
In 1949, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz was handling all the company’s western titles. They were popular, but a new comics genre was selling well at other companies, romance comics, begun by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby with YOUNG ROMANCE and YOUNG LOVE at Crestwood/Prize. DC Editor Robert Kanigher started a line of them at DC with GIRLS’ LOVE STORIES, first issue dated Aug-Sept 1949, and perhaps Schwartz thought combining romance and western themes would work, hence ROMANCE TRAIL. It lasted six issues. Gaspar Saladino lettered stories for only the final two issues, but I’m giving them a separate entry because they included his very first published lettering work for DC, or for anyone. We can’t know what order they were done in, but all the stories show Gaspar’s lettering talent from the beginning on balloons, captions and sound effects. It took him a few years to master story titles. There’s nothing wrong with the story title in the first example above, but it’s rather bland. “A Molly Adams Story” is typeset. Saladino’s work on the poster at lower left is better. Chronologically, this is the first lettering by Gaspar to see print, along with another one-pager in the same issue shown below. I’ve written extensively about Gaspar’s earliest lettering for DC beginning with THIS article.
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