Steven Myers of World Comics in South Daytona, Florida comments on Steve Bennett's recent column about the potential of romance novel readers as a new potential audience for comics.

Upon reading Steve Bennett's recent column (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Romancing the Comic"), it brought to mind Marvel and DC's recent attempts to publish romance comics disguised as vampire stories.  One of the growing areas in romance novels has been the "paranormal romance."  Once known as gothic romances, paranormal romances feature vampires, werewolves, spirits of all shapes and their hunters.  I don't think I need to detail their stories because most retailers have already been exposed to them (i.e. the Twilight Saga, Buffy the Vampre Slayer, etc.).

Recently DC Comics published The Vampire Diaries which was inspired by the CW TV Series and Marvel published Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake Vampire Hunter novels as graphic novels.  And let us not forget Dark Horse Comics' Angel & Faith or Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics and Dynamite Entertainment's Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson comic in recent years.  Although all these series combined romance with action, you can't ignore the fact that they are trying to keep the romance comic alive or undead.

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