The Nurses, a short-lived series of comics, was a tie-in with the CBS television series of the same name (broadcast from 1962 to 1965), which starred Shirl Conway as Mrs. Liz Thorpe, the wise older nurse and mentor, and Zina Bethune as Gail Lucas, the naive, uncertain second-year student nurse, at Alden General Hospital.

Unlike most of the other comics with nurse heroines, which are either humorous or romantic, The Nurses offers hospital-centered stories that are quite dramatic, in the spirit of the television show, dealing with the nurses' day-to-day problems with doctors and patients rather than with their romantic tribulations--in fact, not a single one of the stories is a romance.

In The Nurses, nurses are capable women who do not automatically defer to doctors--for example, the initial story deals with a hidebound old country doctor who must learn to respect the nurses' ability as partners in caring for patients. In another story, Gail and Mrs. Thorpe help a young doctor who is afraid to perform surgery. Gail even saves the life of a doctor by dragging him from a car wreck and tying off an artery.

Other stories involve a sick infant snatched from the hospital by his frightened mother; a beautiful woman devastated by facial scarring that she fears will end her modeling career; and a psychiatric patient who succeeds in convincing Gail that his paranoia is reasonable.

The nurses are not presented as the paragons who appear in other nurse comics--Gail makes mistakes because of her youth and inexperience, and is warned against being too compassionate and too involved in patients' problems.

Each issue also includes a story featuring a rescue group known as "Emergency Crew," and text articles on famous real-life nurses.

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