You'll LOVE Love Diaries and Love Letters for Valentine's Day!

Until the intro of texting, blogs, and Twitter, the main way people kept track of their love lives was thru Love Diaries & Love Letters!
In fact, they made up one of the most popular sub-categories of romance comics, with literally dozens of titillating titles!
Let our selection of the best of these these kitchy, campy (and very kool) classic comics covers help you express your true feelings on the Most Important of Days--Valentines Day on greeting cards, teddy bears, mugs, and even "naughty" undies!

And, if they can't assist your love-life, perhaps something from one of our other sections at True Love Comics Tales™ will help get your point across on the Most Important of Days!

Reading Room OUT OF THIS WORLD "From All Our Darkrooms..."

Here's a tale we couldn't tell in today's world of digital photography...

...but until a couple of years ago, it was quite plausable!

Though set in 1972, this tale from Charlton's Out of This World #4 was published in 1957!

Wonderfully-rendered by Steve Ditko at his moodiest, the story was most-likely scripted by Charlton workhorse Joe Gill.

The "negative" effect was achieved by simply making negative photostats of parts of the original art and pasting them onto the art boards before photographing them for color separations.

To demonstrate, here's the printed cover...

...and here's the b/w original art with the caption and negative photostat removed...

You didn't think Ditko inked the right side as "negative space", did you?

RAUMPATROUILLE "Hüter des Gesetzes" (Guardians of the Law)

After twice defeating energy-based aliens known as "Frogs"...

...the crew of the Orion 7 encounter rebellious robots on an Earth colony!

(Note the story makes use of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics!
 Kool!)

OK, let the comparisons to how Kirk and Spock would've handled it begin...

Reading Room PLANET OF VAMPIRES "Blood Plague" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

This scene...sorta...appears in this issue

Astronauts Chris and Craig invade the vampires' stronghold only to discover Craig's wife (and fellow astronaut) Brenda drained dry, as shown on the cover above.
(Except for the fact that Craig has a moustache and both Craig and Brenda are African-American, as shown HERE.)
Leaving Craig to mourn, Chris blasts his way into the Proctor's office...

What was "the Secret Project"?

We never found out, since the book was cancelled!

But it was already going though the transition that almost all the Atlas books that lasted more than two issues went through.

Radical changes in creative staffs, plotlines, even characters themselves were the norm as mercurial publisher Martin Goodman began shaking things up.

It's a sordid tale best told by one who was there, so click HERE for the details!

As for Planet of Vampires, the word was to make it more like Planet of the Apes and/or Kamandi.

This two-page spread by Larry Lieber and Al Milgrom gives an idea of what was to come...

Perhaps it's just as well there was no #4...

Reading Room PLANET OF VAMPIRES "Blood Plague" Part 1

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

...keep reading and the characters will explain what's going on right after the big explosion.
"What big explosion?" you may ask...

The battle continues...tomorrow!

Written by John Albano and illustrated by Russ Heath, Atlas' Planet of Vampires #3 winds up some plotlines and, unfortunately, kills off several major characters in the process.

Be here tomorrow, when we'll show how far afield the book was about to go as it suffered the "Third Issue Curse" that befell most of the Atlas books.