Entry tags:

medium: british comics, series: comics for girls

I am doing just that.

Last Bunty-post we talked about how much worse Bunty got towards the end, mostly based on memories and bitterness. Well, we were right. There was a MASSIVE drop-off in quality somewhere after 1979. I know, because eBay told me.

So let's revisit the good times. Let's take a look at what the six-to-twelve year olds got to read about in 1977. On Shakespeare's birth/deathday*!

I'm not scanning this story for you, because the episodes I have aren't very interesting, but get a load of this convoluted premise:



For those who're struggling with the tiny print, it reads: Tessa Trent's inheritance had been stolen by her wicked cousin, Tansy, who looked very like her. tessa was told that she was Tansy, the poor relation, anf her claims to be the rightful heiress were dismissed as a jealous disorder of the mind. Tessa was kept prisoner in a grim nursing home run by Dr Wardour where a servant-girl, Dorrie, who believed Tessa's story, obtained work. Dorrie and Tessa's former nurse, Nurse Ellis, tried without success to find somebody who could identify the real Tessa Trent. Then, one day, Tessa escaped from Winterhall.

..Now I know why I like commas so much.





Yes - a warning against arrogance that reads a little like a warning against girls doing boy stuff. NO FEAR, though, because the stories within do not take that tack.

I am super-sorry that the writing is so small on some of these. I hate using scannerrrrs!

These are the first four pages on an ongoing story - I took the executive decision that as the magazine does call it's serials "stories" and since they do begin and end (except for the Marys, natch), it's within reasonability to post the full four pages from this one issue. Nurse Dinkum appears in the July '77 issue I have, but she's done with by March '88.









Child psychology: that is what children love stories about. Or maybe it isn't, which is why Dinkum was gone within a year? The July '77 story is about a boy learning what happens when you play with matches (cats die).

It's a neat enough story, though, and it's got a protagonist with things like "pluck" and "integrity" and whatever. The 'leaning out of leafy windows at night' art reminds me of a Bunty story I am forever trying to re-find that was about the headmistress of a girls' academy who was also secretly a wrestler/vigilante.

Something about it just feels good to read, even if it is a bit over-earnest. No?


This is my favourite page of the issue, though: Maid Marian (as seen in my modhat icon), teaching girls how to handle themselves.



I can't tell you how many time I've thoughtbubbled "I've got to enforce my authority or they'll never obey me again". I only thought it about children, though. Not merry men.

:'[

To cheer me up, let's do fashion.


Can I have your yellow shirt thing, Bunty?

As usual, there are no creator credits anywhere.

*Shakespeare nerds, afford me no kinship; I just live in Stratford and cannot avoid the man.