out of their original print runs and began outselling other comics genres.

That would have to be one of the most fascinating details about early romance comics of the times - unlike what you see today, they respected heterosexuality, marriage and raising families. Nowadays, if the romance genre's seen any revival, it includes emphasis on LGBT ideology, and marriage/having children is surely dwarfed in the liberal-dominated market. At Marvel, the most notorious example in that regard would be Northstar's gay marriage in the pages of Astonishing X-Men 8 years ago. And all the while, Mary Jane Watson was kicked out of Spider-Man's life by Joe Quesada and Axel Alonso, the latter who oversaw the Northstar story when he was EIC. When that kind of conduct takes place and a woman who could've made an excellent selling point gets kicked to the curb, you know something's wrong.

The article also points to 2 notable names from the early period of romance comics, along with some other interesting moments in history:

Among collectors, issues of romance comics are less sought after than those of other genres. For this reason, they tend to go under the radar.

Romance comics, however, featured work by pioneering artists like Lily Renée and Matt Baker, both of whom worked on first issue of “Teen-Age Romances” in 1949.

Baker is the first-known black artist to work in the comic book industry and Renée was one of comics’ first female artists. Prior to working on “Teen-Age Romances,” they both drew “good girl art” – a set of artistic tropes borrowed from pinups and pulp magazines – for several titles. Their work in both genres exemplifies how earlier pulp magazine themes of desire and seduction could readily be applied to newer genres.

After the “love glut,” sub-genre mashups nonetheless emerged. For example, cowboy romances were briefly popular. Later, in response to the civil rights movement, Marvel published the 1970 story “But He’s the Boy I Love,” which was the first story in a romance comic to feature African-American characters since Fawcett’s three-issue run of “Negro Romance” in 1950.

That was all at a time when, unlike what became of comicdom when Alonso was still Marvel's EIC, they weren't exercising political correctness like what you see now, which has surely guaranteed we may never see the Big Two publishing romance as a stand-alone genre again, rather than as a component in superhero stories.

No doubt, there's plenty to learn from early romance comics, very few of which, if produced by Marvel/DC, have been officially archived in trades for modern audiences to check out. (There was a Marvel Romance trade reprinting selected issues of Teen-Age Romance, Patsy Walker and Our Love Story in the mid-2000s, and some of Kirby/Simon's Young Romance also was, but that's still too little.) But so long as political correctness dominates today's mainstream output, it may not be possible to conceive a romance drawing inspiration from how the early writers/artists used to do it.

Labels: dc comics, good artists, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics

The denigration of heterosexual romance has a lot with lgbt people being over-represented in the arts and them being encouraged by their education,by the elites, to attack non-gay culture and replace it with gay culture.

In other words, they are emboldened to queer greater society by the elite, and by queering, I meanm make everyone more "gay".

It begins in the home. Those of them who choose to have children, particularly lesbians, are more likely to have kids who identify as lgbt than the general population.

There are two explanations for this. Either there is a gay gene that expresses itself given the right environment or

these lesbians are deliberately raising their children to not be straight,using various means of psychological conditioning.

ht tps:/ /w ww.nbcnews.co m/feature/nbc-out/adult-children-lesbian-parents-less-likely-identify-straight-study-finds-n989976

This also shows that lesbians or ANY other minority group truly DOESN'T respect diversity or the right of people to choose how to live. Gay people want you to be gay, Muslims don't hide the fact that ideally they will impose Muslim values on you if they have the power, same with Christians and Jews, black people want to replace white historical figures in non-black countries with black ones.

Posted by Anonymous | 2:25 AM

The Marvel, DC and Archie books today tend to respect family values and heterosexual marriage. In the Fantastic Four, Ben just married Alicia and they are planning to have kids; Reed and Sue's children are teenagers and part of the team. Family is a big theme of the book. Several of the X-Men are married and have kids, although it is hard to remember what is in or out of continuity these days.

Characters whose mothers were noticeably absent when they were introduced in the 1960s now have maternal figures who have become part of the story: Thor, Iron Man, Flash. Younger superheroes are portrayed as part of extended families, with their parents important characters in the stories: Squirrel Girl, Moon Girl, Ms Marvel.

The publishers have introduced gay characters and marriages; that is the legal system and culture and reality that American kids grow up in now. The books still predominantly focus on heterosexual romance and marriage.

There are a lot of possible reasons why kids of heterosexual parents are more likely to identify as heterosexual than kids of gay parents, and vice versa. One is that kids start off looking up to their parents, and have privileged access to the worlds their parents live in; kids of lawyers are more likely to become lawyers, kids of doctors are more likely to become doctors, and so on. Vast majority of kids of gay parents, despite this, tend to identify as straight, even if the vastness isn't quite as great as with the kids of straight parents.

Posted by Anonymous | 9:44 AM

What is a 'non-black country'? Certainly not the US, which has been a mixed-race country since before its founding.

Posted by Anonymous | 9:47 AM

Heterosexual values? Is wanting a penis in a vagina really a "value"? A biological urge isn't a value, it just is. Just because you're threatened by people who live their lives in a non-hetero-binary doesn't mean you get to ascribe an ethical system to sexual behavior.

Posted by Anonymous | 10:47 AM

"Heterosexual values? Is wanting a penis in a vagina really a "value"? A biological urge isn't a value, it just is. Just because you're threatened by people who live their lives in a non-hetero-binary doesn't mean you get to ascribe an ethical system to sexual behavior."

Instead of employing moronic pop psychology, let's look at the evidence. It is gay people who find heterosexuality threatening. They are repulsed by heterosexual couples on tv, women being girly and men being masculine. Everyone who is calling for more representation of non-dominant group is usually threatened by or disgusted with the majority group. Every single one.

Gay people, in general, don't care about family values. They are mostly interested in hedonism. This is why gay marriage is not taken seriously by conservatives from around the world. Gay relationships are less stable and mental illness is as rampant, mental illness that can not be explained by persecution. Not to mention a tendency to downplay stds, because they don't seem to understand there is a reason why promiscuity was discouraged in the past. And they see nothing wrong with forcing non-binary values on children too young to walk. All of these things don't make them candidates for being good parents.

"There are a lot of possible reasons why kids of heterosexual parents are more likely to identify as heterosexual than kids of gay parents, and vice versa. One is that kids start off looking up to their parents, and have privileged access to the worlds their parents live in;"
Your response indicates that homosexuality is can be "learned".

Posted by Anonymous | 11:49 AM

Whether heterosexuality is nature or nurture is a complicated thing; it is probably a lot of both. The freedom to express homosexuality is something that is definitely cultural.

Most gay people have heterosexual parents. They don't find it threatening. And a lot of heterosexuals are tired of stereotypes of girly women and self-consciously masculine men.

Compare Pete Buttigieg with Donald Trump. Which one is more interested in hedonism, and which in family values? Which one shows more signs of mental illness and paranoia, which one has been more obsessively promiscuous? Give you a hint - the guy with the orange tan and hair weave does not come off too well in the comparison.

Posted by Anonymous | 12:27 PM

There are a lot of conservatives around the world who take gay marriage seriously. Many of them are in gay marriages.

Think of Mary Cheney, or Andrew Sullivan, or all the gay MPs in the British Conservative Party.

Posted by Anonymous | 2:18 PM

""Heterosexual values? Is wanting a penis in a vagina really a "value"? A biological urge isn't a value, it just is. Just because you're threatened by people who live their lives in a non-hetero-binary doesn't mean you get to ascribe an ethical system to sexual behavior."

Instead of employing moronic pop psychology, let's look at the evidence. It is gay people who find heterosexuality threatening. They are repulsed by heterosexual couples on tv, women being girly and men being masculine. Everyone who is calling for more representation of non-dominant group is usually threatened by or disgusted with the majority group. Every single one.

Gay people, in general, don't care about family values. They are mostly interested in hedonism. This is why gay marriage is not taken seriously by conservatives from around the world. Gay relationships are less stable and mental illness is as rampant, mental illness that can not be explained by persecution. Not to mention a tendency to downplay stds, because they don't seem to understand there is a reason why promiscuity was discouraged in the past. And they see nothing wrong with forcing non-binary values on children too young to walk. All of these things don't make them candidates for being good parents.

"There are a lot of possible reasons why kids of heterosexual parents are more likely to identify as heterosexual than kids of gay parents, and vice versa. One is that kids start off looking up to their parents, and have privileged access to the worlds their parents live in;"
Your response indicates that homosexuality is can be "learned"."

There are so many issues with this response it's hard to know where to begin (besides being depressed that someone's mental health issues could clearly slip through society's cracks).

Let's break it down:
1-there was no use of 'pop psychology', or any psychology. It's suggested that the author's opinions on the LGBTQ community are rooted from feeling threatened. This suggestion would be backed up by the fact he constantly attacks and degrades the aforementioned community. Such attacks tend not to be the result of a 'live-and-let-live' philosophy.

2-Quote the author:"Instead of employing moronic pop psychology, let's look at the evidence. It is gay people who find heterosexuality threatening. They are repulsed by heterosexual couples on tv, women being girly and men being masculine. Everyone who is calling for more representation of non-dominant group is usually threatened by or disgusted with the majority group. Every single one."
What evidence? You saying things does not make it evidence. Maybe groups want to be represented because, you know, they would like to see a media landscape that is representative. "Every single one"? It's good to know you don't paint with a broad brush.

3-To suggest that the entirety of group holds any singular belief is absurd, offensive, and suggests a level of bigotry that's almost cartoonish.

There's much more to be offended by, but some of us have to work for a living. I pity you.