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Monday, October 07, 2013

Number 1450: Waterfront girl

When I was in junior high school Big Pappy took me aside to give me the talk. You know, the one where he warned me about what girls and women to avoid. After hearing about how those girls and women would lead me down the road to sex, sin and ruin, I spent the rest of my teenage years looking for them.

He never warned me about is the subject of today’s post, the waterfront girl (probably because we lived 700 miles inland). Our story is about Sal Benson, singer in a waterfront dive. Our gal Sal has had a rough life, and is now trapped on an island entertaining a bunch of coarse roughnecks. She sees a chance to get out by stealing another woman’s fiancé.

“I Was a Waterfront Girl” is drawn by Paul Gustavson and Bill Ward, and is from Quality Comics’ Love Letters #3 (1950).










5 comments:

jim said...

Favorite line of dialog - Arline:
"Oh heavens, I hope I haven't lost
my skill at handling a knife underwater!"

Priceless. And very handy for saving her boyfriend, too. lol

Brian Barnes said...

Except for the one leggy panel, I couldn't really detect much of Ward in there.

I love how this one tries to teach out that "clean and conservatively dressed Arline" is so much more desirable than sultry night club singer Sal. These romance stories really operated in an alternate universe, didn't they?

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

I mostly just wanted to note that, once again, there's some Nice Guy idling in the wings for the protagonist.

But, in my opinion, Nice Guys deserve a woman skilled at handling a knife underwater. (I've made a practice of giving knives to my female friends, but it hadn't previously occurred to me to encourage them to learn how to fight sharks with them.)

Pappy said...

Daniel, you know nice girls who are not likely to use their gift knives on you. Some of the girls I knew growing up I would not have wanted to carry such a deadly weapon.

Pappy said...

Brian, Paul Gustavson drew some sexy girls all on his own, so I assume Ward didn't have to sex them up for him. I like the leggy panel, but a little Ward-lingerie, stockings and garters, would have been nice!