Rolling out a couple of weeks worth of vacation posts for the Comics Supplement while I'm travelling about, and today we'll start with two yarns from the unusual 1950s love stories comic book Youthful Romances, which had the distinctive gimmick of featuring real-live music celebrities in at least one story of each issue, as well as on the cover.
In our first tale we find two would-be lovers aided by crooner Tony Bennett, as penned by Harry Harrison and drawn by Ernie Bache; and in the second our guest star is Bob Eberly, from Mechanicville, New York, as written by Ira Zweifach, and rendered by Bob Correa.
Enjoy some vintage funny-book celebrity cross-over fun right after the jump!
That story should include a big tip of the hat to the songs author Hank Williams!
Next up, a story from the July 1953 issue of the same magazine, which sports an inside cover giving all of the creative credits for the book, including the cover artist; a very unusual practice that I wish more publishers would have taken up.
Your love life is a cinch if there are enough famous people around to push the right buttons. Nice stylish art on that piece by Mr. Correa. We'll see some more extracts from this goofy comic book series in a future comics supplement. Some issues spotlight personalities completely forgotten today, while others have immediately recognizable guest stars. I'd love these even more if they could have done horror and super-hero books this way, with perhaps Tony Bennett doing some medical torture, or Dinah Shore hacking up people with an axe. Bob Eberly in outer space with Mitch Miller perfectly cast as Mitch the Merciless, tyrant ruler of Mongo.
Once again, thanks are due to the Digital Comics Museum, where I harvest so many of these gems out of the pulp paper forest. It would also be good of me to mention the terrific resource of information at the Grand Comics Database, which is invaluable for tracking down images, stories, and solving general mysteries.
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