You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO is from Full Metal Ox, who is hoping to find this romance comic:
This one has been causing me a nagging itch in the brain; I recall having seen—probably on some incarnation of Scans Daily on a platform other than Dreamwidth—a U.S. romance comic from the 1940s or 1950s that had an anthology host, something more characteristic of horror comics.
He was a Zorro-esque Masked Lover who narrated love stories throughout history (and may have been an immortal or time traveler who’d personally witnessed/taken part in them); the specific story featured a girl who was concealing her blindness, which she felt made her unfit to marry.
Even after specifying romance, the sheer number of masquerade balls, highway robbers, phantom vigilantes, and tragic disfigurements in the genre has made this a royal pain in the kazoo to Google.
This one may be a toughie, but I have faith!
It looks like it’s been identified! https://whatwasthatone.livejournal.com/5301271.html
Idk if there’s any special protocol for including a link in the comments, but it appears this has already been answered: https://whatwasthatone.livejournal.com/5301271.html?
Ah, bummer. It’s really hard to keep track if a HaBO we receive has been posted and/or solved elsewhere. There are some forums that refer posters to us, so alas duplicates happen.
As Theresa and kkw have noted above, this case has been solved—but thank you all nonetheless for your readiness to Help A Bitch Out; interested parties can find links to both the comic and the Scans Daily post at the LiveJournal link above (and trust me—it’s a glorious surplus cheese platter worthy of a Muppet adaptation!)
I memoryholed reading the original scans_daily posts back in 2011. I kind of hope Causally Comics or some other obscure golden ages comics person will do a YouTube video on this. Also, on one of the other scans_daily posts on the comic the poster notes that it was also mentioned in Seduction of the Innocent
Can anyone provide me with a link that’s not the LJ link? For some reason it just won’t open for me. TYIA!
@Alexis:
That post, with all the relevant links, is mirrored on Find That Book on Dreamwidth; let me know if this comes through for you:
https://findthatbook.dreamwidth.org/82284.html
ahhh yes! Thank you @Full Metal Ox!
@Rebecca:
Also, on one of the other scans_daily posts on the comic the poster notes that it was also mentioned in Seduction of the Innocent
In the interest of pedantic thoroughness, here’s the SOTI reference:
Just as some crime comics are especially marked on the cover
“For Adults Only” (which of course entices children even
more), so some of the love-confession comics are marked “Not
Intended For Children.” And just as there were supermen, superwomen, superboys and super-ducks, so the industry now
supplied a “super-lover.” p.38.
(Courtesy of http://www.lostsoti.org/, a profusely illustrated research site devoted to identifying comics mentioned in Seduction of the Innocent.
The whole text of SOTI, unfortunately text-only, is on the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/stream/fredricwerthamseductionoftheinnocent19542ndprinting/Fredric%20Wertham%20Seduction%20of%20the%20Innocent%201954%202nd%20Printing_djvu.txt)