Confessions, Romances, Secrets, and Temptations: Archer St. John and the St. John Romance Comics
One of the most popular comic-book genres half a century ago, romance comics have been largely ignored by recent comics scholarship. Benson, who has written seriously about comics for decades, aims to change that situation with this book on the romance titles published by St. John from 1947 to 1958, which were consistently better than their competitors. Their quality was a function of talented writers, artists, and editors, many of whom Benson interviewed, unfortunately not including key writer Dana Dutch, whose character-oriented stories downplayed glamour and moralizing in favor of verisimilitude and happy endings and set the approach for St. John's other scripters. Insightful critiques and a brief biography of company founder Archer St. John round out the volume. The pages reproduced from St. John's titles whet the desire to read the complete stories, which, fortunately, are available in a companion anthology, Romance without Tears (2003). Although this work's usefulness would be greater had Benson provided more context showing St. John's standing in the comics industry, it still offers invaluable guidance on a significant cultural phenomenon. Flagg, Gordon