British Girls' Comics 101

A blog championing the girls' comics of DC Thomson, IPC Magazines, Hulton Press, Fleetway etc. In my other life I am a PhD student exploring British and American girls' comics, and issues of gender and genre. Settle down for girls' comics news, reviews, opinions and extracts, and leave your hockey sticks at the door!

[segnodisperanza]

You are brilliant, you inspire me and I love you: Keeley Hawes ♡

“When I was walking the dog one day, I saw a memorial quote on a bench: ‘Every day is the first day of the rest of your life.’ And that kind of stuck with me as a mantra.”

[martinemoonshine]

Keeley is wonderful and Love the quote!

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Check the Mandy!

[colsmi]

Four panels from ‘The Game Of Love’ in July 31 1976’s Jackie.

Respect where it’s surely due, the uncredited creators put to shame so many other comics artists of the time, and - sadly & shamefully - of every year since, when it came to both drawing from life and entirely sidestepping the grubby-minded habit of objectivisation.

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British super mutant Ace Hart the Atom Man seems to have some problems with American constables.

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Vintage girls’ annual. Sally 1972. 

[scrappyollie]

Kitty Hawke (Now in Glorious Technicolour) by missoliviahicks, drawn in the style of Kitty Hawke artist Ray Bailey.

Kitty Hawke (and her All Girl Air Crew) was the original cover star of early British girls comic Girl (1951), the sister comic to Eagle. She and her plucky crew graced the cover from November, 1951, to March 1952, when they left the comic and were replaced with Wendy and Jinx, a somewhat more conservative school japes narrative. At the time Marcus Morris (editor) explained the change to readers thus: Here we are with you two days earlier this week - and bringing you something new and exciting as well - which you have asked for. I hope you will like the thrilling new school story on the front page of this issue. Very many of you have let us know that you like school stories and have asked for more - so here is one for you! (26 March, 1952) Wendy and Jinx is nowhere near as exciting as Kitty Hawke, just FYI

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Jackie no. 356, October 31st, 1970

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Jackie no. 359, November 21st, 1970

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Gloucester Comics Haul - Various second hand bookshops (April 2017)

Some sweet British reprints of American comics (note the funky format), late 1990s Mandy and Debbie picture libraries and Thrown Together, a Romantic Adventure Library from Micron Publications. 

The Girl With No Name is a total rip off of Valda, right?

Of special interest to British girls’ comics fans is The Treasure Book for Girls (1961) from Collins, which, although mostly illustrated prose, rather than comics, features some interior art from Valda maestro Dudley Wynne!

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Comics Haul from 30th Century Comics, Richmond, London (January 2017).

Great shop for American and British comics, I especially got a kick out of their insane British girls’ comics back catalogue. Very knowledgeable too and enthusiastic! Which is what you want from a comics shop. 

School Romance is disappointingly devoid of lesbian content, FYI.

Review of That Elusive Grey Ghost here. 

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British Girls’ Comics Review: That Elusive Grey Ghost

June and School Friend (And Princess!) Picture Library No.401

Fleetway Publications

Published 1967 (Reprint, first published 1958)

Purchased as part of my Richmond Thirtieth Century Comics haul from Christmas (yes, I’m behind in my reading), I picked up the Elusive Grey Ghost because I saw the costume, saw School Friend was involved and assumed it was something to do with The Silent Three. The Silent Three are a sort of costumed avenger tale meets the boarding school story, for maximum japes (three boarding school girls start a secret robed society to combat power-mad head girls and petty criminals). Although not a superhero story, I feel The Silent Three can be considered along with costumed avengers, pulp heroes etc. as a predecessor of sorts to the super yarn, but from a British girls’ comics perspective (so inherently better). The only difference being that in the UK, these comics were being created after superheroes were invented.

However, I discovered that this story actually had nothing to do with The Silent Three, despite the similarity of the costumes (in fact, I feel the publishers deliberately hyped up the similarity for the cover – Gerry is even wearing a dorky little number on her hood, a lá The Silent Three, but in the actual comic, none of the characters wear numbers). The Silent Three are an all-girl gang, whereas The Four Grey Ghosts are a mixed group – comprised of ‘Gerry’, or Geraldine, our protagonist, and three boys. The only boy who really does anything is Hugh, and he does everything. Anyway, Gerry is on holiday, and chooses to spend it with her Aunt Penelope, who is on the board of Governors for the boys’ new school and so our tale starts with the inevitable reunion that kicks off all sequels, threequels and franchises.

The story itself revolves around that most boarding school of perils; a smuggling ring operating out of an abandoned quarry near a school (considering the amount of times schoolchildren foil these rings, you would think criminals would stop operating in such close proximity to schools). Currently in my thesis I am considering the superheroine’s position in the superhero genre; how she moves between (traditionally coded) masculine and feminine identities, and it was consequently how the writer was going to resolve good girl Gerry with the masculine rambles of a boys’ adventure narrative that interested me.

What I loved is that the story continued the grand girls’ comics tradition of treating an active girl in a costume as such an oddity that everyone who sees her immediately assumes she is a boy (secret identity safe). Whereas the three boys are under suspicion from the beginning, Gerry is largely able to operate without raising the slightest bit of suspicion. She also plays the whole damsel-in-distress card to hide her nefarious activities – for example pretending to slip on a rock, and then, when Hugh comes to her rescue, hissing new bits of information to him.  At first, Gerry is considered very much one of the gang (all the boys treat her with complete deference), and she is shown to be resourceful, brave and motivated (she has ‘keen eyes’). However, the second things begin to really heat up the boys insist she stays at home (which is sort of an inevitable part of any British comic from that period that has both a male and female protagonist). It is Gerry who slips up and gives the jig (and her secret identity) up to the villains when she accidentally loses her heart shaped locket (complete with a picture of her aunt) at the crime scene. And the moment anything even remotely scary happens, Gerry goes completely to pieces. Oh Gerry! Curse your feminine frailty!

I was getting into the final act, where the entire Grey Ghost gang had been locked up and there was a battle brewing between hardened thuggish smugglers and a group of fancy entitled private school prefects, when I realised my copy was missing the final eight pages! Ack! Such is the perils of buying second hand (though a warning on the bag would have been nice). If anyone has the ending, let me know how it worked out for Gerry!

The back of the comic promises that next month we would be able to purchase a copy of ‘Again the Grey Ghosts!’, so this, coupled with the Veronica Mars movie reunion feel of the opening suggests this was an ongoing series in the weekly comics, popular enough to merit multiple standalone adventures (though perhaps their heyday was in the late fifties and only cheapness saw Fleetway reprint their exploits). Anyway, I’ll definite keep a look out for these.

Best ‘Aw the fifties’ moment: Award for the most practical superhero goes to Gerry, who enters the abandoned quarry filled with villains and dons her robes, not to protect her secret identity, but to keep her clothes clean! It definitely looks like something else was written originally and ‘keeping my clothes clean’ was inserted after the fact, possibly for the 1960s reprint? 

Best fashion moment: School blazer (even in the holidays?) coupled with a striped blouse and an old lady skirt. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!

Best ‘But I’m just a woman! *WINK*’ moment: The aforementioned loose rock deception of 1958.

Well there you have it!

[kalmiyh]

Marc reading British comic, The Beezer.

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Jackie no. 355, October 24th, 1970

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BBC Archives have pulled up this pretty great footage of John Noakes schooling kids about comics’ history (he even goes back to Alley Sloper) and how to (terribly/awfully/please don’t do this) store their comics. I love the Dennis Gifford shoutout! And of course there are some issues of Bunty, Romeo etc. lounging around for eagle-eyed viewers. 

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The second volume of Misty is set to come out in November! The previous volume included Pat Mills and John Armstrong’s Moonchild, a gloomy and gothic take on Carrie and Malcolm Shaw and Brian Delaney’s The Four Faces of Eve. This volume will include The Sentinels and End of the Line. 

Of the two stories in Volume 1, Moonchild was my favourite, not least because of Norma, the glorious villain. Norma is at once sympathetic (she is working class, tough as nails and makes up preposterous lies of her own grandiosity to cover her broken home and lack of success in school) and psychotic. It is heavily implied that she turns to villainy (in this case, ruining the life of Rosemary Black) out of sheer boredom. She also wears a bomber jacket with her own name on it. Genius on the part of artist John Armstrong, who also was a fill in artist for Sally superheroine story The Justice of Justine. I have a great deal of time for his instantly recognisable style which consists of a lot of very severe, short bangs on his female characters! 

Four Faces of Eve is evil enough to earn Pat Mill’s enthusiastic championing of it (I have heard him talk very passionately about girls comics, and this was one of his key examples) but the art style is a little too 1970s whimsical for the story content, which is fiendish. A more gothic take might have suited it better. Still a great read though, especially for people who continue to propagate that British girls’ comics ain’t naught but hockey sticks, ponies and romance.

One final note is that Misty volume 1 is an absolutely gorgeous book; it is produced in the same format as a normal 2000 AD trade paperback, and is well worth the price, even if it is a slim collection. Julia Round provides a great introduction to Misty cover artist Shirley Bellwood (in the great debate of Spellbound vs. Misty I will own that Misty has far superior covers) and Pat Mills’ introduction is very informative. There are also two reprints of Misty features (how to make a devil head and a witch’s hat) which are both so cute! 

Anyway, well done to Rebellion for putting out another volume of their girls’ comics I.P. (it would be great to see them spread out into some Sally, Tammy and Jinty reprints) and come on DC Thomson and get publishing your back catalogue! We’re waiting...

Previews for Misty vol 2 below... be aware of potential spoilers in the story write ups! 

Misty – Book 2 Originally published: 1978-1980 Release date: November Trade Paperback We follow up our hit first volume of the ‘horror comic for girls’ with another collection of two stories: The Sentinels and End of The Line. Misty was a revolutionary concept by 2000 AD’s creator Pat Mills in 1978 and left its mark on a whole generation of young women. The two identical tower blocks, known as ‘The Sentinels’ to the locals, stand tall over the town of Birdwood – but only one is occupied while the other remains mysteriously empty. When Jan Richards' family lose their home they decide to hide out in the abandoned block so they can stay together, only to be sent into a parallel world where the Nazis conquered Britain in 1940... In End of the Line, Ann's father was one of a group of engineers believed to have been killed whilst working on an extension to the London Underground but when she and her mother are invited to the opening of the new train tunnel, Ann discovers a mysterious time portal through which several workers are being kept as slaves by an evil Victorian called Lord Vicary. 

Images courtesy of The Bronze Age of Blogs and Pat Mills’ own blog. 

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Jackie no. 355, October 24th, 1970