Today we wrap up our profiling of the odd Warren series, Teen Love Stories. There was a fourth issue, but it is apparently very, very hard to find (even TwoMorrows couldn't find a copy for review for their Warren Companion book).That happens a lot with final issues--by their very nature, they are the last whimper out the door of a series that wasn't selling well, so a lot of newsstand vendors were no doubt burying TLS behind better-selling publications. I still hold out hope I'll find it someday. The collectors life is sometimes a lonely one.
Anyway, this third issue is another collection of romance comics, advice columns, and articles on, you guessed it, romance. Although the cover is a bit disturbing, with its scary headline "A romantic warning to Hayley Mills!" Yikes!
The romance-comic portion is a story called "Truth Can Hurt" set in the world of racing. Like the previous issues, there are no credits, no periods on the end of sentences, but some nifty artwork. Just check out the excellent drafting and use of blacks and whites on this page:
That top panel could be very boring--its just a person ringing a doorbell--but I find the use of negative space, not to mention it being just a very-well-drawn hand, makes it a very attractive image. I don't know what British comics these were reprinted from, but they sure were drawn nice. Its thirty-six pages of romantic fun!
Next is a text article, called "How to Make a Boy Do Anything You Want!" (do you need a whole article to answer that?). The main thing that's disturbing about it is the sub-title:
"A woman is a woman for only one reason: a man. You're going to live your life with and for a man." Wow, we have Jim Warren to thank for Maxim! Who woulda thought?
Samantha Kirk is back with more advice for the lovelorn, and the common thread in all three of these seems to be young, almost pre-pubescent girls dating guys almost legal adults. What the hell was going on back in the 60s? In this issue, there's one letter from a girl talking about going steady with a boy since she was eleven. Eleven?? Even Ms. Kirk took the time to point out how f**ked up that was.
The creepy "Ask Chuck" column is back, but I think between this and the previous issue someone told Chuck to take it down a notch. The answers this time a lot more sensible and reasonable, i.e. boring.
Next is an article about the dangers of drinking, called "If I Don't Think He'll Think I'm Nowhere" (after #2's pot article, I guess they were trying cover all the addiction bases. Did #4 take on the dangers of...teen-age gambling??) Then we get Nurse Ellen Andrews back to answer questions about medical issues, like the one from "Miss B" in Alabama. She's sixteen, her boyfriend's twenty, and they really wanna have sex. Should they?*
There's s a prose piece called "This Time is Ours", and then the cover-threatened article on Hayley Mills, which opens with "Hayley Mills Has Been a Swinger Since Her Early Teens." Hotcha! And Lindsay Lohan thinks she knows how to party!
Finally, disappointingly, there are no wallet-size boy photos for the inside back cover this issue; I guess the editors ran out of oddly-boyish-looking thirty-five-year-olds to run pics of.
And so we come to the end (for now) of our trip down memory lane to explore one of the oddest, most obscure parts of the Warren Publishing Story--Teen Love Stories. Stay mod, everybody!
*for God's sake, no
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