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Matt Baker's "Party Girl" Cover, True Love Pictorial #5 Up for Auction

The cover story of True Love Pictorial #5 by Matt Baker and Dana Dutch is a tale of a young woman's dreams of becoming a model, taking a turn.

American newsstands were a battleground of magazine genres by 1953, but few were as popular as the confession magazine. Titles like True Story and True Confessions captivated the emerging post-war female readership with first-person tales of sin and eventual redemption. In comic books, pioneers like Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had successfully established the romance comic as a gentler, more idealized form of courtship drama, but publishers like Archer St. John saw an opportunity to take the genre in a different direction.St. John's romance line was more closely inspired by the raw realism of the confessional magazines, resulting in a more mature brand of romance story. Matt Baker was the perfect artist to bring this vision to life.  His polished, expressive style was perfectly suited to capturing the tensions, emotions, and dreams of the young women at the heart of these stories.  The cover feature of True Love Pictorial #5 is an example of Baker at his best, and there's a CGC VG/FN 5.0 Off-white pages copy of True Love Pictorial #5 (St. John, 1953) up for auction in the 2025 October 16 Golden Age Comics Century Showcase Auction III at Heritage Auctions.

The cover story, "Party Girl" by Baker and writer Dana Dutch, is largely driven by its setting. Dorothy lives on New York's Lower East Side, a place she despises as a "crummy dump," in her words, defined by "filth and poverty."  The title page blurb explains that she is the daughter of immigrants from Europe, and her family had moved there to be around their countrymen.  In the early 1950s, the Lower East Side was a densely populated immigrant neighborhood, widely perceived as a place of crowded tenements, but it was also a place of immense cultural vibrancy.  Her job in a dress factory on 36th Street places her squarely within New York's garment industry, a primary employer of working-class women at the time. The work was often grueling, low-paying, and repetitive. Dorothy's dream of becoming a model is a classic tale about dreams of escape.  The story then takes the turn indicated by its "Party Girl" title: when Dorothy's modeling career stalls, her friend Lillian advises her to "escort lonely business men from out of town" for extra money. This is presented as a practical, if dangerous, means of financial survival and advancement which has a predictable result and finally, redemption.

Matt Baker's cover art is usually very tough to get, but getting it on a 100-page squarebound giant is truly special. St. John comics are legendarily difficult in high grade, but adding the notoriously tough squarebound format into the mix makes this lovely copy a true survivor. The highest graded copy ever offered at auction is a CGC 6.5, which makes this CGC VG/FN 5.0 Off-white pages copy of True Love Pictorial #5 (St. John, 1953) up for auction in the 2025 October 16 Golden Age Comics Century Showcase Auction III at Heritage Auctions a unique opportunity for Baker collectors.

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