In Love by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby is arguably the most successful of the the Mainline Comics they created during the brief but brilliant time the duo tried to make a go with their own conic book brand.
Simon and Kirby had given birth to the romance comic genre with the creation of the properly named Young Romance for Crestwood Publications.
Although some look to an even earlier Simon and Kirby comic book for Hillman Publications called My Date as the original.
Seeking to strike out on their own at long last, they came up with In Love, a new title in the (at the time) very lucrative romance genre.
In Love ran for four issues in late 1954 and early 1955 before Mainline went under.
Charlton Comics were on the spot to snap up the unpublished material and put out two issues of their own in 1955.
The title was changed with the seventh issue to I Love You, but as you can see the alteration still retained the general shape and character of the original Simon and Kirby logo.
That remained the case for many years until with issue seventy-nine published in 1969 where they put a nifty oval around the title. Reminds of what DC had done some years before to Batman's chest symbol.
The logo was altered again in 1971.
And again in 1975.
And yet again only a few months later in 1976.
But the comic itself only lasted one more issue, the run coming to a close with the one hundred and twenty-first issue in 1976.
Of all the Mainline Comics, this title lasted the longest and remained true to its original genre, though doubtless the girls who bought the book during most of its long run knew little and cared less about the famous creators who kicked it all off so many decades before.
More Mainline next week.
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Are you going to talk about why the company failed? There was obviously a market for romance comics at the time because Charlton's version lasted for a long time.
ReplyDeleteI do plan to get into the details of the whole deal in the fourth and final posting. As we work our way through I'm more interested in the unusual lives and half-lives these comics had, especially in the hands of Charlton.
DeleteBut there's a little intrigue though to Mainline, but mostly it was just one of many companies that tried and fried during the early fifties after comics came under fire from powerful critics.
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What is with that "Picture Parade" is it a horror story? Its so funny how blase all these comics are about nuclear war
ReplyDeleteIt was the tenor of the times, atomic energy was both a boon and deadly, though I think generally there was limited understanding of the long term costs.
DeleteHere's a link to the actual comic:
http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=11684
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