Return to Romance The Strange Love Stories of Ogden Whitney

By turns amusing and disturbing, this collection of 1960s romance comic strips provides a provocative window into male-female power dynamics as conceived by one of mid-century America's foremost comic book artists.

Ogden Whitney was one of the unsung masters of American comics. He is perhaps best remembered for co-creating the satirical superhero Herbie Popnecker, also known as the Fat Fury, but his romance comics of the late 1950s and 1960s may be even more unique. In Whitney’s hands, the standard formula of meet-cute, minor complications, and final blissful kiss becomes something very different: an unsettling vision of midcentury American romance as a devastating power struggle, a form of intimate psychological warfare dressed up in pearls and flannel suits. From suburban lawns and offices to rocket labs and factories, his men and women scheme and clash, dominate and escape. It is darkly hilarious, truly terrifying—and yes, occasionally even a bit romantic.

Ogden Whitney (1918-1972) was a writer and comic book artist who was most active between the late 1930s and the late 1960s. He is best known for his cult hit Herbie comics series, a superhero satire about a fat boy with superpowers. He also drew crime, sci-fi, adventure, and Western-themed comics. In 2007, he was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

Dan Nadel is a writer, editor, and currator.He is the author and editor of several books, including The Collected Hairy Who Publications; Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900-1969; Gary Panter; Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980; and Dorothy and Otis: Designing the American Dream. Dan was the co-editor of The Comics Journal from 2011 through 2017, and has published essays and criticism in Art in America, the New York Review of Books, and Artforum. He lives in Brooklyn.

Frank Santoro is the author of Pompeii and Storyville. He taught drawing at Parsons School of Design and his comics have been exhibited at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York and at the Fumetto comics festival in Switzerland. Today, he runs a school for comic book makers. He lives in Pittsburgh.

Liana Finck is a cartoonist for The New Yorker and the author most recently of Passing for Human. She lives in Brooklyn.