Recently the glorious Sequential Crush posted a link to Scott Edelman’s thoughtful reflection on the differences between romance comics covers and romance novel covers. He points out that he’s never noticed this variation before — that makes two of us, to my chagrin — and then he says something about clinch covers that surprised me:

They depict (or seem to anyway, since we have no idea what the characters are really thinking) people in love. And more than just in love, happy in that love. What you’re seeing is the aspirational goal of a romance—its, yes, “happily ever after” loving conclusion.

And I realized there is another disconnect here: Scott Edelman assumes that a clinch cover depicts the happily ever after.

It has never occurred to me that clinch covers were meant to be happy. Angsty, of course — impassioned, sure. But happy? Never. For one thing, as Smart Bitches loves to point out, there is a distinct tendency for the couple to look constipated. Or sleepy. But I always interpreted the clinch as the moment where the hero and heroine have recognized that Doin’ It Is A Bad Idea, but have decided that We Just Can’t Help Ourselves. (Leaving aside questions of ravishment and forced seduction, which were definitely operating in many an Old Skool clinch cover. I’m looking at you, Kathleen Woodiwiss — though most of your clinches were stamp-sized mini-clinches glued on top of a misty landscape, for some reason.)

This view of the clinch might explain the Mysterious Wind, which will often be tugging the hero and heroine’s flowing locks in opposite directions at the same time. They’re caught, you see, in a literal storm of passion — they lean toward each other even as the wind swirls around, about to tear them apart. The clinch is danger — the love is under threat — separation and destruction are looming.

Then again, this is all my own interpretation. I went through my collection, looking for clinch covers that showed scenes from the actual text, and came up empty-handed. (Curse my tendency to cull my shelves every other year!) The closest was the Victoria Alexander cover above, which is from a book I found recently at a library sale and haven’t had a chance to actually read yet. But judging from the title and the synopsis on the back (mistaken identities, actresses in the Wild West, and untrustworthy ladeez), I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the scene on the cover is almost certainly not the happy ever after.

I don’t have a conclusion here. I’m just kind of fascinated. Thoughts, o Reader?