YOUNG ROMANCE "Full Hands - Empty Heart!" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Art by Bob Oksner and Frank Giacoia

...Nurse Phyllis Carter and Doctor Allan Tate bond over working together in the ER, and a romance develops between the medical professionals.
But it's a romance with a complication the medical professionals never thought they'd have to deal with...

Wait!

The doctor she's working with has just been murdered in front of her!
Even if she wasn't romantically involved with him...
They can't let her sit down and rest?
She's clearly in shock!
I wouldn't want her near patients in her present condition!
Plus, wouldn't the police want to talk to her as a witness to the murder?
Speaking of that...has anybody restrained Johnny?
Written by Robert Kanigher, penciled by John Rosenberger and inked by Vince Colletta, this cover-featured story from DC's Young Romance #194 (1973) tries to jam a legitimate moral into the last few panels instead of giving it an extra page to play out in a more coherent manner.
Editor/writer Robert Kanigher was the most vocal proponent of racial equality in the DC editorial "Old Guard" of the 1950s-70s, scripting numerous anti-racist stories as well as introducing several Black characters into the DC Comics universe including...

...Nubia, the second ongoing character to bear the Wonder Woman title, as well as scripting this somewhat infamous Lois Lane story...

Though he meant well, Kanigher was rather heavy-handed, sometimes sacrificing plot logic (like the ending of "Full Hands, Empty Heart") to make a moral point.

Note: On some pages Phyllis (and other Black characters') skin is gray/purple and on some it's brown.
That's because on the pages showing her as gray, the color separators used the wrong combination of yellow, red (magenta) and blue (cyan) screens.
When the story was reprinted in Simon & Schuster's Heart Throbs: Best of DC Romance Comics (1979) trade paperback, the only editorial change was to correct the Black characters' skin tones.

All the other coloring remained the same.

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