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.