The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 426: True Love #1, January 1986 ("Wuv, twue wuv" Week, Day 6)

As with yesterday's comic, this one is a reprint of old romance stories, though without the re-scripting. A collection of tales from Standard Comics in the 1950s, featuring some of the luminaries of the industry, these stories are a welcome break from the heart-wrenching, angst-filled stories of teenage heartache. These are stories of what comes next, of the "happily ever after," and how it can oftentimes be just as difficult as early romantic entanglements. Which is probably, as someone whose been married for 20 years, why this comic appealed to me more than most I've read this week. As someone who understands the kind of daily work involved in being in love, and loving, it's nice to see such subjects given a good treatment.

Even more, one of the stories in this issue features a woman who can fix a car, and doesn't take shit from a mopey man with whom she has a relationship. There's even a gentle-yet-heavy-handed exploration of PTSD in the wake of the Korean war, which offers an interesting perspective form which to start thinking about these sorts of romance comics. Industry creators have, for a long time, claimed that one can tell grown up stories using a medium that is far too often associated with children's literature, and these stories offer evidence. Instead of relegating the medium to one that is only useful for action stories, we see from this sampling that creators were trying to tell stories about the things that move us, and that we are moved by, in our daily lives - not unlike most serious, literary authors. True Love shows us that there are romance stories for grown-ups, even if the cultural mores of the 1950s leak through a little too prevalently sometimes.

Also as with yesterday's comic, I read the opening text feature, which revealed where these comics had originally appeared. It was nice to see acknowledgement of the fact that most of these stories were written by men for women, and that that opens up the stories to a slew of critical problems, but I found that, by and large, they treated women with far more respect and interest than the teen romances I've been reading this week. True Love was a 2-issue mini-series, and I think I'll be looking for the second issue for another sampling of these thoughtful stories.

One last thing - the cover does not have anything to do with the interior. It's beautiful, as is most of Dave Stevens' work, but it's actually the promotional blurb on the inside front cover that I find amusing. It calls this work "An unmistakable gem of a cover." Noting the pink hair of the lady on the poster, I can only imagine it's a shout-out to Jem and the Holograms, which was first airing around the time this comic came out. Eclipse always was a clever comics publisher.

Last day, tomorrow, and something a little different. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 212: Alien Worlds #2, May 1983

And here I was worried about what I was going to read after Age of Apocalypse. There, sitting behind the AoA section of the collection was the Bruce Jones-scripted anthology title Alien Worlds. I really like this title, and its horror cousin Twisted Tales. Jones has got a great knack for telling a short, spooky, quirky story, a la the old Steve Ditko tales that were reprinted in my Doctor Who Weeklys, and the amazing array of artists he gets to join him is a treat. Dave Stevens' art on the cover story is just...well, how about I let it speak for itself? Aurora is really something.

Now, the nice thing about the character is that, after this single cheesecake-y shot, she dons her action suit and proceeds to be something of a badass for the rest of the story. I'm hoping that it's a story that continues, because I'm kind of intrigued by the premise. The other two stories in the book are emblematic of Jones' style on this and Twisted, in that they're fairly straightforward sci-fi tales, though entertaining and well-wrought ones to be sure, with a twist at the end. Could it be that Jones is the M. Night Shyamalan of comics, though far less-maligned? A question for another day.

According to the GCD, the series ran 7 issues at Pacific and a further 2 at Eclipse. I don't have all of them, but as I'm heading up to the Edmonton Comic Con this weekend, perhaps I'll track them down. This era of speculative fiction in comics is pretty great. At this point, Heavy Metal's only a few years old, Warren's 1984 is still a fresh memory, and Epic Illustrated is in full swing, not to mention the "ground-level" comics that skewed heavily toward fantasy and science fiction. I wonder what it was about the early 80s that made so many writers and artists embrace these genres across so many levels (and, to be fair, qualities) of publishers? Backlash against the stagnation many perceived in superhero comics, perhaps. Recall, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Watchmen, and Dark Knight were a few years off at this point. Early 80 superhero comics were good, but in that amusing, campy way, still escaping the influence of the 60s Batman television show. Sci Fi and Fantasy were perhaps a good place to go if you wanted to tell intelligent and interesting stories.

First post-Age of Apocalypse comic. Feeling pretty good. Only missing the X-Men slightely. More Alien Worlds tomorrow. See you then!

(Edit: After writing this, I found out that Dave Stevens died a few years ago. His official site is still up and is well worth an hour or so of your time.)