Posted in: Comics, DC Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: gene colan, mike sekowsky, Romance Comics

Mike Sekowsky, Gene Colan in DC Comics' Girls Romances #30, at Auction

Girls' Romances #30 features the cover feature 'Hidden Heart' by Mike Sekowsky and Bernard Sachs. The issue also includes art by Gene Colan.

Girls' Romances was a romance comic anthology published by DC Comics from 1950, the publisher's third such romance comic book, and one that ran for 160 issues, up until 1971. Creators on the title included Mike Sekowsky, who drew more of these comics than anyone else, but also joined by the likes of Gene Colan, Lee Elias, Gil Kane, Win Mortimer, Bob Oksner, John Romita, Sr., John Rosenberger, Art Saaf, Jack Sparling, Alex Toth, and George Tuska. Nick Cardy drew many covers.

Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein based a number of his works on panels from Girls' Romances, including In the Car, We Rose Up Slowly and Sleeping Girl. And Girls' Romances #30 is up for auction from Heritage Auctions, as part of their 2024 February 29 – March 1 Golden Age Romance Featuring Fox Comics auction, focused on this genre of comic book. With art and cover from Mike Sekowsky as well as Gene Colan inside the pages.

Girls' Romances #30 (DC, 1955) Condition: FN/VF. Mike Sekowsky cover and art. Gene Colan art. Overstreet 2023 FN 6.0 value = $45; VF 8.0 value = $84.

The romance comics genre in the USA was created by Captain America co-creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, with Young Romance in 1947, looking for a new higt and something that might appeal to older audiences. They got it, and the series would last for over 200 issues. By 1950, when DC was publishing Girls' Romances, more than 150 romance titles were on the newsstands from Quality Comics, Avon, Lev Gleason Publications, and DC Comics. The DC line was overseen by Jack Miller, who also wrote many stories.

After the Comics Code in 1954, the titles were censored by publishers, reducing the amount if available content and plotlines for romance comics, and sales began to slowly fall, as did the number of titles on the stand until the last issues of Young Romance and Young Love were published in the 70s. Charlton and DC artist and editor Dick Giordano told Michelle Nolan in Love on the Racks: A History of American Romance Comics from McFarland & Company that "girls simply outgrew romance comics" and that it was "too tame for the more sophisticated, sexually liberated, women's libbers… able to see nudity, strong sexual content, and life the way it really was in other media. Hand-holding and pining after the cute boy on the football team just didn't do it anymore, and the Comics Code wouldn't pass anything that truly resembled real-life relationships."

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