ROMANCE COMICS 517
in renewing mainstream interest in the career of bondage pinup girl Bette Page, whom
Stevens befriended after publication of Th e Rocketeer. Stevens’s work on the character
Betty was also reminiscent of “nose art” from World War II aircrafts. Stevens’s pinup
art proved so popular that it detracted from his narrative work, proving more lucrative.
Th is disparity was partially due to the time taken on each comic page, refl ected in the
visual detail. However, he never lost interest in Th e Rocketeer.
Stevens’s hope and plan for Th e Rocketeer was to allow other creators to take a turn
with the character in a series of individual stories. Aside from some pinup pages in
the individual issues, this never materialized. Stevens’s own work on the title was slow
to appear for two reasons. First, Stevens earned a better living doing commercial art
and storyboard work than he did doing comics. Second, Stevens had leukemia, which
eventually caused his death in March 2008. He was quite private about his condition,
so the specifi c onset and its eff ect on his artistic output are unknown, but he is reported
to have had the condition for several years before his death, so it seems likely to have
limited his artistic output on Th e Rocketeer. Stevens’s Th e Rocketeer won the Russ Man-
ning, Inkpot and Kirby Awards.
Selected Bibliography: Stevens, Dave. Th e Rocketeer. Sacramento, CA: Eclipse Books,
1985; Roach, David. Th e Superhero Encyclopedia. Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 2004.
Diana Green
ROMANCE COMICS. Romance comics became an important phenomenon in Ameri-
can popular culture soon after World War II. However, contrary to some of the myths
about the post-World War II comic book scene, they did not explode onto the news-
stands overnight. Romance comics did not really catch on until the second half of
1949, but when they did, they became an American cultural institution read by untold
millions of girls and women for more than a quarter century. By the mid-1970s, how-
ever, romance comics virtually disappeared, only occasionally resurfacing in the form of
satire , or from independent publishers or in other underground comics. Th e original
corporate romance comics, published almost entirely from 1947 to 1977, are now
collected with enthusiasm by a handful of comic book and pop cultural historians and
art enthusiasts.
Th e romance genre, so common in a variety of print sources during the fi rst three-
quarters of the 20th century, remains a powerful source of print revenue in the form of
paperback (and hardcover) romance novels. Many of these stories continue to provide
the fantasies that comic books and pulp magazines once did, along with their higher-
caliber brethren, the “slick” fi ction-fi lled magazines that have also disappeared from
American culture.
Romance novels fi rst comprised only a tiny fraction of the burgeoning paperback
book industry, from its modern origins with the fi rst Pocket Books shortly before
World War II to the beginning of the Harlequin Romance line in the mid-1960s,
which began an explosion of romance paperbacks that continues today. Instead,
