When I first put together these week-long looks at different genres of the periodical comics medium, it was in an effort to branch out from the the fantastical genres I've privileged for most of my time as a reader and collector. In the coming weeks, we'll look at westerns, at war comics, at horror comics, at erotica...basically at anything other than superheroes, science fiction, or fantasy comics, which seem to be the primary imaginative modes communicated through comics. Of all of these different genres, romance comics is the one that I have the fewest of, and that I've always had the least interest in. This week is partially about trying to figure that out.
It's not that I'm not a fan of romance. I've been married for 20 years, so romance is a part of my daily existence - it's an integral part of making a loving relationship work for that many years. And when I'm presented with a romantic situation in a television show, or a superhero comic, or anywhere, really, as long as it's handled with care and aplomb, and is relevant and faithful to the story within which it is occurring (as with any situation in any story, really), it's a useful and enriching aspect to said story.
But a comic devoted solely to romance? A little more difficult, I think. I've become trained to see romantic developments as an aspect of stories, but not a focus of stories in and of itself. Even in the scant number of romance novels I've read, there's other generic elements brought in to enrich the story. And in other comics I read, romance is brought in to enhance the story. So what I need to begin to recognize in these comics is that the primary communicative genre is romance, and any other genres that show up are going to be heavily inflected by that primary genre. Case in point, the story "Why did I lose you, my love?" in today's issue. A young woman is forlorn over the cool treatment she receives from a boyfriend returned from being away at school. She encounters him with friends at a cafe, and is given the cold shoulder by all of them. Though only a 7-page story, elements of the mystery genre pervade the story, mingling fluidly with the romantic angle. There's lots of flashback, monologue, memories that ought to be sepia-toned, and lurking in shadows, looking for clues. Yet all of these elements, which might convey the primary mood of the story in a mystery comic, are background details to the story of a broken heart here. We tend to separate stories by genre, by the primary communicative or atmospheric inflection present, but an important thing to recognize is that it's possible, and often probable, for other genres to be present in these works, subsumed by the primary genre of a piece.
Excuse me while I intellectualize romance a bit. *sigh* Academics....
One further thing that fascinated me about this comic was the "Suzan Says..." advice column. Having come across a number of such columns in various Archie comics, I was curious as to Suzan's genesis. I was surprised to find that she was an actual person, Suzan Loeb, hired as a (feminists, cover your eyes!) "Girl Friday" at Marvel Comics in the late 60s. For a wonderful interview with her (and a super-cool blog about romance comics) have a look here, at Sequential Crush.
And speaking of other genres, we'll look tomorrow at a comic that is subtitled "Gothic Romance." How do elements of horror mesh with the romance genre in comics? We're quite familiar with this notion nowadays (thanks, Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer), but comics have been mucking about in this fusion of genres for almost half a century now. Onward!
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