Modern Love - The Complete EC Series (Dark Horse)

When I first started reading and collecting comics back in ... well, no, that would be telling - let's just say my first comic book ever was a Super Friends comic - back when it was first published and on the spinner rack at the convenience store ... anyway, I was never a fan of the romance comics. Even though I liked soap operas (All My Children, General Hospital, Santa Barbara, Passions, Dynasty, Dante's Cove, etc.), I could just never get into the romance comics. They were way too cheesy for me. Flash forward quite a few years, and now, as an adult (uh...hmmm), I have discovered romance comics in a whole new light! Private Secretary by Dell, Soap Opera Romance and Soap Opera Love from Charlton, Night Nurse by Marvel, Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love and Secrets of Sinister House by DC, among others - and so it is that I came to purchase this Dark Horse hardcover collection of the EC Comics' romance series, Modern Love.

With only eight issues, Modern Love was not a long-running series, but each issue featured three stories of 7 or 8, or even more, pages, as well as a prose story or two, including features such as "Dear Diary" and "Advice from Adrienne..."  While the lead/cover story for each issue was allegedly a "true love story" as told by readers, there was always a blurb on the first page indicating that "the names in this true love story have been fictionized for obvious reasons!"  I had never heard of this series before seeing the solicit for this collection in Previews magazine, but then again, I was never really one to pick up EC comics.  The writers and artists for the eight issues worth of tales are mostly unknown to me, with the exception of Gardner Fox and Wally Wood, who contributed as writer and artist, respectively, for several of the stories.

The series was originally published from 1949 through 1950, published bi-monthly by Tiny Tot Comics, Inc. under the "EC" label ("An Entertaining Comic").  As the inside front flap for the dust jacket of this collection proudly proclaims, Modern Love was ahead of its time in a number of ways - the artists for the series were allowed to draw in their own style and not be forced to draw in a similar style to every other artist in the company.  The stories also featured some, what would have been at that time, highly controversial subjects, such as racial bigotry and strong-willed women who put their career above their men!  Of course, most of the stories featured your standard soap opera, romance tropes - cheating boyfriends/husbands, conniving sisters/best friends, thought-dead husbands returned to life, long-buried secrets come to light, and just about any other ideas that you can imagine that would throw a monkey-wrench into what appears at first to be the perfect romance.

The first issue starts off with a bang, featuring a story of a mean-spirited woman who tries to steal her younger sister's beau away!  It is the third story, however, that really caught my eye, as it not only features a young girl searching for love, but also involves a mystery surrounding muggings that happen just outside of a dance hall where the girl works! It's Nancy Drew ... er, Nina Foster! ... to the rescue! The second issue's strongest tale is about a meddling aunt who believes her niece should only marry for money - and when Janet Mason falls for a kitchen worker, her Aunt Mary will do whatever it takes to keep them apart!  For the third issue, it's mining family vs. farming family in a Romeo & Juliet type tale of star-crossed lovers from two very different families.  The fourth issue, surprisingly enough, features a lead story about an older sister who tries to steal her younger sister's boyfriend - very similar to the one in the first issue.  Of course, it's the title of that story, "Three-Cornered Romance" that caught my eye, since it reminded me of the Dana Girls' mystery, A Three-Cornered Mystery. As far as romance stories, though, it's the last story in that issue, "I Gave My Love Away" that is by far the best one - a female author is looking for new inspiration for her latest romance novel, so she takes a bum off the street, cleans him up, and has him pretend to be the hero of her latest adventure - the only problem is, she never expects to fall for him!  And, of course, as with any good soap, he is not everything that he seems, providing for a rather unexpected outcome to this tale.

The fifth issue features a rather controversial tale called "Shame." While it never comes out and directly says it, the heroine of the story ends up pregnant by a man who takes off and leaves her, so she turns to the neighbor she's known all her life, where she knows she can be safe and secure - but what happens when the baby's father returns? An interesting story for the time, since an unwed mother (and a man marrying a woman pregnant with another man's child) was not your typical comic story fare!  That same issue also features a story about a woman on a game show who wins $45,000!  Yes, you read that right.  Can you imagine the value of that back in 1950?  And yet, in the story, she manages to blow through all that money, but still find love by the end of the story ... and then there's the story of the woman released from jail, who takes a job in a city where no one knows her.  She falls in love, only to have her past come back to haunt her, threatening to expose her and destroy her happiness!  Issue six has another career girl story, but it also features one of the first tales without a happy ending - a woman who falls in love again after her husband dies - only to come face to face with him again, and must give up the one she truly loves now in order to stay faithful to the husband she thought was dead.  Issue seven gives readers a repeat of the dead husband come back to life story with another sad ending, but it also features a tale of bigotry and racial bias, when a father refuses to allow his son to become involved with a Mexican girl who works for the family.

The eighth and final issue of the series has a few surprises.  One is a third tale of a widowed woman who finds love, only to have her "dead" husband come back to claim her - only this time, a second tragedy gives Katha Trenton the happy ending she longs for.  Another is a mystery at a ranch, where someone keeps causing dangerous accidents - and it's up to the new girl to figure out who before she becomes the next victim! And the issue (and series!) ends with a satirical tale that pokes fun at the whole romance comic genre, allegedly written by (and starring) the office boy of the T. Tot Comic Magazine Publishing Company - a story about a comic book publisher that decides to take on romance comics after falling in love himself; but when that love turns out to be a lie, he puts an end to the line of romance titles (just as it signals the final issue of Modern Love comic magazine...)

The stories are fun, serious, sad, happy, over-the-top, and subtle - just about covering anything and everything you'd expect to find in a regular soap opera-type story.  The art varies from issue to issue and story to story, by artists such as Al Feldstein, Graham Ingels, Johnny Craig, Ed Waldman, Lou Morales, John Sink, Harry Harrison, Rudy Palais, Wally Wood, Jack Kamen, and S.M. Iger, but it despite the different styles, there remains a consistency of bold colors, simple backgrounds, and outstanding expressions on the characters (so easy to see what they are feeling just by looking at their faces - you don't even need to read the word balloons!).  All together, the writing and art make this book a fantastic read, and leaves the reader wishing there were more stories to come...

RATING:  9 mine cave-ins out of 10 for telling truly "modern" love stories, highlighting topics and issues that weren't necessarily so open for discussion back in the day.