DC's Pat Boone Comics: Wholesome Americana

The cover of Pat Boone 4 is typical of the short run of this late 1950s DC title, in that it uses a large photo of Pat, plus in this case Johnny Mathis and Bobby Darin, about whom there are some text features with illustrations inside. The series ran from Sept/Oct 1959 through May/June 1960, and coincided with Pat's still being a hit record artist, as well as a movie and TV star. We'll start this second look at DC's Pat Boone series with one of the short 5-page stories set in Pat's family, with his wife Shirley and their four young children. The beautifully rendered art is again by Bob Oksner, who drew the entire 5-issue series, and this and the stories presented in the previous post were written by Larry Nadle.

Next here's a collection of the fashion double-page spreads from the centers of Pat Boone 1 through 5, stitched together as well as I could manage. These are very much a feature of DC romance comics of the 1960s, and you can see a wonderful selection of these on Jacque Nodell's romance comics blog, Sequential Crush. Note the "Twixt Twelve and Twenty" title to the fashion pages from Pat Boone 2 - this was the title used by Pat for one of his self-help books for teens.

Pat himself was used in ads in the comics, including this one for men's shoes from the back cover of Pat Boone 5.

Here's a couple of double page gag features drawn by Mort Drucker. "Teens Eye View" is from Pat Boone 3 and "Teen Dates" is from Pat Boone 2.

Here's one of the text features on another star of the time (and still today in this case!): Johnny Mathis from Pat Boone 4.

Each issue contained one or more pages dealing with the numerous Pat Boone Fan Clubs - fan clubs appeared to have been very important to young people at the time, a social group for individuals with a shared interest. Note the cartoon drawn by Pat Boone.

Each issue has information about Pat Boone and his life, and was in fact written by Pat Boone himself, so it's autobiographical. I like this one, from the last issue:

Finally, the letters pages that were also a regular feature. Whether or not Pat answered the letters himself, or even if the letters were genuine, is unknown, but Pat certainly seems to have got into writing those self-help books for teens in the early 60s.

So that's it for this one. As you can see, these comics contained a lot for the Pat Boone fan, more than what has been offered here on this post. These books are tough to find nowadays, but I would say they're important artistically because of the way Oksner drew the stories (different from his other work, for example, on DC's The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis), and for me, this was some of his best work. The absence of speech balloons, and with minimal framing to the panels, this style must have saved on inking but it also looks really great.

British Girls' Romance Comics: Mates 6th Jan 1979

Like Jackie, upon which this comic appears modeled, Mates was a comic magazine with a mixture of sequential art stories and a variety of pop, fashion, dating, horoscope, and other features. The format of these British weekly romance comics appears heavily borrowed from their slightly earlier American counterparts, with a change in balance in favor of the magazine items.  Many thanks to David Roach for writing in with the artist identifications for the three romance stories in this issue. The themes are typical of those found in the genre on the other side of the Atlantic, as this first story, drawn by Ramon Escolano, demonstrates:

Although two of the stories in this issue are self-contained, the second is part of an on-going serial. Again, the theme of this story will be one familiar to fans of American romance comics. This artist is Ron Lumsden:

Just as Jackie mirrors particularly the DC romance books in having a fashion page or two, so does Mates include a fashion feature:

Saving the best for last, the third and final sequential art story in the book sports some very superior quality artwork by Rafael Busom, and again uses a common romance comic theme. The girl has to choose between two lovers, with one apparently holding the better hand. When an event occurs that brings out the real nature of each, the girl's dilemma is easily resolved:

Like romance comics in America, this genre, and girls' comics generally, have received little attention from art historians and comic scholars in the UK. Tragic really when you look at work like this, not to mention the immense relevance of this kind of material in terms of gaining insight into thought patterns and behaviors of the period. There's also that timeless element of people struggling with relationship issues that are as old as the hills and yet still in evidence today, because they're related to the fundamentals of what makes human beings what they are.

British Girls' Romance Comics: Jackie Annual 1980

Jackie was a British girls' comic published by D.C. Thompson from the mid-1960s through the early 1990s. It had a mixed magazine and comic format, with comics interspersed with fashion, pop, horoscopes, and other features deemed interesting to young teenage girls. At its zenith it was selling over half a million copies a week - 1 in every 100 inhabitants of the UK was buying Jackie! Each year, as was typical for British comics, a hard cover annual was published for Christmas. Here's a selection of material from the 1980 Jackie Annual, including 21 of the 22 total pages of comics contained therein (the entire book including covers is 96 pages). The comics are mostly in black and white. The first is a humorous piece about a young couple, but like the other strips in this book, delves into relationships. The male protagonist has a French rival for his girl's affections, but prevails in the end.

The next story is historical fiction set in Cornwall. It's the tale of a love between a gypsy girl and a wealthy young man, who ends up making a huge sacrifice to save her from harm born of prejudice.

There's a fashion section much like those discussed regularly by Jacque Nodell in her Sequential Crush blog. Despite 1980 being at the tail end of the first wave of British punk, there's little evidence of this in the book. About the punkiest people mentioned are Blondie and Bob Geldoff. 1980 was, however, early in the emergence of the New Romantic genre in music (Duran Duran, ABC, Human League, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, etc.), something that didn't really cross the Atlantic at the time, and the clothes on these fashion pages seem a little more in tune with that trend than anything else.

There are also advice sections, like in the American romance books. Jackie has a greater percentage of these kinds of features, in terms of the number of pages they occupy relative to the comics, when compared to its American counterparts.

The final story looks at sibling rivalry, something that many readers with sisters could probably relate to and perhaps be provoked into thinking about.

None of the art is signed, and I have little knowledge of British comics generally, girls' comics especially. Of course that makes it all the more interesting to me. Hopefully you'll also derive some enjoyment from this excellent art.

Jackie has acquired a kind of cult status in recent years, but has long been an object of popular as well as academic interest. An early analysis of the comic written during the peak years of its popularity is to be found in Angela McRobbie's book Feminism and Youth Culture: From 'Jackie' to 'Just Seventeen'.