Love Hurts: ‘How Do You Make Out These Here Menoos?’
As we head towards Valentine's Day, ComicsAlliance is offering up a daily tribute to love, as depicted in the somewhat dubious world of Romance Comics! Today's entry: Girl Confessions #20's "My First Love!"
This classic of the Atlas Age of Comics tells the story of a young lady named Marica. She's a small-town girl livin' in a lonely world who catches that midnight train to New York City and an exciting new life as a dress designer. But even though she can feel herself falling for suave executive Pete Sawyer, she resists, still carrying a torch for the love she left five years ago in Small Town USA.
And then that love, Ossie, shows up for a date, and pretty much extinguishes that torch with a fire hose by being a total podunk a-hole.
It's a pretty straightforward story (if a surprisingly progressive one that finds itself squarely on the side of the single girl in the big city rather than Heartland moral proselytizing), but what makes it amazing is the fact that Ossie was unquestionably the sensational character find of 1952. Every single thing he says is amazing.
I mean, I was so blown away by the fact that he cannot pronounce the word "menu" that I didn't even notice they were at a restaurant that apparently had a live sexy snake charming act as a floor show. New York: It's a hell of a hurdy gurdy town.