Just Married #79 [1971]

One of the rare pure romance stories, with no fantasy overtones, by Ditko in this issue, his only story for this long-running Charlton title.  "Dream Of Love" is a 7-page story about Dorothy, a young woman working as a script consultant for a small summer stock company.  As the season goes on, she gets more involved in the production, first doing re-writes on the script and then filling in when the lead actress leaves for Hollywood, and also getting romantically involved with the director.

A pleasant if unambitious little story, Ditko tells it effectively, with attractive leads and some nice attention to detail in the theatrical setting.  He does hit the heart imagery for the romance angle a bit heavily, at least once on every page, which is probably overkill, especially for a story appearing in a romance book.

As an example of how important the romance genre still was to Charlton at the time, there's a house ad in here which features the logos for 11 different romance titles running at the time.

Haunted #12 [1973]

Ditko draws the 8-page story "Eternal Love" in this 1973 Charlton release. A pretty standard story about a girl who sees a ghost, who turns out to be a man who died in that house 200 years earlier in the arms of his beloved, who happens to have the same name and face as her. Later she meets and falls in love with a boy who seems somewhat familiar. Actually, the story seems to be missing a few bits of explanation, not sure if the reader is just expected to take them for granted given how common the plot is or what.

In any case, it's the Ditko artwork that I'm more interested in here, and it does shine in a few scenes. I especially like the figure of the ghost on the bottom of page six, reaching out and with a single tear. It's also always fun to see Ditko's renditions of the host of this story, the ghostly Imp, who often seems really excited or fascinated by the story he's telling.

Romantic Story #107 [1970]

Ditko drew only a handful of romance comics in his career, though oddly enough one of them includes what may be his first published story (DARING LOVE #1 [1953]). Another few are as much horror stories, appearing in HAUNTED LOVE. But this one, the 7-page "Nothing But Tears" from ROMANTIC STORY #107 [1970] is pretty much a straight romance, so straight as to be boring. A young girl moves from Pennsylvania to New York City to pursue her dreams of a modelling career, only to find that her three month modelling course didn't prepare her for reality. And no, I'm not sure what kind of models are hired for bar mitzvahs, either. Bonus points for Ditko including the unwashed hippies straight out of one of his fanzine morality play things. Anyway, Mona ends up taking a job washing dishes, and having trouble keeping that when she gets sick, and accidentally walks into traffic in her fevered state. Fortunately the guy who hit her, the impossibly clean-cut Roy Damion, ends up being her saviour, as he has his older cousin Mrs. Pollack nurse Mona back to health while he's off on business, and then gets her a job as a receptionist and eventually marries her.

You know, with most of the Ditko stories from Charlton being horror and ghost stories, I kept waiting for a twist while reading this, Damion being the leader of some sort of cult or something. The story certainly needed it. Serviceable job by Ditko, with a few nice touches on some of the incidental bits (the hippies, the other woman at the "modelling agency", the by-stander at the accident who suggests she get a lawyer). Doesn't make me that anxious to track down the other Ditko romances of the era. Anyone think any of these are worth getting:

TIME FOR LOVE #13 [1969]
I LOVE YOU #91 [1971]
HAUNTED LOVE #4 [1973]
HAUNTED LOVE #5 [1973]

"Nothing But Tears" D-47