GCD has no speculations about who wrote the first issue or most of the rest of them, though Wiki alleges that Stan Lee had some credits on the love-goddess. I frankly don't remember if I noticed Lee's name on any of the stories, but all of the stories are so dull that if Lee wasn't the originator he must've decided to follow the basic template in very sedulous fashion. For most of the run, prior to the attempt to inject a horror-story vibe, most of the issues read pretty much the same. Venus, who came to Earth to learn about love, falls head over heels with a fellow who publishes a magazine about pretty girls, or something like that. Because he's in love with her he makes her the magazine's editor, and most of the goddess's adventures concern her either fending off the backbiting attacks of an envious secretary or being courted by other-worldly swains. For instance, in issue #10, she's pursued by "the Son of Satan"-- no relation to the later Daimon Hellstrom-- and she almost gives up her precious womanhood to him, until her ally Apollo sends down a sun-disc to sweep the satanic spawn away. Of all the stories, this is the only one with halfway inventive myth-content, since by accident or design the story replicates a visual aspect of the Greek story of Ixion.
Beyond the possible Ixion reference, the closest thing that this odd title had to a running myth-theme was the idea that Venus was frequently called upon to surrender to the fate worse than death, only to be saved at the last minute. Then she would return to the side of her publisher-boyfriend, though at no time do the couple make noises about getting engaged. I would surmise that this theme of female sacrifice was one that the creators-- probably, but not definitely, all male-- was one that they thought a romance-reading female audience might relate to. I don't know how VENUS compares to other Timely romance-comics of the period, but in the early issues there's so much concentration on the visual elements of feminine glamour that the series seems to have more in common with Timely's line of "pretty girl" books, which were more oriented upon pleasing that fiendish "male gaze."
The series is on the whole less interesting than debating what might've made the publishers give it the green light. The first issue appeared with a cover-date of August 1948, which means that issues were actually on the stands roughly two or three months previous. And in that same August, Universal Studios released ONE TOUCH OF VENUS. Aside from the basic idea of the goddess Venus coming to Earth and falling for a mortal, the movie doesn't have much in common with the comics-series. However, it does seem possible that Lee or someone at Timely was aware of the property, which debuted on stage in 1943 and had been floated for a possible movie adaptation in 1945. (For that matter, the play was loosely based on a prose novel dating back to 1885.)
Another small point in common is that the comic-book Venus, like the one in the Ava Gardner movie, possesses no powers while on Earth. Indeed, she isn't seen wielding any power but her basic authority while on Olympus, so one might guess that the creators were trying to steer the character's adventures away from male-oriented fight-scenes. On occasion, as in the "Son of Satan" tale, Venus calls upon other gods to help her, which might be deemed a "super-power" of sorts. But in the Golden Age series she doesn't even have the ability to compel people to fall in love with her, which was evidently an invention of Bill Everett when he briefly revived the character in a 1973 Sub-Mariner story. Everett was not involved in the series' romantic arc, but only contributed to the horror-stories of the title's final phase, when the editorship was evidently trying anything to keep the series afloat. Nor surprisingly, the Evreett-drawn stories were the only reprints Marvel published prior to collecting the whole series in archive form. Possibly Everett, who gave his revised version of the goddess a new secret identity, had some thoughts of floating a new series with the character, but we'll probably never know.
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