Love Diary #49

A "Welcome Home Laurel" banner stretches across the cover of this 1967 Charlton romance issue, but the homecoming is anything but joyous — in the foreground, a tearful young woman in red looks on as the man she loves embraces and kisses another dark-haired woman, two older figures watching cheerfully in the background. Cover art by Pat Masulli and Dick Giordano captures that gut-punch moment of romantic heartbreak with real emotional punch, setting the stage for the interior story "Sorrow Song," written by Joe Gill with art by Ernesto Garcia. A genuinely affecting slice of 1960s romance comics at their most dramatically charged.