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Tweak says, "Sandstorm"

strannik01 (strannik01) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-07 12:56:00

Entry tags:

era: golden age, genre: romance, publisher: harvey comics, status: public domain

When romance comics were downright creepy.

As anybody who read romance comics scans in both versions of our fine community can attest, romance comics often featured romances between young girls and men that were (at least) a couple of years older then them. But none of them were quite as creepy as "The Man of My Dreams," a story that appeared in Love Problems and Advice Illustrated #2. Now, I know that age consent worked a bit differently back then (it didn't count if you were married), but still... The names of the artist and writer who created this are lost in the mist of time, which is probably just as well.

Dial-up link link (even if less and less people need it every day)

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sistermagpie
2009-10-08 12:42 am UTC (link)

I didn't mean Candy was considering college, just that he was giving her marriage as a teenager, which to me means she's pretty much set now at her age. I'm comparing her to what I would want, not what she wants--not to say that she must want what I want, just explaining why I'm not particularly satisfied by this love story.

And I don't buy that she tumbled for him even though he wasn't the movie star in her mind. That after being obsessed with him for weeks already she adjusted her focus more to the real guy the same night she met him does not read to me like the lesson they're obviously presenting him as. She was still primed to be in love with him and then continued to be in love with him. He doesn't know about the movie star in her mind, he just sees how she treats him.

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dr_hermes
2009-10-08 12:51 am UTC (link)

Got it. He was offering her marriage after she graduated high school, so even though she never mentioned college, he was keeping her from it? ("I don't want to propose to her in case she wants to go to college, which she hasn't suggested.")

Well, we're interpreting the story based on our own experiences in life. Instead of just saying, "He's not my dream man," and never giving him another thought, she finds herself attracted to him for what he is. I'd give Candy the benefit of the doubt and credit her with seeing her unrealistic expectations were just that. Too many people shop for a mate the way they look for a car, with a checklist of requirements, and they ignore what their heart is telling them.

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sistermagpie
2009-10-08 01:20 am UTC (link)

No, I explained pretty clearly that I didn't say he was keeping her from anything. I said that I as a reader didn't consider it a happy ending that she was all set to be married after high school. I didn't blame Bob for taking anything from her. I as a reader was not supposed to be thinking of anything else for Candy.

And yes, we are interpreting from our own experience, though I'm not using life experience, just my experience of how I took the didactic messages in the comic based on how it was written. For instance, presumably I was supposed to see Betty as a shallow woman for being interested in a movie star compared to Candy's wonderful example, but I didn't. Let's face it, it's not like this comic is a literal example of anybody's life experience. In real life Candy would at some point deal with actual flaws in Bob rather than the way he wears glasses.

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dr_hermes
2009-10-08 02:00 am UTC (link)

I think I understand. It's not something in the story itself, it's what you would want for Candy. (We're talking about her as if she's a real person rather than a plot device and a drawn image, but that's part of reading fiction). Candy doesn't show any sign at all of having thought about college or a career. Of course, this is just a quick little story in a comic book, not a mainstream novel and we don't really get to know the characters that well.

And in real life Bob might not just shrug off that he'd been seeing a fifteen year old who lied about her age. It's kind of odd that no one else mentions this to him during the weeks they're dating. ("Say, you know she's jailbait, right Bob?") The way he reacts makes me suspect he wasn't deceived at all and just went along with it.

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sistermagpie
2009-10-08 02:21 am UTC (link)

Right. Basically, I'm the target audience here as a woman, but I'm a woman in 2009 reacting a story that's telling me how to get a happy life based on what people thought girls should want in the 1940s. The story's instructive, so I'm also reacting to it as sort of a lecture. Bob's the object in this story, so his behavior's not really under scrutiny. He's basically just the stand in for a desirable man (guys don't like girls who wear make-up, so Candy should look natural, for instance). He's mostly there just as an object to validate her correct behavior and criticize Betty's by falling in love with one and rejecting the other.

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dr_hermes
2009-10-08 02:39 am UTC (link)

Oddly enough, I've read a few romance novels (well, I read just about anything I can pin down) and you're right that there is a strong element of instruction in them. There may not be a paragraph on the last page which says "and the moral is..." but it's implicit.

From what I've seen, romance stories are either reinforcement tales: Do this and not that, and you'll be rewarded. Or they're martyr tales: one bad thing happens after another that's not our character's fault, stay tuned to see how long we can stretch this out. It's an interesting genre, with its own rules and conventions just as established as those for mysteries or Westerns.

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ashtoreth
2009-10-08 06:02 am UTC (link)

Yes, the teenager should totally be blamed for being inappropriate. But that hardly removes responsibility from the adult.

And Candy never seems to touch base with reality-based expectations. She has only adjusted her Dream Man to include Bob's looks. This is the kind of marriage that goes down the tubes after five years and a painful adult realization that Bob isn't perfect. And Candy doesn't want someone who isn't perfect. Pretending that this sort of thing isn't likely ignores history, Doc.

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dr_hermes
2009-10-08 06:17 am UTC (link)

Candy is expecting a literal perfect knight to sweep her away. Bob isn't like that in any way and hardly notices her. Yet she's drawn to him because he seems mature and refined.. not at all what she was looking for. I'd say that's not just tweaking her expectations to accept his looks, it's pretty much dropping her expectations as meeting someone different.

"After I got over my first disappointment in him, I discovered that I liked him better the way he was" is not at all the same as "Except for the glasses, he was just what I had been dreaming of." The story sure seems to be saying that Candy drops her unrealistic idealized man quest when she meets a real person she likes. She does want someone that's not perfect, in the sense that she doesn't compare Bob to her imaginary knight. Otherwise, you might expect an image of Bob now in the armor in Candy's daydreams, or Candy trying to reshape Bob into what she wanted.

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	ashtoreth 2009-10-08 06:22 am UTC (link)
	Relationships are about discovery and compromise. Candy adores, unquestioning. That's the behavior of a child and her father, not lovers. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

dr_hermes
2009-10-08 06:42 am UTC (link)

Bob adores her the same way, unquestioning. It's doesn't mean he sees her as his mother. They're just giddy in that early stage of love that usually settles down after a while, and that's when the arrangements and compromises are started to be worked out. And in a few years, maybe it won't work out. There's no way to tell with love, you just have to take your chances.

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	ashtoreth 2009-10-08 06:47 am UTC (link)
	And some people marry who should not have, but pretend everything is all right because admitting that you've made a horrible mistake just makes everyone unhappy. Divorce is so disruptive. Bonus guilt for staying together for the baby you shouldn't have had when you were too young! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-10-08 07:47 am UTC (link)
	Yep. There's no guarantees. (Reply to this) (Parent)

sistermagpie
2009-10-08 02:33 pm UTC (link)

Bob adores her the same way, unquestioning. It's doesn't mean he sees her as his mother.

Of course not, but then, he doesn't adore her the same way. The arcs about how they come to each other are very different. Candy's adoration for Bob starts before she meets him, based on her ideas of how dashing he will be. Even after she adjusts her expectations (adjustments which actually are mostly about looks--it's the only thing she mentions), he's still glamorous owing to his age compared to hers.

His adoration of her is inspired by her adoration of him. When Betty, the girl he criticizes as "a dope" when she was 15 leaves him on the dance floor to meet a movie star, he dismisses her as adolescent, then finds Candy in a corner, moping over his not noticing her. She'd even rather stay by his side than leave a burning building.

It's just very ironic that the very behavior Candy's praised for (as opposed to Betty) is just as adolescent. Betty's rushing to see a movie star, Candy's pining over a guy who's so mature and refined...compared to the guys her own age. The comic treats her being 15 as an obstacle when if they'd met when they were both 15 he wouldn't have had the main thing that attracted her.

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dr_hermes
2009-10-09 02:06 am UTC (link)

I see your point, although the fact they're coming at the relationship from different directions doesn't matter as much as the fact that they got there does.

You caught the unspoken irony in that Betty seems to get shortchanged because she knew Paul when they were both kids. Now that Paul's 21, he has an appeal for Candy that he wouldn't have had if he was 15 himself.

But that's the way romances work. Timing matters. If you met the same person a year earlier or later than you did, neither one of you might have been interested. (And vice versa.) There's a huge element of pure chance in life.

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strannik01
2009-10-08 02:52 am UTC (link)

Got it. He was offering her marriage after she graduated high school, so even though she never mentioned college, he was keeping her from it?

In fairness, back in the 1940s, college and marriage were usually seen as mutually exclusive. It doesn't necessarily mean that it was the case here, but given the time period it was written in, it's not an unreasonable conclusion to draw.

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dr_hermes
2009-10-08 03:31 am UTC (link)

Yes, that's a real sign of the era. Also, women tended not to take college that seriously back then. It was more for their own edification and socializing than for professional goals. Before WW II, more women than men went to college, though, since they weren't expected to support themselves. It was the G.I. Bill that gave thousands of veterans financial means for higher education rather than just going to full-time jobs right away.

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