Romance Comics

When Emet Comics absorbed Rosy Press, we knew that would lead to more diverse queer romance comics, and quite possibly more of Fresh Romance, the anthology title that first launched back in 2014. And our dreams have come true, with Emet announcing a new Kickstarter campaign to fund Fresh Romance Volume 2, a collection of all new romance stories to be published as five digital issues as well as a print collection.

Since romance comics had gone out of style well before I was born, I had no idea just how popular and prolific the genre had been. I had always assumed it was some kind of short-lived craze that fizzled out like other comic fads, but then I started noticing how high the issue numbers were on so many of the covers I selected. Turns out romance comics enjoyed an incredibly successful three-decade run from the late 1940s to the late 1970s. I also learned that the comic that launched the genre, 1947’s Young Romance, was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby! You know, the guys that created Captain America a few years earlier. This was without question the easiest one of these galleries I’ve ever had to pull together, because almost every single cover I came across was a home run. They’re all just amazing! There was no sorting and sifting and really trying to get through all the underwhelming garbage to get to the good stuff. It’s all good stuff.

At the beginning of last year, editor and publisher Janelle Asselin launched Rosy Press with the specific goal of publishing romance comics, a genre that most in the industry had long since given up on. With the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign, the Rosy Press anthology title Fresh Romance had an acclaimed digital run, continuing today with the release of Issue #7. Now Asselin is running a second Kickstarter to bring a Fresh Romance collection to print, with the help of Oni Press. ComicsAlliance spoke to Asselin --- a former editor for this site --- about her recent successes and future goals for Rosy Press.

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.

Every February, my thoughts turn to the world of romance comics, and every February, I am reminded that romance comics are a terrifying world of choking sobs and brutal heartbreak. But not this year, friends, for Cupid has landed his arrow soundly in my heart, and I am madly in love... with Kazune Kawahara and Aruko's My Love Story!!. Not to be confused with the '60s comic of the same name (minus those crucial exclamation points), Kawahara and Aruko's amazing and hilarious romantic comedy manga tells the story of Takeo, a gigantic, super-ripped and reasonably terrifying high school student who falls in love constantly only to be turned down in favor of his beautiful pal Sunakawa, who seems to have very little interest in girls, or anything else for that matter, and how he finally found someone to like him back. And seriously, it might be the best romance story in comics.

Valentine's Day is once again looming in the near future, which means that here at ComicsAlliance, our thoughts have turned to romance. And, since our ideas of romance have been formed pretty much entirely by comics, that means that we're also pretty fixated on the sobbing, sniffling, and weeping of utter heartbreak. If there's one thing I've learned from my love of classic romance comics -- and t

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...

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...

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...