Panels That Make You Go Hmmm...

So there I was, sitting on my couch the other day, casually flipping through romance comics (as I often do), and my eyes immediately fixed on this panel from the story, "Please Don't Kiss Me!" from Young Romance #187 (October 1972). Why, is that a young woman staring at a painting of lovers engaged in a naked tryst while exclaiming "I wonder what it would feel like... to be loved like that?" Yup, sure is!

Yeah, yeah, I know it is in a piece of art, in a panel which is actually quite small, but still. Seems a little suspect that the depiction of a ménage à trois (no matter how small and fuzzy and artistic) would have made it through the self-regulating body which commanded in its 1971 revision that, "Nudity in any form is prohibited. Suggestive and salacious illustration is unacceptable," and "Illicit sex relations are not to be portrayed and sexual abnormalities are unacceptable." But hey, the Comics Code's loss of discretion is our gain!

Can you tell I've been on a Comics Code kick lately? I can't speak for other genres, but I find it pretty fascinating just how much seemed to slide in the romance comics!