ROMANCE COMICS 519
Zip Comics #18 (September 1941)— but Archie eventually became by far the most
successful teen in the funny books. He and his coterie of Betty, Veronica, and Jug-
head, plus many other characters, have been entertaining readers young and older
ever since.
Th e fi rst comic book directly marketed to girls— and featuring a smattering of
romance in the text features— was the highly successful Calling All Girls #1 (September
1941) from the publishers of Parents’ Magazine. Like the Archie titles, this and several
much less successful imitators was a bridge to romance comics. Squeaky clean Parents’
Magazine kept Calling All Girls going for more than two decades in a variety of formats,
although the comic strip elements were gone by 1946. Th e fi rm left the comic book
business in 1949 and did not participate in the blooming of romance comics.
Th e iconic comic book creators and entrepreneurial business partners Joe Simon
and Jack Kirby established the romance genre in comic books virtually single- handedly,
beginning with the fi rst romance comic book, Young Romance #1 (September–
October 1947 ) for the small Crestwood Publications line, otherwise known as Feature
and Prize. Earlier in the same year, working for the second-tier publisher Hillman
Comics, Simon and Kirby dropped strong hints of romance in the teen-humor title
My Date , which ran from #1 ( July 1947) through #4 ( January 1948). An obscure 1946
one-shot with a romantically themed cover, Romantic Picture Novelettes , was merely a
compilation of Mary Worth newspaper strip reprints.
Beginning in 1940, the Simon and Kirby team wrote and drew superhero adven-
tures few competitors could match. Th ey created Captain America #1 (March 1941)
for Timely / Marvel Comics and produced the fi rst 10 issues before moving over to
larger National Comics (now DC Comics), for which they made the Boy Commandos
a huge hit during World War II. Kirby, one of the most prolifi c comic book artists of all
time, ultimately became most infl uential for his Silver Age work at Marvel, most nota-
bly with his co-creation of the Fantastic Four in 1961; but for the fi rst two decades of
his career, Kirby’s most signifi cant contribution to comic books was the co-creation of
the romance genre with the immediate commercial hit Young Romance.
“I wondered how they (female readers) would accept a comic book version of the
popular True Story Magazine , with youthful, emotional yet wholesome stories suppos-
edly told in the fi rst person by love-smitten teen-agers,” Simon writes in his memoir,
fi rst published in 1990 (122). “Visually,” he continues, “the magazine love stories seemed
a natural conversion for comic books” (125). He could not have hit a longer, more timely
grand slam in the comic book industry, which was in desperate need to re-tool because
of the rapidly waning interest in superhero themes. Th e fi rst story in the fi rst issue
of Young Romance , “I Was a Pick-Up!” could not have been more diff erent than what
had been appearing in any other comics designed to appeal to female readers. Such
fl amboyant stories, in fact, helped lead to the formation in September 1954 of the self-
censorship industry organization, the Comics Code Authority.
Young Romance and Simon and Kirby’s sister title Young Love , which debuted in 1949
for tiny Crestwood Publications, thrived with exciting, often highly original covers and
