Nurses as Supporting Characters: Love Confessions 29 - "Victory in His Arms"

Love Confessions 29 published by Quality Comics has a nice Ogden Whitney cover. Despite the temptation to think so, the nurse is not romantically involved with the wounded soldier in the hospital, as the cover might suggest. Instead the nurse figures as a support character in "Victory in His Arms", and really only appears at the beginning and end of the story. This story is interesting in that it certainly has an anti-war component. Joan's anti-war sentiment is, however, about to cause her some grief:

As Joan ponders her fate, she begins to moderate her anti-war position to accommodate the need to defend the freedom that allows her to be outspoken against war. I love the panel on page 5, so typical of romance comics, where the woman lies awake in bed at night, wrestling with emotional turmoil. As might have been predicted, this part of the tale, in which Joan is in a kind of love limbo imposed by her break up with Gar, is brought to an end when she receives news that he's been wounded.

Gar has had a few realizations after having been on the front line, and so his position has mellowed. The two are now in the same place regarding this difficult topic, and ready to move forward with their relationship, the division resolved. The nurse's motherly and friendly role is befitting of the image of nurses in the mid-1950s, and we're left having received the message that war is sometimes a necessary evil.

Romance comics came into being 2 or 3 years before EC launched the war comic genre with Two-Fisted Tales in 1950, but blends of the genres exist, especially in the first half of the 1950s concurrent with the Korean War. These blended stories are, however, mostly found in the romance comics, and of course there are even romance comics with war in the title, such as True War Romances and Wartime Romances.

Nurse Romance Stories: Diary Loves 10 - "Hide-Out"

Diary Loves 10 published by Quality Comics in May 1951 features a seven page doctor/nurse romance called "Hide-Out!". The artwork is reminiscent of Bill Ward, who did draw for this series, but this issue isn't credited to Ward in Overstreet, so it's maybe someone attempting to emulate Ward's distinctive style. For comparison, it's worth looking at the cover and story from Heart Throbs 1, about which I posted last year. Note the way the nurse's hair is shaded with those lines. Very Ward-ish. If anyone can identify the artist please comment.

Okay, this particular story requires a remote setting, hence the isolated rest home that this engaged couple are starting up. A young doctor and his nurse getting the place ready to open up for customers. Then out of nowhere who should turn up at their door but an escaped con and the buddy who sprang him. The fugitive is badly wounded, and his guardian orders treatment, or else!

The gangster is asking the impossible, however. The sprung jailbird, Bud, is going down fast, and Dr. Kit Marlowe knows he can't save him. Trouble is Tony Merillo won't accept failure. If the Doc doesn't save Bud, he dies, and maybe so does his bride-to-be, Janet Andrews. Tony's hesitancy to definitely condemn Janet should Bud die, along with his professed admiration for her fine visage, gives her the one idea that might just save the young couple's lives. She starts playing up to Tony, pretending she'd like to make a new life with him. Tony's no pushover, but with a gorgeous blond staring him in the face and telling him everything he'd always wanted to hear, it's only a matter of time. As long as Janet can maintain the charade, that is, which involves convincingly rejecting the life and the love that she had. Inevitably Bud expires, but just as Kit is about to blow the whole gaff, Janet changes the subject, remembering that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

Janet has to continue playing Tony's game. She suggests tying Kit up so they can go together to the kitchen, but on the way out she secretly passes Kit a scalpel, and leaves it up to him to figure out what's really going on. In the kitchen Tony wants dessert up front, and Janet has to bide her time and play along, which means giving Tony a kiss like she means it. By now Kit is free and entering the room. Janet spots him, thinks quickly, and asks Tony for seconds. During this embrace Kit has the opportunity to wallop Tony over the head with that piece of equipment no rest home can be without: a number 3 wood! Janet can finally resume her actual persona, and the harrowing experience has brought the couple closer together, accelerating their wedding plans. What an ordeal they had to go through though!

My favorite page is 6, especially panels 3 and 4, where Janet is passing Kit the scalpel. This is nice art. Quality Comics did strive to live up to their name, for sure. They had some great books in their line.

What does this story say about nurses? This one is a gorgeous blond. She's dedicated to her work and to helping her fiancee set up the rest home. She sleeps separately from him even though they are out there alone, where they could preempt their marriage, but they don't - this is the early 1950s, and it was still the accepted norm for people to wait until after they were wed. So she has moral principles. Then in an emergency she's quick thinking, resourceful, and understands her partner and how he'll think and react. She's also ready to make sacrifices for the greater good - in this case kissing a repulsive individual to give her fiancee time to disable him. She remains femininity personified throughout, however, because we know the truth about her motives even though Tony is beguiled.Overall it seems this is a positive picture of a woman as a nurse in a private setting, despite the inevitable romance with her male doctor, to whom she still is subordinate.

Nurse Romance Stories: True War Romances 6 - "My Forgotten Mistake"

With a cover date of March 1953, Quality Comics True War Romances 6 features a nurse cover story "My Forgotten Mistake."18-year old office worker Lucy is in love with Jack Foster, who seems not to notice her at all. Lucy surmises it must be her girlish appearance. After all, everyone at the office calls her 'Angelface' because of it. So when the office workers decide to throw a party in honor of Jack leaving to join the forces, Lucy decides its time to demonstrate that she's really a woman. She 'tarts' herself up with a revealing dress and is instantly noticed by every male as she walks in. Instead of dancing with Jack, however, she uses the attention given her by Carl when his animal instincts are activated upon the sight of Lucy's shapely form, to make Jack jealous. Due to her inexperience, however, the effect on Jack is not quite what she intended. Jack is quite disgusted by her brazen display, which shatters the image Jack had of Lucy. He had previously been attracted to her, but restrained himself because he knew he would be going into the forces, and didn't want to start something he couldn't follow through with if he was killed in action. Lucy sees the truth too late to prevent Jack leaving with a very revised view of Lucy as a person, one that is no longer desirable. So this is Lucy's mistake, the kind a young person can make and which can potentially ruin what might otherwise have been a wonderful life. In an attempt to move on with her life, Lucy goes back to school and qualifies as a nurse two years later.

Lucy gets a job in an army hospital, where a wounded soldier takes a fancy to her, but Lucy still has no interest in any man except for Jack Foster, who by some cosmic coincidence, turns up as a patient at the very same hospital. However, he no longer recognizes or remembers Lucy, or anything from his past. He's suffering from amnesia as a result of a wound. When the doctor finds out Lucy knows Jack, he assigns her the task of helping him regain his memory, so she takes him to his former workplace. But nothing stirs, except for Lucy's anxiety. Jack finds Lucy attractive, but the irony is, if she succeeds in helping him remember his past, he'll recall his impression of her as a shameless flirt.

Lucy has matured in the two years since she last knew Jack, and also possesses a dedication to her work as a nurse. Her sense of obligation to the well-being of her patient over-rides her desire for Jack not to remember her in a negative light, and so she arranges a re-enactment of that very same office party held before Jack left to go to war. The scheme works, and Lucy exits rather than go through that rejection by Jack all over again. Back at the hospital she thinks she's alone when expressing her anguish out loud, but Jack followed her there after the office gang told him how she sacrificed her chance with him so that he would be well again. Jack realizes what a prize chump he's been and declares his love for Lucy. Thank goodness for that! She's a good person and finally got the break she deserved. She's a good nurse too, and she might not have become one had it not been for that 'mistake' two years earlier. And then she wouldn't have been at the hospital to help Jack regain his memory! Fate seems to have planned it that way!

The image of the nurse here is something good and pure, a step up above the ordinary. Lucy is a version of the self-sacrificing angel, who puts her patient's well-being before her own. She made an innocent mistake as a girl, but did something good to make amends, even though she was not guilty of real wrongdoing. As a nurse, her life was free of reproachful actions - those belonged to her pre-nurse past. Overall a positive image of nurses and of the reformatory and uplifting power of nursing on the individual who becomes a nurse. The story also suggests success in romance associated with becoming a nurse, with the nurse likely to be the object of the romantic attentions of male patients, particularly those in the military. This is the between-the-lines stuff that's not mentioned in the nursing recruitment ads that often accompany nurse romance stories in comics. That suggests to me that the nursing profession was not only paying for their ads to be put in romance comics, but part of the deal was that there was a nice nurse romance story in the book as well, one that said things that the nursing ad couldn't really say directly. I mean, how would it look if the nurse ad said, "Become a nurse and you're sure to get a handsome hunk ask you to marry him!" The romance story can say that in so many words and pictures without stating it directly.

Love Secrets 32 - "I Fell For a Commie"

McCarthy era Love Secrets 32 (August 1953) published by Quality Comics, with it's cover story of "I Fell For a Commie", contains possibly the most shocking romance tale you're ever likely to read! It chronicles the moral and ideological decline of Gladys, as love robs her of discretion and she plunges headlong into membership of the Communist Party!!!!

 

With dialog suggesting that Capitalism will cause the degradation of this country, even though it was intended to warn us of the lunacy of Marxist philosophy, this comic would probably never have hit the stands had it not been pre-Code! But how did it all happen? It started with Gladys and her friend Ruth, two young women trying to live the American Dream - they just wanted to get a job and make their own way in life. It's at the State Employment Bureau that Gladys's fall from grace is set in motion. There's a rough looking guy, apparently a veteran, expressing his disillusionment with the way returning military personnel are treated by the country they've risked their life to defend. Right there Gladys should have smelled a rat. Obviously she would have been aware of the great care the U.S. government takes of veterans, and that all those homeless bums that social workers claim are ex-military suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and in need of help, are actually unscrupulous individuals trying to con everyone and get a free ride, just the sort of thing communists would get up to! Before she has time to think, though, Gladys is mistaken for a communist collaborator by a cop who is called in to remove the red menace from the bureau. Outside she talks with a handsome young man who was also turfed out, and there's an instant connection - that moment when you just know this is the one! Their love progresses and deepens rapidly, but all of a sudden, there's a note for Glad from her beau Tom Brenner - he has to stop seeing her, hopes she'll understand, and that she'll still think of him. Bummer!

Gladys is stunned by Tom's departure from her life, but then she sees Ruth with Tom in a passing car. No, Ruth hasn't stolen her lover! She recently joined a club that Tom is also a member of, and he was dropping her home. "Can I join?" is Gladys's immediate response, and so the drama of her undoing unfolds. It doesn't take Gladys long at the meeting to realize that this is a clandestine cell of Soviet Russian sympathizers she's stumbled onto - the poster declaring that "Stalin wants peace" kind of steered her in that direction. But when she sees Tom there her good sense deserts her, and she figures what the heck! She'll join the club just to be with Tom and won't listen to their silly communist propaganda. And it looked like she could pull it off when she remained unswayed by reading Das Kapital in the clubhouse basement. Why would anyone want to remove the gulf between the rich and the poor, eliminating those structural inequalities that oppress lower socioeconomic and minority groups and favor the wealthy? American society doesn't have a class system! Those incredibly loaded corporate businessmen, with no interest whatsoever in maintaining conflict with the USSR so they could sell lots of weapons, couldn't help having obscene amounts of money! And they'd have shared it with all those poor people in a heartbeat except that would have robbed those same impoverished persons of their dignity and of the satisfaction they would derive from making their own fortune through honest hard work! From each according to his means, to each according to his need?! Come off it, Karl! But back to the plot - Tom and Gladys are getting serious. We could end up with Reds IN the bed instead of 'Reds under the bed'!

What happens to Gladys next shows us just how dangerous the insidious tactics of those commie scum can be. Gladys is shown respect by the other members for her commitment, and given full membership of the Communist Party. Tom's been part of the whole plan to reel her in, it seems, making out that he didn't want to influence her, that she should make up her own mind. Tom must have learned that trick in a KGB workshop on reverse psychology. But now she's on the inside, the extent of the group's subterfuge is revealed and that last vestige of loyalty to the free market kicks in and Gladys outs as an anti-communist after all. This doesn't go down too well with the leadership.

But Tom intervenes swiftly to steer Gladys out of harm's way. After all, he may be a commie, but somewhere in there he's still a man with feelings for this lady. Gladys, though, fears death at the hands of her lover when Tom catches up with her outside. So Tom has to come clean - he's not a communist after all - he's an FBI agent but obviously he couldn't tell her up until now. With all the evidence he needs, Tom has the case under wraps, and now he and Gladys can enjoy their relationship on a normal footing. Gladys went through it though, didn't she? I mean, there was a point there when she really looked like she was convinced to travel along "communism's evil byways"! It also turns out that the Korean vet at the Employment Bureau that day was a fake - despicably pretending to be a poorly-treated war hero to undermine the public's faith in democracy.

So there you have it. Authored by Senator Joe McCarthy himself during his spare time between witch hunts, this story is an uncompromising Cold War warning against the communist devil that threatens us still! The fact that you don't see this kind of story in modern comics today simply exposes the ugly truth that the comic book industry has been taken over by the Reds!

The Mysterious Matt Baker

Just why is it, when Matt Baker is acknowledged as one of the greatest, if not THE greatest romance comic artist, that we know so little about him? My answer to that question is that he was African American, possibly the first African American to work in comics. He lived and worked in a segregated America, whose comics portrayed a bleached society in denial of its own diversity. Matt Baker clearly did his job well, but passed away before he could receive the public recognition that his work deserved and is given, as far as is possible, nowadays. Baker's work is rare, sought after, and expensive. Why expensive? Looking at the cover of Teen-Age Romances 37 (above) it's not hard to see why. He's every bit a Norman Rockwell, but more dynamic.He understands so well how people move, and his figures are full of expression, not static or starched. He's especially good at drawing beautiful women, and while he is most widely known for Phantom Lady, his romance art is arguably his most accomplished.

A Google search doesn't bring up much background on Baker. There used to be a website with some biographical material, but it no longer exists. He's the subject of some online encyclopaedia entries:

http://www.americanartarchives.com/baker,matt.htm

http://lambiek.net/artists/b/baker_matt.htm

http://www.toonopedia.com/phanlady.htm

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2009/01/27/scotts-classic-comics-corner-matt-baker-covers/

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Matt_Baker_%28artist%29

http://raggedclothcafe.com/2008/01/27/matt-baker-by-joanna-van-ritbergen-guest-contributor/

http://comicbookcatacombs.blogspot.com/2007/11/creator-profile-matt-baker.html

http://terrororstralis.com/sheena/comics/FH-comics.htm

But basically its going to be difficult to ever know much about the man who left us such an impressive portfolio of wonderful art.

Anyone for tennis?

The story from Teen-Age Romances 37 (pictured at top of entry), entitled "Thrill-seekers' Weekend", is one of a number of Baker classics from St. John comics featured in John Benson's invaluable compilation Romance Without Tears (2003. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books). 11 Baker-illustrated stories, written by Dana Dutch, are contained therein, along with some gorgeous Baker covers. It is still obtainable new and used through Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Romance-Without-Tears-John-Benson/dp/156097558X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260075184&sr=8-1

as is Benson's companion volume, Confessions, Romances, Secrets, and Temptations: Archer St. John and the St. John Romance Comics (2007. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books) which delves into the background of the St. John Publishing company, and contains a three page interview with Matt Baker's half brother, Fred Robinson:

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Romances-Secrets-Temp-Benson/dp/1560977914/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Thanks to Dark Horse, we're also able to enjoy It Rhymes With Lust (2007. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Books), Baker's ground-breaking 128 page St. John digest size masterpiece, that has claims to be the first graphic novel:

http://www.amazon.com/Rhymes-Lust-Arnold-Drake/dp/1593077289/ref=pd_sim_b_2

and which carries a short, one-page bio of Baker on the last page.

Baker's work suffers or benefits depending on who his inker is. Undoubtedly his St. John work gets some of the best, if not the best treatment, while I've seen Atlas obscure Baker's pencils almost beyond recognition. To finish, here's a Quality Comics, middle-of-the-road piece of Baker. Nice cover, and a short, six-page story (the entire comic can be downloaded from Golden Age Comics Dowloads). "Was He Ashamed Of Me?" echoes the theme of my previous post - again the uncertainty of whether love is possible between people who come from different socio-economic strata:

 

Post-script: not by Matt Baker, but this cover of Young Brides 27 refers back to my comment at the end of the previous post. It's another tortured individual who deems herself unfit to interact with the wealthy:

Money is the Honey

Reading "Will The Real Prince Charming Please Stand Up" from Girls' Love Stories 147 the other day on Sequential Crush set me thinking about the role wealth plays in the stratification of our society. When anyone mentions the Indian caste system you'll hear groans and judgmental attitudes from all over, but when you think about it, our society is in its own way just as hung up on wealth and status. Things have changed a bit over the years, maybe. Instead of a young woman's father telling her suitor that he expects him to be able to keep her in the manner to which she is accustomed, the women themselves do the talking. In Indian society a woman traditionally would marry a man of equal status to herself, but could also marry a man of a higher caste if he'd have her. But to marry 'down' to a lower caste man would violate accepted norms. This expectation of remaining within one's stratum in society is also there in the west - we just don't call it a name like 'the caste system', and it's a little more subtle, more informal than formal, but it's a force at work in society nevertheless. In Girls' Love Stories 147 the 'loser' in the story was a 'gold digger', a woman planning to snare a wealthier man so she could up her station in life. I started to look around and quickly came across some variations on this theme. Heart Throbs 1 (Quality Comics, August 1949) has a couple of stories with differential wealth as a stumbling block on the path to romance. In "Spoiled Brat", lonely millionaire's daughter, Mona Barclay, surprises herself by falling in love with a hired hand on board Daddy's yacht.

The assumption of superiority that accompanies wealth appears to be a barrier that Mona uses, in this case, to avoid confronting her true feelings regarding Bill. Those feelings become evident to Mona later in the story when the yacht is in trouble in a Caribbean storm. Mona sees Bill injured and instinctively goes to his rescue while putting her own safety in danger. Its also a new side of Mona that Bill hadn't known existed, and its enough to tip the scales in his heart towards declaring his love for Mona.

What we don't see is Mona's father's reaction to this union. Will he suspect Bill of using his daughter to get at the Barclay fortunes? Will Mona really be able to cope with such a drastic reduction in household income if she and Bill live true to the statement that they'll manage on a sailor's wages? The cultural differences between the two are likely to create distance in a number of areas of their marriage. But the story's author stops at the point where everything's really hunky dory, without troubling our minds with worries about what might not work out.

Another story in the same comic, "Double Masquerade", is a version of the gold digger story mentioned above. Judy is an office worker, a typist, fed up of existing in the lower socio-economic stratum of society. She's saved up a bunch of money, bought herself some great clothes, and she's off to stay at a swanky country retreat, Lakeshore Manor, where she fully admits she will make every attempt to find herself a well-to-do husband. Very similar to the Girls' Love Stories 147 plot. At the Manor she plays it cool, then the opportunity for a handsome gentleman to step in is provided by Judy's horse bolting. It looks to Judy like everything's going according to plan.

 

They fall in love, but Judy has to repeatedly avoid Marty's questions about her family. Judy doesn't want to let go of him, believing him to be a member of a wealthy banking family, but her love for him is real, and her conscience won't let her go through with the charade. She fesses up to Marty that she's just a poor stenographer, but runs off too soon for Marty to tell her it doesn't matter 'cause he's from the lower echelons of society himself. Marty's persistence catches him up to her where they can both come clean about their masquerade and their true feelings for each other. They can both live with their failed ambitions to become rich by tricking the other because they've found something more. And don't you think their comparable backgrounds will assist in allowing them to make a good go of their marriage?

Then I took a look at the second story in Intimate 1 (Charlton Comics, December 1957), entitled "Late Love". This is a 5-page short story highlighting awareness amongst the impoverished of how financial difficulty places additional stressors on a marriage, putting it at greater risk of failure. So accepting of this principle was Carmen, that she never entertained the idea of marrying the man she'd loved since high school, because he couldn't provide the financial security she required to make her feel that her future marriage would succeed.

Carmen turns down Brick Howell's proposal's of marriage, telling him straight it's because he's poor. She doesn't count the acreage his grandfather left him as worth anything, but Brick has faith that one day, as the area develops, his plot will be sought after and worth a bundle. Carmen dates one guy after another, but can't connect with them because she's in love with Brick. She finally gets a handsome, rich guy, Clay Mason, interested in her, and mentally prepares herself to settle down with him. But seeing Brick brings it all back to her, and she knows he's the only one for her. She gives up her requirement for her man to be rich, and agrees to marry Brick. Just then Clay turns up, steps aside seeing that Carmen obviously  adores Brick, and announces that he's just purchased Brick's land for a tidy sum. So Carmen gets her financial security after all - if only she'd had more faith in Brick's vision, they could have been together all this time. Still, better late than never. Again, though, this story brings up the issue of wealth, in this case being the concern of a woman requiring monetary assets as a precondition of marriage. Strangely enough, this behavior is supported by research that shows women are more attracted to guys with money, while men are more interested in a woman's looks, and its all very Darwinian and down to what's going to produce offspring most likely to survive. So when romance comics incorporate these societal stereotypes (comic book writers pull ideas from, for example, existing media or simply from life itself) there's a lot to the stories in terms of giving us glimpses of patterns in human behavior. Comic book - 10 cents. University research - thousands of dollars. Hmmmm...!