LAST KISS COMICS by John Lustig

LAST KISS COMICS by John Lustig. I'm reviewing LAST KISS #2 here, it is available from www.lastkisscomics.com for $4.99 and see the site for postage etc....(I'm going to rate this comic right off the top of the review at *****. That's 5 out of 5 stars.) That's right folks a perfect score. How can that be you ask?

To tell you the story of Last Kiss I got this off their web site: In late 1987, Charlton Comics was selling off the rights to all its comic books. By then, most of the "good stuff" had already been sold. What was left were series and genres (war, romance, western and horror) that had little appeal to modern American comic book fans—most of whom were only interested in superhero comics. Despite that, I had a vague idea that it might be possible to do something with the Charlton material.

For $400 I bought all rights to First Kiss - a 40-issue romance series published from 1957 to 1965. I took a gamble and bought the series sight unseen. It was the series with the most issues for the least amount of money. And I pretty much got what I paid for - schlock!

Oh, it had some good art too - stuff by Dick Giordano, Vince Colletta, Jon D’Agostino and others. But Charlton paid the lowest rates in comic books to its creators and to make a living artists and writers had to churn out stories very quickly. Speed was more important than quality.
And so, despite editor Pat Masulli’s pledge to readers on the first page of the series, First Kiss fell far short of being "the finest of the magazines dealing with affairs of the heart." Instead, it was often shoddy and almost always quirky. Some stories (notably "Campus Crush" the first story in the first issue of First Kiss) don’t make much sense. Despite the now-quaint, 1950’s morality of these stories, there’s a nightmarish quality to many of them. Primary First Kiss writer Joe Gill was working much too fast to worry much about keeping characters consistent and logical. Anything can happen in First Kiss stories.

Well what it doesn't say is that then John Lustig a writer for Disney Comics and other projects added his own stories to the panels he bought, and calls it LAST KISS. This is some very, very funny stuff. At first glance I think people just think this is another romance comic, it is not. It is soo funny. So much so that Marvel even stole John's idea last year, and did a series of comics making fun of their old romance books. They did hire John to write some of them so that was cool. But you just can't beat LAST KISS for being a laugh out loud funny comic. And John has notecards, and other items on his site you don't want to miss!

LAST KISS #2 has a funny color cover, 50 black and white pages of comics and a contest where readers wrote their own balloons to some panels, and letters, an interview, and more! You'll see: "Widow Ms. Muffet" which is a brand new story with new art from Dick Giordano! "Royal Romance"- Also drawn by Giordano! "Oh, Darling! You're Such an Animal!"--Selling pets door-to-door inked by Giordano! "Date of Last Resort" --grand prize winner in the reader contest. "Love Stinks"-First place in the reader writing contest. "The Ugly One"-Is this the strangest romance story every created? "Remember to Forget Me"-Art by Vince Colletta Studio! (Except for the contests everything is written by John Lustig.)

I also have #3 around here somewhere and all I can say is get these books before they go out of print like #1 did!!

Also John has over 2,000 names on his mailing list. Email John at: john@lastkisscomics.com and ask to be put on his mailing list. You'll get a full color comic strip in your email every week! Join the fun! A free laugh out loud every week, who could ask for more? Not me. (And John swears to not sell your email to anyone or give it out to anyone so you can be safe and secure there.)

---AF