Earlier today, I told you about my hunt for a 30th anniversary gift that led me to purchase a page from Love Tales #73 (May 1957) for Irene, and it occurs to me you deserve to see the rest of the original art from that story,

Page 4 of “The Wrong Kind of Guy!,” drawn by John Tartaglione, has been hanging on Irene’s wall since 2006. Amazingly, I was able to find the splash page, page 2, and page 3 online as well, scanned and uploaded by their owners.

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Well, Valentine’s Day was this week, which means my thoughts turned to romance … romance comic books, that is. It reminded me of a dichotomy I noticed several years ago between the covers to romance novels and the covers to romance comics, a difference I’ve never seen anyone mention. And so I figure I should mention it to you here now so that you can go, “Oh, Scott, you dummy, where have you been, everyone already knows that!”

It started for me back in 2006, as Irene and I were approaching our 30th anniversary. I decided that, because of Irene’s love of both romance novels and comic books, I’d buy her the original art to a romance comic book cover for an anniversary gift. What I soon discovered, as I studied all the art then for sale from dealers, was that romance comic book cover art was terribly sad, and not at all suitable to celebrate three decades of love!

Somehow, even though our house has always been filled with both romance novels and comics, I’d never noticed this.

Take a look at the covers to a couple of random romance novels. (more…)