As I sorted through a pile of British romance comics I purchased recently I came across this wonderful bonanza of Matt Baker art - an Australian romance comic reprinting American romance comics in black and white. If the same procedure was used here as was the norm for the Alan Class reprint comics of the early 60s, these would have been made from the original inked artwork shipped over from the USA! This 68-page digest size
Lonely Heart Library 21 has 6 Baker stories and three by other artists whom I cannot identify. No ads, and just the outside front and back covers added by the Australian company - the rest is all American art. These are apparently all St. John originals, with the Baker stories written by Dana Dutch. The book was published by the Blue Diamond Publishing Co. of 70 Bathurst Street, Sydney, Australia, and printed by Rotary Colorprint Co. Pty. Ltd. of 15 Hamilton Street, Sydney. The distributor was Gordon & Gotch (Asia) Ltd. of Melbourne, Australia. I'm not sure how this came to be in the UK but was perhaps distributed here.
The first story, "My Dates Were Phony", is by Matt Baker and is from Teenage Romances 17 (Aug 1951).
"They Whispered "Shameless!"" is another Baker penciled story, this time from
Teen-Age Romances 19 (Dec 1951).
"Forbidden Fruit" is by Baker, but I can't find any reference to it in the Grand Comics Database. My information comes from
John Benson's list of St. John romance stories. According to John Benson, this story is from
Teen-Age Romances 16 (June 1951) and strangely enough is one of a number of St. John stories that appear to have been drawn in preparation for digest-size printing.
"I Misbehaved" is by Matt Baker from
Teen-Age Romances 18 (Oct 1951)
"Strange Rival" was published in St. John's
Diary Secrets 26 (Dec 1954). I don't know who the artist was. This story was previously published in the St. John series of
Pictorial Romances (issue 19).
"I Wanted a Good Time" came from
Teen-Age Romances 32 (July 1953), artist again unknown, although according to John Benson's list, it has Sachs inking.
"Deceitful" is more gorgeous Baker art, but it is not identified as such in the GCD (no identification is given there). It was published in
Teen-Age Romances 18 (Oct 1951). Confirmation that it is by Baker is from John Benson's list.
"I Carried Things Too Far" is by Baker, again from
Teen-Age Romances 18 (Oct 1951).
"True Love Pays Dividends" is of unknown origin and by an unknown artist.
In addition to all the cultural details that abound in these stories, I think it is interesting to see just how widespread was the dissemination of Matt Baker's work. This comic has a distributor's date stamp on the cover of 12 March 1957. Although American comics were not distributed in Britain in the 1950s, there were British reprints, hard to find nowadays. This Australian reprint suggests another route by which American comics could find their way into Britain during that period. What it also suggests is that these black and white digest-size romance comics that appear to have been typical of Britain and parts of the British Commonwealth during the 50s and 60s are worth investigating, both for work native to the countries in which they were published, as well as for reprints of American art. I think you'll agree that Baker in black and white really shows off the quality of his lines. I'll be uploading a .cbr file of the entire comic to the Digital Comic Museum for them to determine whether it can be added to the collection (I'm thinking yes, but they are the experts), so look out for it there in the near future.
Many thanks to Joanna for writing in and connecting me with John Benson's checklist of St. John romance stories.
This absolute classic Matt Baker masterpiece has it all in terms of nursing stereotypes from the period. This particular story appears to have been the inspiration for many hospital romance tales in later comics. Dated April 1949, this is an early romance comic, and one of the very best, being published by St. John. There's a bunch of notable things going on right there on the cover - we have the stereotypically red-headed young nurse in love with the handsome young doctor (the main reason for going into nursing, right!?), and the older. plain-looking, grumpy 'battle-axe' of a senior nurse - that's what those young career girls become if they don't take advantage of the opportunities for marriage that are earned by their hard work in nursing school. The student nurse is being trained up to be a 'doctor's handmaiden', the standard image of nurses that became prevalent in the 1950s and fodder for all those popular hospital romance novels and TV dramas. Inside we get a glimpse of life as a student nurse at the end of the 1940s - living in hospital accommodation with her comings and goings policed; menial work like washing floors, good training for subservience to her patriarchal masters; the notion that this is all very temporary anyway - marriage is just around the corner. Great stuff, but especially because it's all drawn by one of the masters of the art form, the great Matt Baker! A big thanks to the Digital Comic Museum for the scans, courtesy of JVJ.
