Do you miss all the strange so-bad-they’re-good pulp stories from the Golden Age of comics? Well IDW has collected it at long last and all the stories contained in this issue are deliciously terrible.
WEIRD LOVE #1
Writer: Joe Gill
Artist: Garc
Editors: Clizia Gussoni and Craig Yoe
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Cover Price: $3.99
TRY TO FOLLOW ALONG
Weird Love #1 is an anthology comic collected and reprinted by IDW that celebrates everything wonderfully bad about the pulp comic love stories of yore.
The first story printed in Weird Love #1 (which runs over 40 pages), is titled I Fell For a Commie. Oh, yeah! Young attractive woman can’t find a job so she goes down to the local employment office and it is there that she meets and handsome young man about town speaking out loudly against consumerism. They are assumed to be associates, thrown out and romance ensues! In the end it turns out the handsome young man is actually an undercover agent, nobody dies and we heed a lesson from the almost-plight of our heroine: don’t date communists – they might try to murder you!
Second story: Love of a Lunatic features hippies prominently. Like an episode of the Twilight Zone or Night Gallery this tale of woe begins at the end – with a young woman driven mad by the man she’d fallen in love with. From her padded cell tucked deep inside an insane asylum we watch her fall in love, be manipulated by just about everybody (including her own parents), discover dead bodies, make out with some people and eventually lose her mind when the truth is no longer clear.
Taming of the Brute is the third tale woven through the pages of Weird Love #1 and is, more or less, a How-To-Snag-Yerself-A-Hubby guide straight out of the 1960s told in comic form.
Weird Love #1 features three more stories titled: Love in High Style, You Also Snore, Darling! and About Face. I leave you to your own deductions concerning their respective plots – and they are no less thrilling than the three expanded on above.
The true charm of Weird Love #1 is the nostalgia factor, the way future generations will likely look back at our own drugstore harlequin romances and laugh. It’s absurd to think that these stories were ever published – much less consumed – but if we are reading them now someone must have been reading them in the past.
The six stories contained within the pages of this first issue are wordy as all get-out with many bubbles strictly for exposition. If you can deal with this style of comic book storytelling and the ridiculous plots as an interesting look back then Weird #1 will be nothing but enjoyable. I know I laughed.
PRODUCT OF THE TIME
The art of Weird #1 is what one would expect. Everyone looks more or less the same, but with a different coloured dress, slightly differed hairstyle or – in the case of the males – someone will wear a bowtie while their scene partner sports a neck tie.
Much of the art has been either preserved or restored in such vivid colours that it’s lovely to look at, if the lineart remains lacking by today’s standards. For the type of comic anthology Weird #1 is and the quality of work it represents I think the art serves it very well indeed.
AWESOMELY BAD
Weird #1 is for the type of people who enjoy watching Plan 9 From Outer Space and/or The Room repeatedly, for those who find joy in times past and the products that came out of them of potentially questionable quality. At $3.99 the 40+ pages are a steal and certain to make you laugh. So, why not?
