Latino/Spanish Artists at Charlton: Luis Avila (3) - Love Diary 53

This next example of Luis Avila's work - "Unfaithful Heart" from Charlton's Love Diary 53 (Feb 1968), really does his talent justice. It's another romance story in which the leading lady is trying to figure out who she really loves. Some of the panels in this one are really quite exquisite. For sure Avila has a certain mental image of the kind of woman he likes to draw, as well as the kind of car - an Alfa Romeo Duetto! He does good kissing scenes and embraces. His characters are stylish dressers, must spend a lot of time and money on hair-dos, and live in stylish apartments or houses. They're not short of a few bucks! They are thoughtful people, wrestling with entry into adulthood proper. They're faced with dilemmas that they don't fully understand at first, but work things through until the truth is revealed.

 

Nice!

Latino/Spanish Artists at Charlton: Luis Avila (2) - Just Married 103

In this next example of Luis Avila's work, we're at the end of his stint at Charlton. The cover of Just Married 103 (December 1974) is by Art Capello. The 9-page story by Avila, "Putting It Together", is about a small town third grade teacher about to marry the wrong guy. At first she's not sure why she doesn't experience the thrill she expects from a kiss with her fiancee, so she takes off for the weekend to stay with her girlfriend, who sets her up with a date. the excitement she's been missing manifests during the time she spends with this new guy, especially as they take a tour of the big city. Maybe a complete change of environment is what she needs. The new guy is really struck on our heroine, and wants to meet her folks. Back home its soon clear to Naomi what she really wants, and the two look like they'll live happily ever after. Avila's ladies have a very similar look, as you'll see when some more examples are posted. His technique is to use a lot of poses - not a huge amount of dynamism. As with Demetrio's work, its all very upper middle class despite the protagonist being a third grade teacher. The cars really don't look American. Some unusual poses (for the story) - perhaps he uses fashion model photos to get the outlines. The style with which he draws hair is somewhat common to the Spanish/Catalan/Latino artists generally.

 

 

A well-tried theme for a romance comic story, but told in a way that fits well with Avila's style. I wonder who the writer is?

Latino/Spanish artists at Charlton: Luis Avila (1) - Teen Confessions 50

Out of This World has hitherto focused on various themes - romance comics, nurses in comics, diversity in comics (including anti-racist propaganda and desegregation of the comic book medium), and British girls' comics. Certain artists have also been given attention, notably Demetrio Sanchez Gomez. 'Demetrio', as he signs his work, is one of a number of Spanish/Latino artists who were drawing for Charlton and DC romance comics in the late 60s and well into the 1970s. The Charlton romance comics of this period often contained one story of superior artistic quality (usually but not always the third and last in the book), and many of these were drawn by those Spanish/Latino artists. Besides Demetrio, there was Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, who did a lot of superhero work for DC, but also a number of other, less well-known artists. One such was Luis Avila. A search in the Grand Comics Database suggests that in American comics he only worked for Charlton. The table below includes all the works attributed to him in the Database, in chronological order of publication:

Date	Title	#	Story	#pages	Signed	Cover
08/67	I Love You	69	Where happiness lies	8	Y (V Avila)	N
10/67	I Love You	70	Too many kisses	8		Y
12/67	Love Diary	52	I betrayed you, darling!	8		Y
2/68	Love Diary	53	Unfaithful heart	8		Y
6/68	Love Diary	54	A few lies, many tears	10		Y
7/68	Teen Confessions	50	I’ll be your kind of girl, darling!	10	Y	Y
8/68	Love Diary	55	I too am in love	8		Y
11/68	Just Married	61	I’ll be a modern wife	8		Y
7/69	Romantic Story	101	Flee from heartbreak	8	Y	Y
8/69	Love Diary	61	A soldier’s promise	8		Y
10/69	Career Girl Romances	53	How to succeed in love	10	Y	Y
11/69	Teen-Age Love	67	No good!	10	Y	Y
12/69	Romantic Story	104	A heart of gold	10	Y	Y
1/70	Grand Prix	29	Not for reel	7	Y
1/70	I Love You	83	A Frenchman’s Kiss	10	Y	Y
1/70	Love Diary	64	Nobody kisses a goddess	10	Y	Y
3/70	I Love You	84	Drop out!	10	Y	Y
5/70	Time For Love	16	Love lies deep and cold	10	Y	N
7/70	I Love You	86	Happiness guaranteed	10	Y	Y
4/71	Career Girl Romances	62	No time for kisses	5	Y	Y
4/71	Teen Confessions	67	Moonlight should be shared	9	Y	Y
5/71	I Love You	91	Beyond love	9		Y
10/71	Sweethearts	119	Men are unessential	8	Y	Y
1/72	Love Diary	76	Is this all there is?	9	Y	N
4/72	Just Married	84	Once we were happy	9		Y
7/72	Hot Rods and Racing Cars	115	Desert madness	7		N
5/73	For Lovers Only	71	Second chance	9	Y	Y
6/73	Career Girl Romances	75	My love returned	9	Y	Y
8/73	Time For Love	35	An ancient spell	9		Y
9/73	Teen Confessions	82	Tomorrow is now	9		Y
10/73	Time For Love	36	Betrayed by a kiss	9	Y	N
9/74	For Lovers Only	75	The whispering	9	Y	Y
12/74	Just Married	103	Putting it together	9		N

Upcoming Out of This World posts will be focusing on Avila and some of the other artists providing romance stories to Charlton in the specified time frame. Today's post features "I'll Be Your Kind of Girl, Darling!" from the July 1968 issue of Teen Confessions (#50). The story is about a high school senior who best friend of many years has started skipping school to hang out with the 'in' crowd, especially a motor-bike riding young man who graduated last year but then didn't go to college despite having a scholarship. Our protagonist is a very sophisticated and mature for her age young lady who bides her time, makes all the right moves, and ends up with the desirable guy, gets her friend back in school, gets him back on the college track, and gets a very nice mod look in the process. Avila's art tends to remind the reader of fashion model poses from the period (e.g. Twiggy, Mary Quant) - there's a lot of posing going on in the story as well! It is visually attractive and draws the attention of the eye. The script is reasonable, but a couple of word balloons seem to be inaccurately assigned. It is a notch up from much of Charlton's art, and refreshingly different for American comic book art of the time. Spanish/Latino artists did a lot of romance and other comic book genre art in Europe in the 60s and 70s, including in the UK, and their distinctive styles seem to have a more European rather than North American look. Here's the story from Teen Confessions 50 - see what you think!

 

 

The mod backgrounds in some panels, along with the hairstyles and clothes, make it an interesting cultural artifact, in addition to it being an example of a particular style of art and of the romance comic genre.