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[MarkWarner]

After a short planned break over Thanksgiving, plus an unscheduled delay due to me having a sieve where a head should be, we are back with our next choice!

This is #147 so very soon we'll hit our 150th book! I want it to be a special one, so any ideas please message me. BTW I have had a few reading book suggestions come through ... which is great, but MORE please!!!

We are WELL overdue for a romance book and it has been nagging away at me. Then I saw this comment come through on the forum

"I came into this with quite low expectations. But these stories are pretty good. Romance! Crime! Action!"

I had a quick flick and see this was pulled from a compendium by rangerhouse & movielover. The book is "My Love Secret #24" https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=38412. And the story we will concentrate on is NOT the first one, but "My Love Was for Sale" which starts on our page 11. It looks distinctly strange!

[EHowie60]

Like my comment says, I was pleasantly surprised by the book. "My Love Was For Sale" was a bit of a whirlwind for Lorna. Two family tragedies, then a guy who only wants money abandons her. I really felt for her as she is driven by desperation into modeling, narrowly escapes sexual assault, and finally offers her hand to the highest bidder. Sort of strange that she becomes an overnight sensation and attracts millionaires...I mean she's quite attractive, but I don't see why the country's elite bachelors would all be fighting for her. Good artwork. It was interesting how Lorna is drawn several times with her body extending beyond the panel, even if the border would cut her off. Gives the impression that she's somehow on top of the rest of the page. It makes her seem detached from the action, and I think mirrors the emotional detachment she's feeling in those scenes.

The story that really got me liking this book was "My Sister Loved Him Too!". I was expecting a straightforward story of rivalry. What I got was a double-identity crime story. A rather enjoyable one too. What's "Boots" short for, anyway? Boottha? Bootlinda? Elizaboot?

"She Hijacked My Heart" was interesting too. Half romance, half adventure detective story! In this one the new girl is the true love and the old flame turns out to be the crook. Lots of action. It's interesting how two of the three stories have crime and fisticuffs, but the cover gives no indication of this. The cover seems like it's made to appeal to female readers, but there's a surprising amount in this book that's the sort of thing that was supposed to appeal to male readers. Not that many male readers were likely to find it behind the typical romantic cover.

[narfstar]

Love for Sale started out slow got interesting then got predictable and stupid. It was still kinda a fun read. I too liked extending her figure out of the panels.

[crashryan]

Usually it's a comic's artwork that interests me the most. This time the artwork is typical Iger shop: perfectly adequate but overall meh.

On the other hand the stories aren't bad. I like that they work in elements from crime and adventure comics.

"My Sister Loved Him Too!" has a good twist but the writer blows it (see below.) I'm not sure why, at the end, the heroine is afraid Boots will steal her man. He has just told her he wants to "thrash it out" with Boots. If this were a Fox comic he'd probably thrash Boots. This entire comic honors the hallowed tradition that Bad Guys (and Girls) smoke cigarettes while Good Guys smoke pipes. (I haven't yet found a Good Girl smoking a pipe, though.) Bonus: we get two drunk Bad Girls in one issue.

The ending of "My Love Was For Sale" is no surprise, but the efficient script gets us from here to there in an interesting fashion. Too bad the artist cops out in some key sequences (e.g. Mom's fall down the stairs and anything having to do with small figures). EHowie 60 has a nice justification for Lorna's overflowing the panel borders. I wish it were true. But we all know it is so the artist can draw the entire female body and show plenty of leg/lingerie/butt/whatever. A time-honored practice pioneered by Fiction House and Fox.

Speaking of the artwork, a single figure in a single panel (the grimacing guy in our page 15, panel 3) is so out of sync with the rest of the art that I'd swear it was drawn by someone else. It's the only 3/4 head in the story where the features line up. It's funny: I know it isn't, but it looks like it was pencilled by Steve Ditko. Probably a swipe from somewhere.

The text story, "I Was a Gypsy's Sweetheart," is too short for its subject. It would have made a better 8-page comic story. Hard to swallow that the heroine decides to hop a freight with this dude without ever seeing his face.

"She Hi-Jacked My Heart" is the most satisfying story in the book. It's a romance grafted onto a South Sea he-man story. Plenty of action, a decent romance and a coherent plot.. Except for Rose's reasoning for hijacking Papa's sugar shipments. It's convoluted and I had to read it twice. I wonder if female romance readers appreciate stories told in first person by men.

"She Hi-Jacked My Heart" avoids a maddening problem in the first two scripts. Though the stories are told in first person by the heroine, we hear the thoughts of the other characters. This misstep spoils "My Sister Loved Him Too." In her very first appearance we know Boots is a Bad Girl when she thinks, "This is too easy!" In "My Love Was For Sale" we likewise hear Dirk congratulate himself on a successful con while the heroine still thinks he's a straight arrow. Not that the final revelations wouldn't have been predictable, but at least they'd be revelations.

I have been trying to puzzle out what "Boots" stands for. Of course she might be a girl who likes to wear boots. Or maybe it's short for Beautiful (Booty-full?). I'm reminded of a 1920s newspaper strip, Boots and Her Buddies. I don't think they explained her name either.

[crashryan]

Because I can never let a stupid question go, I dug around with Google to learn why a woman would be nicknamed Boots.

At first I got nowhere. Most Boots people were men. Some had Boots as part of their surname, e.g. Bootzin. Boots Randolph's family called him Boots to avoid calling him Homer (his father was also Homer). But why? Most old slang terms derived from the military, which make them an unlikely source in the early 20th century.

I discovered that Emperor Caligula's real name was Gaius. He was given the nickname when he was a boy because he wore kiddie-size versions of soldiers' boots. "Caligula" means, in effect, "Booties." So I thought, maybe our girl is nicknamed Boots because she wore booties as a baby?

Then I found it. On familytreemagazine.com is a list entitled "Your Female Ancestors' Nicknames." There between Belinda and Bethina we discover:

Name: Bertha    Nicknames:   Bertie, Bitha, Boots

It's still a stretch getting from Bertha to Boots, but I can imagine Bertie or Bert changing over time to Boots.

[paw broon]

Only on the subject of BOOTS as a nickname.  Over here there was a comedy show called "The Army Game" - way back - and one of the characters was called Private Bisley and his nickname was "Bootsie", short for, excused boots Bisley.

[crashryan]

To Paw: according to an old dictionary "Boots" was used in the British Army as a nickname for "the youngest officer in a regiment." By extension it could be applied to the youngest member of a club, etc. I suppose this may be how new recruits to the U.S. Army came to be called "boots" and their training camp a "boot camp."

The name "Boots" was also given to a hotel servant who shined the guests' shoes ("blacked their boots"). I figure these aren't likely to have been applied to a woman. You never know, though.

[paw broon]

I was very unsure about this one and it was a tough read what with all the verbiage and a couple of confusing panels, but I quite enjoyed the first 2 stories. Boots was a rank bajjin right from the start and thee mix of romance and crime appealed to me. What I couldn't get to grips with was why anyone would put up with her behaviour for so long.  She should have been shown the door early on, but then there wouldn't have been much of a story.  The art on this story wasn't the best with some of the figures being a bit off.
"My love was for sale" was a nicer looking story and I felt some compassion for Lorna.  It did see obvious that she was going to end up with the reporter, who softened by the end.  A happy ending.
But that last strip annoyed me.  Gene was a bit thick if he hadn't realised Rose was a bevvy merchant.  He must at least have smellt the booze on her.  Didn't enjoy this one. 

[Morgus]

I liked the art (especially the ladies escaping the frames for no other reason then to show off their forms). The girls could get that evil/psycho look in their eyes that was both dangerous and alluring. The story was okay, as far as it went. I was hoping for even more crime then what we got, without romance winning in the end...it would have been cool in my book for her to bump off Mr. Wrong in a hall of bullets and then get taken down in an interstate roadblock Bonnie and Clyde style...but you had to have True Love and Romance win out I guess...too bad the crime/ romance format never panned out. It would have been interesting seeing how it could have developed.

[SuperScrounge]

My Sister Loved Him Too! - I wonder why Shirley didn't smell a set-up when Boots kept repeating that she was her sister? Was she hypnotizing Shirley?

My Love Was For Sale - With all the bad things that happened to her, I'm surprised they didn't throw in a tragedy involving her kids.

I was a Gypsy's Sweetheart - Eh.

She Hi-Jacked My Heart - Okay.

Minit Curl ad - You know, with a little work they could have expanded this to a full length story. 

[bdw]

[MarkWarner]

I really DO NOT LIKE romances

[SuperScrounge]

I Was a Gypsy's Sweetheart: A girly story about gypsys (no doubt swarthy) which I did not read.

In this story Gypsy was used to refer to a hobo who catches rides on trains. When she actually sees his face, he's ugly.

I hope that description didn't make the story sound better than it is though. You really didn't miss much by not reading it.

[bdw]

@Mark

so what exactly is  a "love rat" ? is that a Britishism?

something like a cad I suppose...

[paw broon]

Cad, indeed.  Terry Thomas was the great cad of British films.  Worth watching his antics as Charlie Bottflower in The Green Man.
Love rat is really a cheater.  Unless Mark has a wider, south coast definition

[MarkWarner]

Yes that's right and I guess a cheater is the best description ... so I think a bounder and a cad probably would be a better description

As for Terry-Thomas ... "I say ...." Wonderful and pure self-invention. If he's in a film you know that the very least it is going to be watchable

BTW Paw did you know that his stage name was "Terry-Thomas"? Just one word. NOT Terry Thomas. I haven't the tiniest inking why old chap!