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Truer Than True Romance: Classic Love Comics Retold!

Truer Than True Romance: Classic Love Comics Retold!

List Price: $19.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A FUNNY AND NOSTALGIC LOOK AT ROMANCE COMICS!
Review: Jeanne Martinet has written a very funny tongue-in-cheek retrospect look at the plethora of DC romance comics of the 1949's to 1970's. Leaving the artwork untouched, humorist Ms. Martinet literally rewrote the stories, and as a result has created new tales of "betrayal and heartbreak by providing all-new word balloons and captions for each story. In short, Jeanne Martinet has retold the stories. . .my favorites include "My Heart Said Yes, But My Therapist Said No!". . . "I Hate My Hair!". . .and "Ten Ways To Get Over A Broken Heart". I enjoyed this book, but wish the author would have included more stories.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Goofy Fun
Review: Really funny rewriting of yesterday's romance comics. This book has more going for it than nostalgia for those who lived in this era and enjoyed these romance comics as teens & young women. Even if you have never read a romance comic in you life (and I haven't)this book will have you laughing uncontrollably. If you like the kind of sly silliness that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is famous for, you will probably like this book. I'm hoping the author will do a whole series.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Goofy Fun
Review: Really funny rewriting of yesterday's romance comics. This book has more going for it than nostalgia for those who lived in this era and enjoyed these romance comics as teens & young women. Even if you have never read a romance comic in you life (and I haven't)this book will have you laughing uncontrollably. If you like the kind of sly silliness that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is famous for, you will probably like this book. I'm hoping the author will do a whole series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Work of Genius
Review: Thank you Ms. Martinet for providing something I didn't even know I needed. This was an excellent book that was intelligently funny. I love a larf more than anyone and this came through for me.

I tried to read through the comics themselves and figure out the original plot (provided by Ms. Martinet) but couldn't figure them out. Good thing she did something even better. Reminds me of an old television show "Mad Movies" that I loved.

Can't gush more. Thank you!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I LAUGHED AND LAUGHED
Review: This book is a hoot! Very funny story lines--certainly no more inane than the originals--but psychological twists and the author's penetrating satire make these updated versions all new, yet somehow eerily, uncomfortably (who, me?) familiar. Martinet works in many laughs and is a truly inspired advice columnist. The art is marvelous: When did men ever look this hunky, or women so sublimely emotive? Ahh, for the good old (bad old?) days! I loved this!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great idea worked out ok
Review: This book takes existing romance comics of yesteryear and changes only the texts. The original comics are extremely static and feature few props or decors to play with (much like cheap soap operas). This is good in one way, because it allows Martinet to focus on the dialogs, which are turned into fairly bizarre exchanges, but bad on the other, because she doesn't have much to work with.
In the end, unusual as they are, most stories are still romances, if somewhat updated to this century. The result is funny but not laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: FUNNIER THAN HECK - TRULY!!!
Review: This hilarious book made me laugh out loud with glee - The author captures the stresses of romance in the 50s - 70s and adds her own ascerbic wit and modern sensibility, incorporating our culture's penchant for psycho-over-analysis, consumerism and easy-fixes. The end result is a wonderfully refreshing "take" on the past and the future of romance. A must-read for Boomer gals!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Romance and Laughter
Review: This is one of the funniest books I've ever read. It actually made me laugh out loud. The author has taken those dopey old romance comics (beautiful color artwork, though) and completely transformed them with her hilarious new dialogue. So you have all this great old artwork from the era of "Leave It To Beaver" and "Gidget" beautifully mixed with dialogue that would be right at home on "Sex And The City." The effect is sort of like that Woody Allen movie "What's Up Tiger Lilly" or maybe "Mystery Science Fiction Theater" where she comments on the old stories and updates them at the same time. Pure genius! The romance columns are a riot too; my favorite columnist is Dee Pressen, who gives VERY pesimistic advice. Please turn this author loose on more romance comic book stories!!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A good idea, but....
Review: This is one of those ideas that sounds great when first proposed. Most large comic publishers between the 1940s and the 1970s offered a genre of comics aimed at young female readers, the "romance" titles, which featured absurd tales in which the course of true love never does run smooth. Artwork was generally minimally competent, with all females looking alike and all males looking alike. (In the case of the most incompetent artists, all HUMANS looked alike.) Why not take a set of stories (in this case from DC titles ranging from late 1950s to late 1970s) and write new dialogue and captions, but leave the art (except for a few small signs) unchanged? Sounds promising!

But, here, it usually doesn't work. The very mild and narrow "chick wit" left this old codger with only a single laugh in the whole book, and not that many smiles. In the most successful, and funniest, stories: (1) A blonde bimbo who never makes a move without consulting her psychic finds, at story's end, that the (sultry brunette) psychic can put on some moves herself! (2) A girl in a seaside community whose entire population has been rendered completely mindless by toxic pollution falls in love with the EPA man sent to investigate. But the need to use existing art sometimes completely defeats the writer. For example, a story about a girl who refuses to check her bags at the airport goes nowhere, because the very odd art (in which the girl often poses standing inclined at 45 degrees to the vertical, for no conceivable reason!) is basically unadaptable. In yet another story so poorly drawn that all characters, male and female, look alike, the comic possibilities of their resemblance are very poorly realized. Very little, also, is made of the wild changes in fashion seen between the late 1950s and the late 1970s.

Not recommended with any marked enthusiasm!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Took me back to the old days
Review: This was a delightful book, especially, if like me, you grew up on Love Comics. I read those probably from around 1958 - 1962. And, like the author said, that's why I'm screwed up about relationships today! Anyway, this book just made me laugh out loud through the whole thing. I especially enjoyed the one where the girl was in secretarial school, but it's been switched to a writing school, and she falls for the teacher. I loved the line of the main female character, "Doesn't she know we're all going to die"? That's what these characters needed to hear 40 years ago! Give up the scholop and get real! LOL I also liked that the author summarized the original plot, to put it into perspective for us. Very, very much fun, and the comics are beautifully copied, especially the men's blue hair, with their floating heads above the women's beds!


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