In his introduction to Eclipse Comics' 1988 collection of some of the earliest Simon & Kirby romance comics, Richard Howell writes that, "Romance has always been a major component in entertainment, be it novels, plays, or movies, but for over ten years after the first appearance of comic books, romance only had a token presence in their four-color pages". This changed in 1947 with the return from war of one of comics' earliest and best-known creative partnerships, that of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who had already created Captain America, the Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion.