Robert Kanigher

I love Lois Lane so much. She's arguably the single greatest love interest in the history of comics, and like so many readers, I can't really get enough of her long-running love story with... uh, that guy. Jeez, it's on the tip of my tongue. What's his name. You know, he has the red cape, his name starts with an S, he's got powers far beyond those of mortal men? Oh! That's right: Satan.

While my favorite superheroes are pretty well-known, I've always had a soft spot for the weird, minor and exceptionally obscure comic book characters, too. There's something about those goofy little weirdos that only show up a few times that always grab my attention, and this week, as we head towards Valentine's Day, I think I have found a new favorite: Amy Ames, The Listening Heart! Amy appeared in the mid-60s in the pages of DC's Secret Hearts as an advice columnist who would sort out her readers' heartbreaks and occasionally find a few herself, and I'll be honest with you, folks, those stories are not really that great. They do, however, feature scenes where Amy just tells a bunch of teenagers that their feelings are stupid, and that is a romance comic plot I can get behind.

Q: Let's say I know nothing about the Metal Men except some of their names. Should I care about those guys? -- @_lexifab A: On the off chance that you're wondering why this is the week that people are asking about a relatively obscure team of disposable superhero robots now, I'm going to go ahead and guess that it has something to do with their return in the pages of the brand-new Justice League #

Ah, romance! As Valentine's Day lingers on the horizon, it is once again time to turn our thoughts -- and our hearts -- to love. Or at least, the truly bizarre and occasionally downright mind-boggling version of love that appears in that most dubious of genres, the Romance Comic...

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: Secret Hearts #107's "Heartbreak -- Take Me!" In this novel-length tear-jerker from 1965, Robert Kanigher and Gene Colan tell the story of one Amy Ames -- The Listening Heart...