Michelle Nolan

For the better part of three decades romance comics were an American institution. Nearly 6,000 romance comics were published between 1947 and 1977, and there was a time when one of every five comics sold in the U.S. was a romance comic. This is the first book devoted entirely to the rarely studied world of romance comics. The text includes information on several types of romance comics and their creators, plus the history, numbers, and publishing frequency of dozens of romance titles. The author examines several significant periods in the development of the romance genre, including the origins of Archie Comics and other teen romance publications, the romance comic "boom and bust" of the 1950s, and the genre's sudden disappearance when fantasy and superhero comics began to dominate mainstream comics in the late 1970s.

A History of American Romance Comics

Love on the Racks

Will Murray

Kendell Foster Crossen

Adam Lance Garcia

Martin Grams (Jr.)

Om! Ma-ni pad-me Hum! The first of its kind, the complete adventures of the Green Lama follows the adventures of Buddhist Jethro Dumont and his aides as they battle the forces of evil in the western world. Written by Kendell Foster Crossen, it's non-stop action in the vein of The Shadow!Never completely reprinted before, the series is collected in three volumes. Each volume contains an all-new introduction, focusing on a different aspect of the character's life across several forms of popular media. Volume 3 contains in introduction by radio historian Martin Grams, Jr. and features the final four stories: "The Case of the Fugitive Fingerprints," "The Case of the Crooked Cane," "The Case of the Hollywood Ghost," and "The Case of the Beardless Corpse," as well as an all-new epilogue by Adam Lance Garcia and Mike Fyles: "The Case of the Final Column."THE GREEN LAMA is a trademark licensed and managed by Argosy Communications, Inc., by arrangement with Kendra Crossen Burroughs.

The Green Lama - the Complete Pulp Adventures Volume 3

This first-ever volume focusing on sports pulp fiction devoted to America's two most popular pastimes of the 1935-1957 era--baseball and football--provides extensive detail on authors, along with examination of key plots, themes, trends and categories. Commentary relates the works to real-life baseball and football of the period. The history of the genre is traced, beginning with the debut of Dime Sport (later renamed Dime Sports), the first magazine from a major publisher to provide competition for Street & Smith's long-established Sport Story Magazine. Complementing the text is a complete catalog of fiction from the six major publishers who competed with S&S, also noting the cover themes for 1,054 issues.

Six Publishers, with a Directory of Stories, 1935-1957

Baseball and Football Pulp Fiction

This is the first book to comprehensively examine the multitude of non-Archie teen humor comic books, including girls and boys such as Patsy Walker, Hedy Wolfe, Buzz Baxter and Wendy Parker from Marvel; Judy Foster, Buzzy, Binky and Scribbly from DC; Candy from Quality Comics; and Hap Hazard from Ace Comics. It covers, often for the first time, the history of the characters, who drew them, why (or why not) they succeeded as rivals for the Archie Series, highlights of both unusual and typical stories and much more. The author provides major plotlines and a history of the development of each series. Much has been written about the Archie characters, but until now very little has been told about most of their many comic book competitors.

An Illustrated History

Archie's Rivals in Teen Comics, 1940s-1970s

This history of American sports fiction traces depictions of baseball, basketball and football in works for all age levels from early dime novels through the 1960s. Chapters cover dime novel heroes Frank and Dick Merriwell; the explosion of sports novels before World War II and its influence on the authors who later wrote for baby boom readers; how sports novels persisted during the Great Depression; the rise and decline of sports pulps; why sports comics failed; postwar heroes Chip Hilton and Bronc Burnett; the lack of sports fiction for females; Duane Decker's Blue Sox books; and the classic John R. Tunis novels. Appendices list sports pulp titles and comic books featuring sports fiction.

A Study of Baseball, Basketball and Football Fiction of the 1930s through 1960s

Ball Tales

This history of American sports fiction traces depictions of baseball, basketball and football in works for all age levels from early dime novels through the 1960s. Chapters cover dime novel heroes Frank and Dick Merriwell; the explosion of sports novels before World War II and its influence on the authors who later wrote for baby boom readers; how sports novels persisted during the Great Depression; the rise and decline of sports pulps; why sports comics failed; postwar heroes Chip Hilton and Bronc Burnett; the lack of sports fiction for females; Duane Decker’s Blue Sox books; and the classic John R. Tunis novels. Appendices list sports pulp titles and comic books featuring sports fiction.

This first-ever volume focusing on sports pulp fiction devoted to America's two most popular pastimes of the 1935-1957 era--baseball and football--provides extensive detail on authors, along with examination of key plots and categories. Commentary relates the works to real-life baseball and football of the period. The history of the genre is traced, beginning with the debut of Dime Sport (later renamed Dime Sports), the first magazine from a major publisher to provide competition for Street & Smith's long-established Sport Story Magazine. A complete index lists fiction from the six major publishers who competed with S&S, and cover themes for 1,054 issues.

Michelle Nolan

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