Number 1512: “Lemme love ya, Sally!”

Danger! Rape rears its ugly head in a love comic from the '50s. Dear Lonely Hearts #5 (1954) features not one, but two stories of what today we’d call date rape (or as close as you can get without having it happen). The writer(s) must’ve had a theme going here to warn girls and women that some guys don’t need a lot of stimulation to jump from gentlemen to rapists.

While Johnsie, the yokel of “Mountain Love” misunderstands Sally’s clothes and attitude as an invitation to intimacy, on the other hand Pierre, of “A Man Worth Loving” is an opportunist, looking for the first chance at Bobbie, at which he attempts to overwhelm her.

These are cautionary tales about not getting into bad situations. It’s too bad the message might not have taken with males, because we still have guys who refuse to believe that no means no, and in most cases there are no gallant gentlemen, as there are in these stories, to step in and prevent a serious crime.