True Secrets #8

Few romance comics capture heartbreak quite like this August 1951 installment of True Secrets, where a woman in red clings desperately to a man near a pay phone, their charged exchange — her tearful declaration of unconditional love, his anguished farewell — playing out in dramatic speech bubbles right on the cover. The pencils by Al Hartley and inks by Christopher Rule give the scene a raw emotional pull, and the left-side vignettes tease additional stories asking whether "the other woman" will ruin Mary Barden's life and what terrible secret haunts Harriet Arnold. Ten cents bought a lot of heartache in 1951, and this issue delivers it beautifully.