SOURCE: "The Love Comics and American Popular Culture," in American Quarterly, Vol. XVI, No. 3, Fall, 1964, pp. 486-90.

In the following essay, Sadler lists the recurring themes, character types, and plot points of romance comics.

All across the country, in small town drugstores, at roadside drive-ins, or in big city news-and-tobacco shops, the wall-shelf arrayed with dime comic books is a familiar sight. Here is a form of popular literature, and, like any literature, it must have its raison d'Xtre. If you begin to browse, you will soon notice that these little booklets fall into specific categories. There are, for example, the "love comics," which seem to be directed, for the most part, to the interests of teen-aged American girls. Their heroines are usually girls in their late teens. Usually, they are distinctly lower-middle-class girls. Their families have achieved a measure of ease and comfort, but not without impressing...