Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: American Comics Group, ogden whitney, Romance Comics

The "Jailbird's Romance" of Romantic Adventures #49, Up for Auction

Romantic Adventures #49 features "one of the grimmest little epics to appear in a romance comic" according to historian Michelle Nolan.

Few publishers were better at navigating the moral panic era of the mid-1950s than Richard E. Hughes' American Comics Group.  Similar to the long-running horror title Adventures into the Unknown, which against all odds was able to thread a needle through the Comics Code era and last from 1948 to 1967, the publisher's long-running Romantic Adventures (eventually renamed My Romantic Adventures) lasted for 138 issues from 1949 to 1954.  Romantic Adventures #49 is one of the best of the bunch, with romance comics historian Michelle Nolan noting of this issue's cover-feature Jailbird's Romance that it is "one of the grimmest little epics ever to appear in a romance comic. It could just as well have appeared in one of the goriest crime titles."

As Nolan also noted, Romantic Adventures #49 and the bizarre next issue #50, which we have also discussed recently, are an oddity for a publisher not known for taking its titles to such extremes.  Perhaps like fellow romance and horror publisher William K. Friedman, Hughes was weary of the industry taking its lumps from a Senate Subcommittee and Fredric Wertham earlier that year, and decided to publish a brief rebellion against what was coming.

American Comics Group, which published newsstand comic books from 1943 to 1967, was owned by Fred Iger, with DC Comics owner Harry Donenfeld becoming a co-owner in the early 1960s. Writer/editor Richard E. Hughes ran the line. The publisher is best remembered for the launch of the first ongoing horror-comics title, Adventures into the Unknown, and the satirical-humor hero Herbie Popnecker who was introduced in the Forbidden Worlds series. ACG is underappreciated for its ability to navigate the transition into the Comic Code era which ended many other publishers of its kind.

Unlike William K. Friedman, Richard E. Hughes got his late-1954 rebellion out of his system and successfully navigated the ACG line through these perilous times. There's a CBCS GD- 1.8 copy of this notorious romance comics issue is up for auction in 2024 October 3 – 5 Good Girl Art and Romance Comics Showcase Auction #40269.

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