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bucketoffish's review against another edition
3.0
I gotta admit I picked up this book thinking it was going to be something different. Originally, I wanted a book on the history of vintage romance comics after becoming interested in the paintings of Roy Lichtenstein. The fact that he pulled his images with very little alteration from the pages of pulp comics was very interesting to me. I wanted to see an exploration of literary romance and melodrama through the perspective of popular American media in the 1960's.
This book was not quite what I was looking for, since it focused not really on the comics themselves, but rather on the advice columns that followed each issue. I had no idea that there was a whole industry of mostly-male comic writers who pretended to be women columnists and wrote dating advice for young girls. The advice given in these columns was a really interesting look at the youth culture of the time. Romance and courtship has changed so much since these comics and advice columns were published, though of course a lot of the concerns have stayed the same over the years. This was a very interesting snapshot of an aspect of culture which today has almost changed beyond recognition.
This book was not quite what I was looking for, since it focused not really on the comics themselves, but rather on the advice columns that followed each issue. I had no idea that there was a whole industry of mostly-male comic writers who pretended to be women columnists and wrote dating advice for young girls. The advice given in these columns was a really interesting look at the youth culture of the time. Romance and courtship has changed so much since these comics and advice columns were published, though of course a lot of the concerns have stayed the same over the years. This was a very interesting snapshot of an aspect of culture which today has almost changed beyond recognition.
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