First Love Illustrated #54

A roadside moment full of mid-1950s romantic tension sets the scene on Al Avison's cover: a stylish young woman in a red dress gestures coolly while a young man tends to a broken-down red car in the background, and in the foreground a pipe-smoking older man in a plaid cap watches from behind the wheel of his own vehicle. Harvey's First Love Illustrated always had a knack for capturing the small, charged dramas of the heart, and this July 1955 issue — with interior art by Bob Powell — promises that same earnest emotional pull inside.