How to Go Steady: Timeless Dating Advice, Wisdom, and Lessons from Vintage Romance Comics

by Jacque Nodell

How to Go Steady explores love, heartbreak, and wisdom from vintage romance comic book stories and advice columns.

Romance comics were a genre of comic books that were incredibly popular in the postwar years. The first true romance title, Young Romance, was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (the same creative team behind Captain America) in 1947. The genre exploded like wildfire and for years sold more copies than superhero titles. Romance comics contained stories of love and lots of heartbreak.

In this history book meets how-to guide you’ll learn all about dating according to romance comic books of the 1960s and 1970s. Chapters delve into how to meet potential dates, etiquette, coping with jealousy and heartbreak, meeting parents, sex, and of course, the do’s and don’ts surrounding going steady. Not only will you learn everything from what to do with a borrowed hankie to how to make the first move, you’ll learn how to develop the most attractive quality of all—the confidence to be yourself.

Historical anecdotes and practical tips told in a fun and accessible way make How to Go Steady the perfect read for comic book fans and non-comic fans alike, as well as those looking for love.

Genres: Nonfiction

187 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 19, 2017

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Silly me, I thought this would be more of a deconstruction of the advice of the period rather than an actual, serious, and repetitive "how to date" book.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Quick, Fairly Straightforward Read

I thought this would be an advice book featuring lots of actual comic panels, with advice pulled from the comics. It's not, so don't pick this up expecting that. You'll be disappointed (also, Amazon, putting this in the comics and graphic novel section is highly misleading, as this is no graphic novel).

What this is is advice mainly from columns run in the romance comics. I didn't even know they had advice columns in comics, but there you go. It's not bad, and much of the advice featured was good. I'm more curious about any awful, dated advice, honestly. But it was interesting to hear about the advice and the context, though that was partially ruined by the afterword, by a former advice columnist who admitted to making letters up. Boooo.

Overall, this is just meh. If the description I've given sounds at all interesting, then you'll probably like it. It only took a couple of hours to read, so it's not a huge time investment.

[Scott Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating look into a neglected subject

Jacque Nodell delivers a nice breezy examination of the advice columns that used to run in the romance comics. She contrasts the advice given there to more mainstream dating advice offered at the time, and reveals some unexpected conclusions. An added bonus was the afterword by Suzan Lane, who actually wrote an advice column for Marvel Comics.

Highly entertaining, and recommended to anyone interested in comics history, pop culture portrayals of romance, or interested in getting to their own "Happily ever after."

[Stacey Sieczko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cute. I enjoyed it.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gotta admit I picked up this book thinking it was going to be something different. Originally, I wanted a book on the history of vintage romance comics after becoming interested in the paintings of Roy Lichtenstein. The fact that he pulled his images with very little alteration from the pages of pulp comics was very interesting to me. I wanted to see an exploration of literary romance and melodrama through the perspective of popular American media in the 1960's.

This book was not quite what I was looking for, since it focused not really on the comics themselves, but rather on the advice columns that followed each issue. I had no idea that there was a whole industry of mostly-male comic writers who pretended to be women columnists and wrote dating advice for young girls. The advice given in these columns was a really interesting look at the youth culture of the time. Romance and courtship has changed so much since these comics and advice columns were published, though of course a lot of the concerns have stayed the same over the years. This was a very interesting snapshot of an aspect of culture which today has almost changed beyond recognition.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though I'm not much of a romance comics fan, I've enjoyed Jacqueline Nodell's Sequential Crush blog about them. This book focused on a rather specialized niche of that niche topic, advice columns in the comics (Nodell makes a persuasive case that they did in fact receive real letters, a number of them from guys). The book looks at how the columns advised readers about dating, making out, going steady, heartbreak and marriage. Oh, and sex. As Nodell points out they put a lot more emphasis on "be yourself" and not just becoming what the guy wants than a lot of advice books did in that era. But man, reading letters in which teenagers have a boyfriend ten or fifteen years older — that would never fly today.
3.5 stars. I hope Nodell does a book with a broader look at romance comics in the future.

[Evan Schmalz · Rating 5 out of 5]

informative and entertaining!