A couple of retitles

In looking through the Grand Comics Database for comic book covers that I might use for my first recaps, I was struck by an idea. There were a number of covers that I looked at that didn't really need any recaptioning if they were given the right TG-oriented title. Unfortunately, the best idea that I came up with was "Turnabout Romances". My second best title, "Twice a Virgin", I thought was way too subtle, but I think with the right cover (and probably some recaptioning) it still might work.

I then found two titles that only needed a little reworking to turn them into TG titles. I turned the title "Boy Meets Girl" into "Boy into Girl" (I have also seen the same comic book series turned into "Boy Becomes Girl"), and "Boy Loves Girl" was turned into "Boy Loves Girlboys". For the first one, the only thing I changed was the title. For the second one, I shortened one word.

What he doesn't know...

The many loves of...

I like the idea SoCalSerets. By changing the title you've left the nature of the transformation up to the imagination of the reader. I think you mentioned somewhere else that you're not interested in body swaps or magical transformations. I'm the same so I think these are great!

I tried to do something similar on my first cover here - where as well as recaptioning I changed "Girls' Romances" to "New Girl's Romances" (moving the apostrophe to make "New Girl" singular). But on lots of covers there is an image behind the title so recaptioning is a lot less work than retitling.

Love, Debbie

Thanks, Debbie.

"Boy into Girl" was pretty easy to re-title, although I went through about a dozen script fonts before I found one that looked okay.

"Boy Loves Girlboys" was a little harder. The Girlboy part was easy--I just copied Boy and concatenated it to the Girl from the original title. For the "S", I took the S from Loves, removed the shadow, and then had to shrink the height and stretch the width to make it look right.

Still, that wasn't too hard, since there was a solid color background. I spent more time cleaning up the edges and removing a small crease that was in the original comic book that was scanned for the database.

For this one, I changed only the subtitle, since Corliss to me already sounded like a boys name. It is, for example, the name of an NBA player, Corliss Williams, and a male philosopher, Corliss Lamont. The subtitle from the original cover was "America's favorite teen-age radio and screen star ! ! !"

Meet Corliss Archer was a radio show, as well as two short-lived TV shows, and an even shorter-lived comic book. There was also a movie, A Kiss for Corliss, with Shirley Temple in the title role.

Smoke signals.

SoCal,

Love Boy "Into" Girl. Great retitling -- and so simple!

Regarding "The Many Loves Of...", I'll bet it originally said "I was the other woman," and in my mind, that's a better line than "man", once you've changed the title to "Boy Loves Girlboys" anyway.

Love the Corliss Archer cover. Isn't it interesting how some names change gender? Names such as Ashley? Is Corliss one that's gone in the other direction? Are there still girls named Corliss?

Great stuff!

Thanks.

For the "Boy Meets Girl" series, I chose #10 as my first re-title just because of that great wink. I think that there are several other covers that probably work with just a re-titling to "Boy into Girl". The new title would really change the meaning of #21, "False Honeymoon". :-)

There are a few covers that I think need more than just an edit of the title. For example, #16 from "Effie Grows Up" to "Eddie Grows Up", and #17 from "The Third Kiss" to "The Third Sex". #23, "If You Hide Your Past", requires a little more editing of the last line.

Regarding "The Many Loves Of...", you're right about "I was the other woman". I now think that I shouldn't have altered that line. That's pretty easy to remedy, though.

Corliss was, AFAIK, originally a last name. It's an aristocratic tradition to adopt last names as first names. The tradition is probably done more for boys, but with many last names, like Corliss, there is no specific sex that seems obvious for them so they could be for either boys or girls.

For the original radio show, the intention was probably to pick a name that suggested an upper class, or at least upper-middle-class background.

For names that have changed genders, you might want to look at the article on unisex names on the Wikipedia.

Here's a re-title that I'm not sure works, since it relies on the multiple meanings of the word "queen". I'm interested in what others think.

The 1947 comic book, Jo-Jo Congo King, looks like it was sub-par Tarzan imitation. All the other covers had pretty standard damsel-in-distress covers, except for the one that I've used.

It's interesting that many of the damsels on the covers had a sort of Bettie Page look to them (although Bettie Page didn't start modeling until 1950).

Is that a python in your loincloth...?

There were so many "jungle girl" comics from that era that I probably wouldn't even have suspected this was a recaptioning if I'd seen it elsewhere....

Maybe it needs the queen in quotes then, as in Jo-Jo Congo "Queen" (or maybe even that isn't enough).

Here's a more involved re-title. I took "Crimes By Women" #07 (Fox, 1948), and turned it into "Cross-dressed Criminals".

I'm not sure about the font that I chose, but after trying a couple of dozen fonts, this one was the best of the bunch. I saved it first as a Paint Shop Pro .PSP file, so I may go back to it and try some more fonts to see if I can come up with something better.

First, here's the original:



And here's my re-titled version:

Cross-dressed Criminals #1

I loved "Cross-dressed Criminals". I think the font is pretty good myself; it has a bit of a 1930's look to it. I especially like the way the title goes "behind" the gun-moll's head. From a page design point of view though, I think "cross-dressed" would look better un-hyphenated.

Thank you. And thanks for the comments.

The Betty Noir font from blambot.com: That is specifically why I had qualms about the font. It is just too Art Deco. Most of the comic book covers that I want to use to create more "Cross-dressed Criminals" are from the 40s & 50s, and for most, the clothes, decor, autos, etc. are clearly from those decades.

Cross-dressed vs. Crossdressed: I looked at it spelled both ways (and consulted a number of online dictionaries), and then decided the hyphened version was the better choice.

Title behind the head: That was "fun" to do. ;-) I created several layers to do that trick.

I think the title came out nicely, except I think there's a little two much white space at the top of the door now without the heavy block font that was used for "Crimes by Women". I was tempted to lower the door height (and lower the baseboard at the same time), which would have the added effect of making the "gun-moll" look taller.

The Betty Noir font from blambot.com: That is specifically why I had qualms about the font. It is just too Art Deco. Most of the comic book covers that I want to use to create more "Cross-dressed Criminals" are from the 40s & 50s, and for most, the clothes, decor, autos, etc. are clearly from those decades.

Yeah, I know what you mean - it does look great, but I can't think of any Art Deco-like fonts actually being used *in* comics until much, much later, going for a "retro" look, as in the animated Batman series or (on sale this week and perhaps suited for its own TG take) Madame Mirage.

I think it still works, in part because Crimes Against Women itself looks somewhat unlike the typical comic book cover. (For example, how the company name is practically hidden.)

That's a good series to mine, by the way, full of peculiar images by any standard, especially ours. A lot of them would make good covers for "TG Time Patrol" type covers, even....

That's a good series to mine ["Crimes by Women"], by the way, full of peculiar images by any standard, especially ours. A lot of them would make good covers for "TG Time Patrol" type covers, even....

There's at least two from that series that I'm planning on doing "Cross-dressed Criminals" versions of (#13 & #15, and maybe #1 & #5 if I don't get bored with using that series).


(For example, how the company name is practically hidden.)

I've been going through the Grand Comics Database looking specificially at the different series produced by the same publisher as "Crimes by Women" (Fox) because I noticed that several of their other series were ones that were already being regularly mined for recaps.

This time, it's a re-title and recap. "Diary Secrets" #10 has been morphed into "Drag Secrets" #1.

Here's the original:




And here's the new version:

Secrets and surprises.