The Friendly Skies: Young Romance 127 - "Another Face, Another Love"

Although I have a number of these Bonnie Taylor comics in my collection, I don't have this one, the scan of which I received from another collector. The Bonnie Taylor story suggests what life is like for a woman constantly on the move in the job of an airline stewardess. Drawn by John Romita Sr. and written by Bob Kanigher, it represents the product of a high quality team working for DC at the time (mid-1960s).

'Career girl' or 'working girl' stories are fairly common in romance comics, and tended to highlight the 'career-love dilemma', most amply demonstrated by nursing romance comics, numerous examples of which can be found on this blog. In comics, nurses were exposed to an endless barrage of handsome and/or wealthy patients, as well as doctors and interns. For airline stewardesses it was passengers and pilots that provided the potential love interest, or handsome strangers in the many ports of call.

By the 1960s, Charlton Comics were the principle purveyors of career girl romance stories, with numerous nursing romance books as well as Career Girl Romances itself. Marvel adapted their previously more cartoon-like and humorous Millie the Model and Patsy Walker titles, making them more like romance titles, and DC took the bold step of orienting some of their romance books to career girls, creating ongoing features about specific characters. In Young Love it was Mary Robin, RN, also produced by Kanigher and Romita, Sr., and in Young Romance it was Bonnie Taylor in her very PanAm-ish blue uniform.

Interesting studies can be found on the traditional airline stewardess of yore. Come Fly With Us! A Global History of the Airline Hostess, Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants, and Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant are some good examples, as well as the well-researched but unfortunately canceled TV Series Pan-Am. Of note on the cover of Young Romance #127 above, the first issue to feature Bonnie Taylor, is the caption that reads, "Meet Bonnie Taylor, the lovely airline stewardess, who flies in and out of romantic adventures," suggesting that Bonnie's relationships are unlikely to be long-lasting.

Just as with the Mary Robin, RN stories, these Bonnie Taylor romances are written as a kind of diary. In Young Love the Mary Robin stories actually take the form of a diary written by Mary, but with Bonnie Taylor it is more like she is the narrator of her own tale detailing the euphoria and heartache of her fleeting encounters. So here's the story that introduced Bonnie Taylor to the eager 1960s readership of Young Romance:

 

   

It's interesting that Bonnie is definitely on the look out for romantic opportunities. Also interesting is the implication that Bonnie's job will drag her away from any romance she does find. In the case of the Captain, she lost out to a girl who is located in one place. The good old career-love dilemma for the working girl.

Really Cute Girlie Stuff: Elizabeth Berube

I rediscovered Elizabeth Berube's beautiful work for DC back in 2005 when I was going through my collection for material to post on my old 'Romance Comic Reading Room'. Over the last couple of years I've noticed Jacque Nodell write a few posts on Sequential Crush featuring Elizabeth Berube and her work, so for my post today I just wanted to bring all of that together for those who might be interested in this wonderful artwork and the person behind it. When I look at Elizabeth Berube's work I see a kind of Alphonse Mucha, Art Nouveau influence that fits with the time Ms Berube was working on this material, as that style was enjoying a revival of popularity in the late 60s/early 70s scene. Noteworthy is the inclusion of minority characters in some of these pieces. So here's those pages I scanned back in 2005 from some DC romance books, image-edited to hopefully get them looking at their best, plus links to all of Jacque's posts, including her interview with the lovely lady herself:

First here's the existing Sequential Crush posts that feature Elizabeth Berube:

Artist Spotlight: Elizabeth Berube

Sequential Elizabeth Story

Fashion Files: Beauty on a Budget – Woollies

Special Announcement: Appearance by ElizabethBerube

Winter Forecast Horoscope

Fashion Files: Legs by Liz Berube

Interview with Elizabeth Berube

Now here's some samples of the different kinds of features Elizabeth drew for DC romance comics, beginning with a contents page from Falling in Love 142:

Next here's a selection of horoscope pages, starting with the Fashion Horoscope from Girls' Love Stories 147:

 

Pisces from Young Love 79:

Cancer from Young Love 121:

Leo from Young Love 121

And some horoscope double page spreads, first from Young Love 121:

and from Young Love 123:

Beauty on a Budget was a fairly regular feature in late 60s/early 70s DC romance books. First example from Girls' Love Stories 151:

Next from Girls' Love Stories 175:

And Girls' Romances 152:

Plus Young Love 119:

Not to mention Young Love 121:

Finally some examples of less frequent or one-off features drawn by Elizabeth Berube. From Young Love 121, a request to readers to send in their fashion designs:

A 'how to' page giving ideas for making decorations, in Young Love 120:

And a similarly themed 'Hip Hints' page from Girls' Romances 151:

And last of all (for this post), a charming 'Dating IQ' questionnaire from Girls' Love Stories 158:

That's all for now, but revisiting these pages has inspired me to search for more, so don't be surprised to find more of the beautiful Elizabeth Berube's beautiful work on Out of This World. Next up - stay tuned for more cute girlie stuff - some more comic book paper dolls!

Social History in Comics: Blitzkrieg 2 - "Walls of Blood"

Robert Kanigher, a long-time writer for DC, can be observed over his career to have been a name more often associated with anti-racist messages in comics than other writers of the time, and he often teamed with artist Joe Kubert on DC's war books. Blitzkrieg was a rather controversial book with the publisher (Joe Kubert, personal communication) that took a look at World War II from a Nazi perspective. This issue (#3, Mar-April 1976) is particularly hard-hitting in the way it depicts the callous slaughter of Polish Jews by inhuman Nazis. With a cover by Joe Kubert and interior art by Ric Estrada, the artwork is meritorious. The comic is one of a number of anti-racist war comics published by DC through the 1960s and well into the 1970s. Overall, when this particular body of work by Kanigher is examined, it is possible to see a theme of equating racism against African Americans with the anti-Semitism and other prejudices of the Nazis, the bottom line being that okay we despise, and rightfully so, the racist atrocities committed by the Nazis, and this is an incompatible position to take if we don't simultaneously condemn racism against African Americans and racism generally. It's also the approach adopted by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at Marvel (see especially Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #6). I found this issue of Blitzkrieg a bit uncomfortable to read because of the reality behind the story - it's painful to even begin contemplating the human suffering that really did take place at that time.

 

Heavy stuff, and it barely begins to convey the full horror of what went down, even though as a piece of popular media, it does a lot to make the reader think about the Holocaust, more than most material from the mid-1970s.

Beatniks in Comics: A Sampler, Part 3

The cartoon left (from The Adventures of Jerry Lewis 68, Jan/Feb 1962) ironically depicts a girl picturing the 'square' guy as a desirable beatnik, rather the opposite of mainstream society's opinion at the time!

For this final look at beatniks as they appeared in early 1960s American comic books, here's another page (below) from a Bob Oksner DC comic, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis 1 (May/June 1960). It shows Dobie's Beatnik buddy, Maynard, with his tendency to walk around lost in the music that's going on inside his head. While not unkind, this typically in one sense detached-from-reality image of the beatnik found in the comics of the early 60s suggests individuals not in tune with mainstream society, but instead seeking an alternate world view on their own terms. On this page from Dobie Gillis 1, Maynard's tapping on the store window frame is mirrored by Dobie tapping him on his shoulder to break his internal musical reverie and bring him back out into the 'real' world of the rest of humanity.






Unusually, in Dobie Gillis 1, there is also a four page Maynard story, featuring a female beatnik friend of Maynard as well. Unfortunately the non-conformity of this pair of beats comes back on Maynard, who suffers humiliation as a consequence of failing to observe acceptable driving etiquette. There's a subtle message here, that okay you beatniks are free to be 'different' if you want, but if you don't conform to societal norms that really matter to the rest of us, you are going to be sorry. This fits in with the general image that seems to be presented of the beatnik - basically a bunch of people struggling to find their identity, not getting 'with it' in terms of society's expectations, and being seen as failures or bums as a result, laughable because of their choice to take a different route.

Taking this deadbeat view of beatniks to the extreme, Mad (of course) re-writes 'My Fair Lady' into the story of a beatnik that one corporate guy challenges another to transform into an advertising man, again suggesting that the beatnik is seen (by society and not necessarily by Mad) as the lowest of the low. Somehow the conversion of the beatnik into a manipulative money-maker is seen as desirable from society's point of view, rather than accepting Irving Mallion (played by a cartoon of Frank Sinatra) as a valuable free-thinking individual in his own right. The satire here is all directed at the topsy-turvy value system by which western society is run. This from Mad 54 (April 1960), with art my Mort Drucker and written by Nick Megliola.

What we've seen over the last three Out Of This World posts is the image of a very recognizable sub-culture, complete with its own linguistics, behaviors, appearance, paraphernalia, and art forms. Certainly some of what constituted beat culture is still with us today, following its re-absorption into the mainstream. One final example of the late 50s/early 60s comic book fascination with beatniks, again from Mad (#49, September 1959), is this beat translation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, with art again by Mort Drucker:

 

Finally, a request from Out Of This World to anyone who reads this. I have for many years been searching for a particular Archie (or Jughead or similar) comic that I had when I was a kid in the 1960s. Somewhere in the comic, Archie introduces a beatnik Jughead to his father, and Jughead responds with the following (that I memorized at the time and have never forgotten):

"Endsville, Daddy-o! Lend me some skin, man! Your heir's a gasser. I dig him the most."

Archie translates this for his father as, "Good afternoon, Sir! Pleased to meet you! You have a fine son. I like him a lot."

At the time I literally couldn't stop laughing when I read this, and kept looking at it over and over and collapsing on the floor in fits of uncontrollable mirth. Although I doubt I could quite recreate the same intense reaction now, I would still really like to get a copy of whatever comic that was. If anyone out there can tell me which issue it is that I'm looking for I would be very happy!