Falling In Love #99

As you can see, the psychedelic and op-art influences were being reflected in DC's romance line fairly early; this was the May 1968 issue.  Just a beautiful cover by Ric Estrada.  Note the tribute to Palisades Amusement Park, a longtime DC advertiser.

You can get a quick idea of the opening story from this sequence:

She doesn't resist him, but she refuses to tell him she loves him.  And after they're going steady she decides to try to attract her old boyfriend, Greg. But then she realizes she's just playing Rod's game:

As you can see, Rod's already fooling around on her with the brunette in the background.  And it turns out that Greg really does want her back:

Cute ending, with the final line probably swiped from the movie Some Like It Hot.

The second story concerns a gal who arrives in the big city for the first time.  Fortunately a handsome stranger helps her flag down a taxi to her old friend's apartment, where she'll be staying.  She assumes she'll never see him again, but that evening:

Gail finds herself falling for her roommate's boyfriend.  To make matters more difficult, Marjorie and Cliff insist on including her in their dates, making her uncomfortable whenever they get a little lovey-dovey.  Finally, one evening Marjorie asks Gail to entertain Cliff as she is going to be working late.  Cliff falls asleep and Gail confesses all:

But it turns out Cliff heard everything, and returns her love.  And surprise, while Marjorie isn't overjoyed, she realized something was up:

Comments: I like the characterization for everybody in this story, although I doubt that Marjorie would really have been as phlegmatic as it appears here.

The final story is the cover feature, and it's a doozy.  Lisa and Amy have been friends since they were kids, but Lisa starts to realize that the boys are interested in her buddy:

So she gets a new bff:

Heh.  But although the guys notice her more now that she's not around Amy, they still tend to have wandering eyes:

But finally she meets Frankie, who notices only her:

Well, happy ending, right?  Not quite, for Lisa notices that Frankie, while not straying, still doesn't treat her the way she wants.  And this is where the story gets a little murky, because it appears that Lisa's kinda bitchy:

And when it looks like he forgot her birthday she's in tears.  However, he does show up with a present and this time it's obvious that he's not very thoughtful:

Any guy who's ever given a prank gift to a gal will know that doesn't go over well.  And as time goes on, Lisa realizes that while Frankie may be faithful, he's not satisfying her other needs.

But this time she's had enough.  Maybe she needed him at one point, but no longer:

Comments: Entertaining story and beautiful artwork by Estrada.  Frankie comes off as a bit of a cypher; why exactly doesn't he flirt with the other girls?  I assume because that's what the plot required.

RIP Ric Estrada

Jacque Nodell has a tribute post up to one of the more important romance artists in comics, who passed away last weekend. I did some searching around and came up with a nice Ric Estrada story I'd like to share with you.

The tale is Portrait of Satan, from Eerie #12, dated November 1967. Eerie was an excellent magazine put out by Warren that must have paid well (or reliably), because the artistic talent was extraordinary, including many of the leading EC illustrators from the 1950s. In this issue alone, the artists include Jeff Jones, Johnny Craig, Joe Orlando, Al McWilliams and Estrada.

The story itself riffs off the basic "I'd sell my soul for..." premise. An artist is struggling to meet commercial deadlines but what he really longs for is to do serious art.



As you can see, there is a superficial simplicity to the art but the technique is impressive; it almost looks like he's working with watercolors there and not just pencil and ink. And sequentially, the art looks great:



So the deal is that if Hacker can paint a perfect portrait of the devil, then he doesn't forfeit his soul. When it's completed the devil acknowledges that the portrait is perfect, but he's still going to take Hacker's soul because of an admission that the artist made:



Comments: The story is just okay, with a not terribly surprising ending and a decent twist on the standard "Damn Yankees" plot. But the art adds atmosphere and menace. Interestingly, the style is very much different than the romance art that Jacque includes in her post.

I am trying to track down a Wonder Woman issue that Estrada did the art for (#176) and will update this post if I can locate it.

Update: I'll put a few examples from the WW story. One thing always to remember with superhero titles in the Silver Age is that when a guest artist filled in for an issue, he was expected to draw in the style of the previous artists. For most of the Silver Age that had been the team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, who had been pulled off WW after issue #171 (and assigned to handle the Flash at about the same time). The prior few issues had been done by Irv Novick, who went on to some success with Batman. To maintain some continuity, Esposito did the inking on the Novick issues and this one as well.

This was also at the moment in time of DC's silly experiment with coloring in the "pipes" (the normally white spaces between panels). Anyway, here's Ric's take on the Amazon Angel:



Oh, yeah, I should mention that this was the tail end of Batmania as well, which accounts for all the sound effects in the above panel. But a nice, dynamic shot of Wonder Woman like that was not all that common in the Silver Age.

The story... I haven't even the heart to try to discuss it. Sweet mercy, Wonder Woman's stories almost never made sense but this is horrific even for Kanigher. Three geeky brothers are stalking Wonder Woman, trying to get her to marry them. They have a secret formula that turns them into walking stud muffins:



A style more noticeably like Ric's romance artwork comes in in these little bits of Diana Prince:



I'm pretty sure I covered the other time that June 18th rolled around in Wonder Woman #106, but not finding it quickly in my archives. IIRC, the reason I remember it was because that same issue they used another "once a year" gimmick, this time a date that Wondy's various items of equipment--bracelets, lasso, glass plane--were unreliable.

Anyway, you can probably guess the next chapter. Wonder Woman is called on three separate emergencies where she is unable to assist because of her lack of powers, but the three "Star" brothers save the day. However, they also are a little overly aggressive in their approach to romancing her:



His technique reminds me of Muscles in the old BEM ad.

At any rate, Wonder Woman is flattered but cannot give up crimefighting for any of the Star Brothers, especially when it turns out their powers were only temporary.

Comments: As I discussed above, Estrada does well on Diana, but it seems to me that at times his fight scenes with Wonder Woman leave a little something to be desired:



I can appreciate that she's struggling, but it also looks like her neck is growing.

But overall Estrada does a fine job, arguably some of the best art during the otherwise almost uniformly wretched Silver Age Wonder Woman. It would have been nice to see him grow into the character, but fate had other plans, as this was Kanigher's last issue as Wonder Woman's writer and editor. The secret agent Diana Prince was just around the corner.