Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Matt Baker, St. John Publications

Romance and Espionage: The Secrets in Matt Baker's Diary Secrets #15

The Matt Baker cover of Dairy Secrets #15 represents a romance comic filtered through both moral panic and government espionage.

The post-World War II era was marked by a range of new challenges which were reflected in comic books and the broader American culture.  The Second Red Scare began to take root under the influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy, as Americans were told that subversive Communist influences could be lurking anywhere, even in the sprawling federal bureaucracy of Washington, DC. Meanwhile, moral panic over various perceived declines of traditional values increased such national anxieties. Popular music, comic books, and even the rising post-war independence of young women were all viewed as threats to the social order of the era.  Two of Diary Secrets #15's stories are heavily influenced by such issues. "I Couldn't Say No" is a reflection of the Red Scare consuming the nation's capital at that time. It's a cautionary tale in which the romantic indiscretion of a "government girl" becomes a matter of national security. The story "Co-Ed Calamity" tells a more traditional tale about the expected moral codes for young women, dramatizing how a single misstep, or even the accusation of one, can lead to social and academic ruin.  An underappreciated St. John romance comic book with cover and art by Matt Baker, there's a CGC VG/FN 5.0 Off-white pages copy of Diary Secrets #15 (St. John, 1952) up for auction in the 2025 October 16 Golden Age Comics Century Showcase Auction III at Heritage Auctions.

The lead story of Diary Secrets #15, "I Couldn't Say No," is a textbook example of Cold War paranoia translated into the language of romance comics. Set in Washington, DC, it tells the story of June, a "government girl" working at the State Department. Lonely and craving romance, she falls for the charming Dave Markham. Her professional life is on the rise, and she is promoted to be the executive assistant to her boss, Mr. Stone, and is given the combination to a safe containing "highly confidential foreign trade agreement documents." Her personal and professional lives collide when Dave convinces June that he needs access to those documents.  It is soon revealed that Dave is an agent for a foreign government and had been manipulating June from the start.

This plot dramatizes the fears surrounding the federal workforce under President Truman's Executive Order 9835, known as the Loyalty Order of 1947. This order mandated loyalty investigations for millions of federal employees, creating a climate of suspicion as workers' personal lives became subject to government scrutiny.  As a result, loyalty investigations were conducted by the FBI, and agents were instructed to report not only on signs of subversive activities but also on things like "loose morals," which could be seen as a vulnerability to blackmail. For the thousands of young women who had flocked to Washington for government jobs, this story in Diary Secrets #15 could be viewed as a cautionary tale.  St. John comics are notoriously fragile and rarely survived in higher grades, making any attractive copy a true find, and there's a very nice looking CGC VG/FN 5.0 Off-white pages copy of Diary Secrets #15 (St. John, 1952) up for auction in the 2025 October 16 Golden Age Comics Century Showcase Auction III at Heritage Auctions.

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