A treat today for Baker fans
The indicia are superfaded on the ifc, and the back cover has a little water damage, but the inside pages were pretty nice. I did a lot of work on the cover but didn't have a decent image to work from, so I hope I got the colors ballpark.
I like the racy cover with the short-haired tattler. The hinting and teasing covers don't always match the story in the St. John romances, but this one does. The comic leads with an extended Baker piece "Asking for Trouble" about an orphan from NY who comes to live with her older brother and wife in a small town. She puts up a nice girl front but before long is planning wild parties and has the town's men wrapped around her finger. Smoking, booze, a fast older man, plans to cheat in school, all make for a racy story featuring a racy Baker girl. Second up is a Cal Massey story "My Other Self," and the comic rounds out with "They Called Me Teacher's Pet."
If any haven't seen it, John Benson (largely from JVJ's identification) put together a nice index for his books on St. John Romance and Dana Dutch that Fantagraphics hosts here:
http://www.fantagraphics.com/downloads/The index identifies the artists for the last story as Mikes Sekowsky and Peppe. Benson also believes the Baker story and the text piece "More Luck Than I Deserved" to have been written by Dana Dutch the subject for much of his excellent book
Confessions, Romances, Secrets and Temptations: Archer St. John and the St. John Romance Comics which also has a nice timeline of all St. John comics listed by month.
Thanks everybody for all the scans, there's hardly a day where something a new and interesting scan doesn't pop up here.
Cheers,
Darwin