Medical Women are THE New HOT Comics Characters!

Italian comics (or "Fumetti") artist Milo Manara is noted for his beautiful (often nude) women...

...though they're not nude in his work for America's PG-13 Marvel Comics!

But these last few weeks, living in an Italy under total lockdown, Manara has started taking a very different approach to portraying women...

Rather than the usual coquettishly-posed, minimally-clad examples of male lust, he's discovered a different appreciation of the female form.

Posting on Facebook, he expresses his gratitude to doctors and nurses, ambulance drivers and techs, policewomen, delivery workers and others who perform essential services during the pandemic.

In terms of style, it's still recognizably his work, but now has a far different focus.

Check out his FaceBook gallery HERE.

BONUS: There's a "motion comics" version of this superb illustration...

...HERE!
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X-Women
Manara's only Marvel Comics work (besides covers like the Storm (of the X-Men) one above)!
Scripted by long-time X-Men writer Chris Claremont

CoronaVirus Comics CYNTHIA DOYLE: NURSE IN LOVE "Decision"

Wonder why the suffix "... Nurse in Love" is used for this series?

Well. when a character who's never appeared before can deduce what's going on, it's pretty damned blatant!

You have to ask, if Cynthia Doyle: Nurse in Love's feelings are that obvious to a person she's never seen before, why doesn't Doctor Benson realize how Nurse Doyle feels?

Because this is a soap opera in comic book form, that's why!

It's not meant to be even a semi-serious feature about a female medical professional, like Dr Pat!

This is, as most 1950s-1970s strips starring nurses were, a three-Kleenex romance comic!

Heck, before the book became Cynthia Doyle: Nurse in Love as of #66, it was Sweetheart Diaries, a romance anthology!

Cynthia appeared in a single story in the final issue, then the entire book was turned over to her!
Why?

As we pointed out in our previous entry about City Surgeon, in the early 1960s, one of the most-popular genres in pop culture was "medical drama"!

Spearheaded on TV by hunky prime-time physicians Dr Kildare and Ben Casey along with the related series The Nurses as well as daytime soap operas with hospital settings and paperback romance novels with covers featuring "studs in scrubs" with swooning nurses, comics hopped on the medical bandwagon!

Charlton , which couldn't afford the rights to comics based on any of the TV shows, launched numerous series featuring doctors and nurses including Dr Tom Brent: Young Intern, Nurse Betsy Crane, Young Interns, Sue & Sally Smith: Flying Nurses and, of course, this book!

(Oddly, there were never any cross-over stories between the various books!)

Written by Joe Gill, penciled by Dick Giordano and inked by Vince Colletta, this story from issue #69 (1963) came about halfway through the book's run.

BTW, if you're wondering why this story has a "coronavirus" classification, it's because Dr Stark is suffering from a fatal disease, and the surgery can only postpone his inevitable demise!

Note: there were never any comic series or books about male nurses!

There were several one-off tales, but the profession was considered "unmanly".

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Nurse Nurse

CoronaVirus Comics CITY SURGEON "Plague"

Though we're currently obsessed with a potentially-catastrophic epidemic...

...stories about such pandemics go back as far back as fiction itself!

So the theme of this never-reprinted tale from Gold Key's City Surgeon #1 (1963)  shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone!

Tell the truth, Nurse Lake seems to be brains of the operation!

She's the one who figures out one of the two missing crewmen might already be deceased, and her quick thinking immobilizes the other when he shows up at the office!

In the early 1960s, one of the most-popular genres in pop culture was "medical drama"!

Spearheaded on TV by hunky prime-time physicians Dr Kildare and Ben Casey along with the related series The Nurses as well as daytime soap operas with hospital settings and paperback romance novels with covers featuring "studs in scrubs" with swooning nurses, comics hopped on the medical bandwagon!

DC and Marvel simply ran more medical-themed tales in their existing romance books.

But the smaller publishers were another matter...

Charlton launched numerous series featuring doctors and nurses in separate titles including Cynthia Doyle: Nurse in Love, Dr Tom Brent: Young Intern, Nurse Betsy Crane, Young Interns, and Sue & Sally Smith: Flying Nurses.

(Oddly, there were never any cross-over stories between the various books!)

Archie Comics published a short-lived series about Young Dr Masters!

Dell had popular comics based on Dr Kildare. as well as their own Nurse Linda Lark!

Gold Key published two different Ben Casey comics (including one done "fumetti" style using photos of the TV actors with captions and word balloons) and created their own doctor in City Surgeon!

Unfortunately, artist Jack Sparling's illustrations weren't consistent, showing Dr Blake Harper as young and virile in one panel and middle-aged in the next on the same page!

Plus there was no romantic element to the book!

For whatever reason, there was never a second issue of the title and Dr Harper never made another house call...

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Cornered

Benign Humor Medical Cartoons