Written by Joe Gill and drawn by Tom Sutton, from the October 1974 issue of Haunted Love, this Gothic romance tale set in Paris in 1906 is one of Charlton's best. A newly qualified doctor, Henri Duval, begins attending a bed-ridden elderly woman by the name of Madame Maleure at her huge, stately home where she lives with her young companion, Madeleine Beauvois. Madeleine takes care of the Madame, and it's a full time occupation, leaving her no time for herself. The doctor fixes that by getting a local nurse in to help part of the time. And now that Madeleine has a little time off, she can go out to dinner with the doctor! Strangely enough, this is exactly what Madame Maleure wanted to happen, for Madeleine and the doctor to fall in love. What sinister plot has she hatched? And where will it all end? The story has to be read to find out! Joe Gill must have been allowed a bit of extra time to work on this one, and Tom Sutton's artwork is really very nice. Sad that both of them have passed beyond the veil.
So there it is. A Charlton Gothic romance to challenge the quality of those few DC Gothic romances. Actually Charlton published more Gothic romance comics than DC, as Haunted Love ran for more issues than the combined run of those two DC titles, Sinister House of Secret Love and Dark House of Forbidden Love. These are scans from my own copy of this book, but the printing, as is often the case with Charlton comics, is a little rough, and it shows in the scans. It would be really cool if the best Charlton work was reprinted on good quality paper and in a way that preserved the details and colors of Sutton's art in these kinds of stories, and the work of others like Mike Zeck, Joe Staton, John Byrne, Steve Ditko, etc. I saw that there's a 'Best of Ditko's Charlton' set of reprints out that includes his older stuff from the 50s:
http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Suspense-Steve-Ditko-Archives/dp/1606992899/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267625615&sr=8-2
I guess it will take people like Blake Bell with enough drive to get stuff like that done.
