Color Climax - Teenage Sex Magazine — No 4 -1978-.pdf
The magazine’s core feature was the photonovel—a story told through sequential, un-retouched photographs with dialogue bubbles. While other magazines used actors and soft focus, Color Climax used real, anonymous teens in realistic, often drab, European settings (parking lots, concrete apartment blocks, rainy bus stops).
Here is how they structured their romantic storylines:
To understand the romantic storylines, one must first understand the market. By the late 1960s, mainstream teen magazines in the UK and US were sanitized. Romance was either chaste (hand-holding at a sock hop) or centered on the unattainable pop star. Color Climax, based in Copenhagen, exploited a loophole in Scandinavian publishing laws to create something different. Color Climax - Teenage Sex Magazine No 4 -1978-.pdf
The Color Climax Teenage Magazine targeted readers aged 14 to 19, but its editorial voice was distinctly older—think 19-year-olds who worked factory jobs, rode scooters, and smoked cigarettes. The relationships depicted were not about puppy love; they were about power, jealousy, and physical awakening.
In a typical 1972 issue, a common storyline involved a shy girl (Lone, age 16) missing the last train home. She accepts a ride from a boy with a leather jacket (Sven, age 18). In Seventeen magazine, this would lead to a lecture about safety. In Color Climax, the relationship escalates quickly into a negotiation of trust. The romantic storyline focuses on the thrill of risk. The dialogue often broke the fourth wall, acknowledging the danger but celebrating the agency of the teenage girl. The magazine’s core feature was the photonovel —a
The most talked-about feature in the magazine’s history was the "What Happened Next?" column. Readers would write in with the beginning of a romantic dilemma (e.g., "I like my best friend’s ex"), and the magazine would publish three different photographic endings: one romantic, one tragic, and one "pragmatic."
The pragmatic ending was the magazine’s trademark. For example: and that is okay. By 1978
This pragmatic approach to teen relationships was revolutionary. It taught a generation of Scandinavian teens that not every romantic storyline ends in a wedding or a fistfight; sometimes, it just ends in a parking lot, and that is okay.
By 1978, the Color Climax Teenage Magazine had ceased publication, overshadowed by the company’s shift to more explicit material. Yet, the DNA of its romantic storylines survived. You can see echoes of its gritty realism in 1990s Danish cinema (like Pusher), in the confessional style of Kids, and even in the awkward, unfiltered romantic arcs of shows like Skins.
The magazine succeeded because it treated teenagers like adults. It acknowledged that relationships for a 16-year-old involve the same complex emotions—boredom, lust, economic anxiety, and fleeting tenderness—as adult relationships, only with less vocabulary to express them.
