What are the rarest romance comics? 34 34

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/17/2024 at 8:53 AM, Dr. Love said:

It's a Charlton.  Sooner or later the runt of the litter gets it's day in the sun, rotation wise.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/17/2024 at 9:11 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

 

 

Only joking, @Dr. Love The parking lot is no place for the romance thread (although I daresay those two wouldn't trouble you much) 

I must say that I do love this thread and am in awe of your knowledge and that of the other regulars. I love Charlton, but I'm under no illusions as to where it stacks up on the quality front. For reasons only a comic collector would understand, I've taken on the task of collecting every pence copy of every Charlton comic that was distributed in the UK by L Miller in the early 1960s. There are 834 of them, in the pence possibility window, and I've confirmed over 600 so far. There are some cracking romance books among those numbers which, whilst worth very little, would likely win an 'only one known' competition were they to ever enter. Here's a nice, uncommonly racy one:

 

I'm not sure the cents copy of that one is particularly easy to find either. 

I like to gather early UK stamped cents copies too - this one priced 9d by Thorpe & Porter has a nice composition I think, with the added bonus of a date stamp:

Anyway, I love the romance thread. Which is quite apt, I suppose.

 

 

[Point Five]

That First Kiss cover is awesome! Never seen it before. 

 

[Robot Man]

On 1/17/2024 at 6:02 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

 

Only joking, @Dr. Love The parking lot is no place for the romance thread (although I daresay those two wouldn't trouble you much) 

I must say that I do love this thread and am in awe of your knowledge and that of the other regulars. I love Charlton, but I'm under no illusions as to where it stacks up on the quality front. For reasons only a comic collector would understand, I've taken on the task of collecting every pence copy of every Charlton comic that was distributed in the UK by L Miller in the early 1960s. There are 834 of them, in the pence possibility window, and I've confirmed over 600 so far. There are some cracking romance books among those numbers which, whilst worth very little, would likely win an 'only one known' competition were they to ever enter. Here's a nice, uncommonly racy one:

 

I'm not sure the cents copy of that one is particularly easy to find either. 

I like to gather early UK stamped cents copies too - this one priced 9d by Thorpe & Porter has a nice composition I think, with the added bonus of a date stamp:

Anyway, I love the romance thread. Which is quite apt, I suppose.

 

 

I would suspect that 68 page issue would be scarce no matter what. Not a lot of them. I have most of the horror and war ones but none of the romance and I look for them.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/17/2024 at 3:30 PM, Robot Man said:

I would suspect that 68 page issue would be scarce no matter what. Not a lot of them. I have most of the horror and war ones but none of the romance and I look for them.

Indeed. I nab them when I see them...

[Dr. Love]

The Charlton crew was something else. All mobbed up, they say. Certainly, those with Italian heritage were very much at home. John Santangelo, the big boss. Al Fago, D*ck Giordano, Rocco Mastroserio, Sal Trapani, John D'Agostino, Vincent Alascia, Art Cappello. Vinny Colletta. And the strange one, the outcast - Steve Ditko.

Trust me when I tell you there's a lot about Charlton you may not know.  For instance:

 

"At approximately 10:00 a. m., Friday, August 18th, 1955, a natural disaster struck that changed everything for the staffers at Charlton, and even threatened to close the company's doors down permanently. The aftermath of Hurricane Diane cut a swath of destruction through the Carolinas, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and, of course, Connecticut. Eleven inches of rainfall caused massive flooding that claimed the lives of hundreds of victims in the Connecticut Valley area. All 129 acres of the Charlton grounds were submerged in 18 feet of water. $300, 000 worth of paper inventory, mats, comics art work, and plates, among other things, were destroyed by the flood in minutes.

"When the flood came through," Burton N. Levey, cousin to co-owner Ed Levy and Charlton executive, said, "we had to get on top of the building because the water was rising, and a helicopter landed on the roof and took us off—that's how I got out of there! I watched my car float down the river."

"The press was entirely underwater, the building was underwater," Joe Gill said. "[Artist] Maurice 'Reese' Whitman had to be taken off the roof by helicopter. Cars were washed away. When the smoke cleared, Santangelo called a meeting of the artists and myself. He was an inspired speaker in his broken English, and said he was going to carry on (though, in the meanwhile, the guy had gotten umpteen dollars in flood relief from the government, for free; this was an enormous boost for him), but he couldn't continue to pay us the same 'high rates. ' He said that we could all continue working at half of what we had been working before. I was dropped to two dollars a page [a quarter of what the major companies were paying at the time]."

According to the Oct. 1955 issue of Newsdealer, the springing-back of Charlton was "a story of employee personal contribution which defies the imagination." The article says how the employees and community dug Charlton out of the wreckage, ultimately running the presses again in ten days, though staffer Giordano doesn't recall "it being that quick." Nor did Burt Levy: "It was a disaster and it took us a long time to get going again." "No," Ed Konick said, "it took several months to recover; we were operating but using outside printers. It took a long time to clean up that mess." Despite notice that the company maintained "a full payroll," there is no mention of either Santangelo's disaster relief money, or the pay-cut employees suffered.

"If I didn't write fast, I wouldn't be able to get along under that price structure," Gill said. "So, we were working for those rates, and the artists were only getting $13 a page. What could you expect from an artist with a wife and child, and how much time and care could you expect him to put into a page? There was the pride of doing good work, but it was impossible to do our best work consistently over a period of time. I did a lot of garbage, and some good work—not much, but some. Charlton got a helluva lot more than they paid for out of me. People who are critical of Charlton artists and writers have to remember that the price structure of the company was a big factor." Giordano said the regular rate for art—pencils and inks—was $13 a page. "After the flood, it was halved to $6. 50; later it went up to $10; later still back to $13."

[Dr. Love]

Besides being the most prolific romance publisher - and not by a small margin either, nearly double the output from DC - no other publisher was as brazen at cross promotion as Charlton. 

BUY MY BOOKS! 

 

from swimming pools - in ground "Buster Crabbe" regulation size for goodness sake!

 

 

to paid trips to California Disneyland - or NYC!

 

 

would you like your own Real Live PONY?!

 

 

hows about a Treasure Chest, matey?

 

 

or the vague but impresive WIN 8000 PRIZES

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/17/2024 at 4:48 PM, Dr. Love said:

Besides being the most prolific romance publisher - and not by a small margin either, nearly double the output from DC - no other publisher was as brazen at cross promotion as Charlton. 

BUY MY BOOKS! 

 

from swimming pools - in ground "Buster Crabbe" regulation size for goodness sake!

 

 

to paid trips to California Disneyland - or NYC!

 

 

would you like your own Real Live PONY?!

 

 

hows about a Treasure Chest, matey?

 

 

or the vague but impresive WIN 8000 PRIZES

 

 

Love it 

You'll find some more appreciative cover mockery in my old Brent thread here if you're ever at a loose end Dr. Love. I do recall mentioning the swimming pools once or twice....

[Darwination]

Swimming pools, eh?  Ties to associates with gentlemen in the concrete business

Charlton lore goes way back to when the outfit started by straight up pirating sheet music.  Here's a Hit Parader from 46 that's actually a well done magazine. Edited by Harold Hersey who had quite the history in the pulps and author of Pulpwood Editor, one of the more famed memoirs on the era:

https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/fd93s6eztd5g5zs/Hit_Parader_v04n10_%281946-08.Charlton%29%28D%26M%29.cbr/file

I'm not sure I'd be breaking the bank for that Brides in Love (high price, yes, but sit on that ish for a minute - you'd be fine), but Charlton has great romance covers here and there (with so many issues, it might be hard not too - leading publisher of romances ever). 

In particular, I think the color design on the Charltons is neat.  A few of the above issues stand out:

On 1/17/2024 at 10:48 AM, Dr. Love said:

 

 

 

I admit I often open a Charlton romance after seeing a fun cover and sort of shudder at the contents

All that aside, they're being collected. I list one on eBay, any condition, any issue, and it's gone. A friend who's been disgorging his Charlton romances has had the exact same experience.  Charlton romance used to be considered the lowest of the low.  And maybe it still is, but people are collecting them! 

13 bucks a page, SMH

[Darwination]

Not a romance comic, but I was digging around a little bit in Charlton (looking at first Hit Paraders, v01n01 shows Charlton as the indicia publisher in November 1942) and caught that this neat little one-shot one is actually a Charlton pub (T.W.O. Charles Company in the indicia).  Not sure when they started Capital Distribution, but this one has an FDC on the cover.

https://archive.org/details/hepcats-jive-talk-dictionary-1945.-t.-w.-o.-charles-d-m-ia

Edited January 17 by Darwination

[Bumble Kitty]

On 1/16/2024 at 10:39 PM, Dr. Love said:

MCS auction, graded as Fine went for  $430

not what I would call shocking, but instead things that make you go...wait, what?

 

For me, I would call the auction result shocking.  I didn't even feel this book was worth tracking, let alone bidding on it!  I know I bought a vast majority of my Romance books when they were cheap, and now the prices have moved up, even sharply up.  But I have to shake my head and wonder at some of the prices these books bring. 

Maybe I'm a dinosaur.  

[Darwination]

I don't own any of these, but I think I'd grab this one if I saw it for the kitsch value (only a couple handful of others in the entire run seemed notable).  I went looking for a cover image at Heritage, but the walk through every Brides in Love they've ever offered was, uh, very short   I do like the title design.

 

 

Edited January 18 by Darwination

[Qua-Brot]

I've seen a couple of early 50s Sweethearts that were pretty good, one by Baker's inker and this one. Charlton sci-fi also had few stand out covers (mostly Ditko), and a few Crime and Horror. Come to think of it, basically before the flood described above Charlton seemed to have about as good a record as any of the 2-bit comic producers of the time . . .

Meanwhile I guess I should start listing those 60s Charlton Romance books soon!

 

[sagii]

[sagii]

Speaking of Charlton Romance paging @mustang33guy

[mustang33guy]

On 1/17/2024 at 8:52 PM, sagii said:

Speaking of Charlton Romance paging @mustang33guy

Thanks Corey, Charlton Romance is definitely a sandbox I can play in!

 

[mustang33guy]

[mustang33guy]

[sagii]

@mustang33guy 

[Point Five]

Man, this thread is on fire! Love these covers you guys are posting! A lot of stuff that's new to me.