Comics for girls part 2: Bunty, 1987

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Last time we visited School Friend in 1953. This time it's Bunty, the British Girls' comic for basically the latter half of last century. And yeah, I'm biased because I love it like I love 90s X-Men and Tomb of Dracula and CB&MI:13. But it's not just my opinion! Google "Bunty the book for girls", you'll see what I mean.

Anyhow, 1987 was a great year in many ways I am sure, but in particular it brought the world a) me, and b) this annual.

I actually want to share almost every story from this annual, because they are mostly grand. But scanning takes me SO LONG, that this time I only have two stories, two previews, and one BONUS FUN PAGE.

Now you remember that recent Black Canary post showing her figuring it's a "guy thing" to go misty eyed over Robin Hood memorabilia? HMMMM. Meet.. Robina Hood (yeah.. forgive her the name)!

This isn't the only Robin Hood-themed strip that Bunty had over the years; there was one about the adventures of the man himself (or rather, in the one story I have from that series, the adventures of a girl who lives in Nottingham Castle and idolises him).

So we meet our heroines, as they takes taxes from the tax collectors. Robina, by the way, shoots one of them through the hat. Very restrained of her.



Flo Tuck! Little Jane! Winnie Scarlet! Albus Severus Potter!

When all of a sudden..!!



Turns out it was a young knave whose vision was impaired by his borrowed helmet, thinking that the girls were outlaws attacking innocent victims. Their knocking of him sprains his ankle, or something, so they take him home with them and he tells his tale of woe.



Robina, natch, has an idea about all of this. So she goes to see..



Old grey-hair Robin! And Tuck. Marion's nowhere to be seen, by the way, but one cannot have everything.

Fighting all polished up, the gang sneak into the tournament, in what I feel is the best panel in the whole story:



DISGUISED IN GOWNS. Like the men always are! But they are too! Because their lives do not call for gowns usually! <3!

Robina goes off to join the tournament, and starts to think it's a bad idea, particularly when Alan Dale - the only male descendant, who happens to be evil - half-recognises her. Then she discovers just who she'll be jousting.



Uh-oh! but she does okay..ish.



Her armour flies off after the fall, and everyone gasps and tries to capture her and suchlike. Her noble opponent is having none of that!



The bad guys can't risk upsetting the Duke of Aragon, and the Duke thinks Robina's just great, so the girls get all the loot, share it with the blonde kid they hurt earlier, and live happily ever after making jokes about what bad quality the kid's armour was. Hurrah!


Time for story two, after this interval! Print out and play.

I have a fondness for this story because in my younger years I spent hours deciding just what my bus-house would be like on the inside. She's living my dream!

Willa's pals don't want to leave straight away, so Willa fixes them up with flower-picking jobs for the day. Which probably sounds a much nicer job that it really is.



They help.



Betrayal! Willa and pal with the doctor also find that their wallets are missing. :[.



Whilst working off their doctor-debt and making friends, the girls discuss how lovely it is there, and how sad it is that science is making flower-based perfume obsolete. Eventually its their turn to do the evening entertainment for the fellow pickers (they put on a fashion show, of course).





And that's that. A short story (the longest tale in this volume's twelve pages (the Four Marys)), but one emphasising the.. romance of being decent and hardworking, I guess. And it's a good example of the 'black and white and one colour' method of colouring I talked about last time.

Finally, two intro-panels from stories I'm not going to fully post. One for the girls being tough, one for the CRACK. Because I know what you love, s_d. And I love it too! (And I promise, this is not the weirdest pet story in the book. TUNE IN NEXT TIME.)

Comments

[bingojones.insanejournal.com]

I'm sorry. Did you say "Bunty?"

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

I did.. shouldn't I?

[bingojones.insanejournal.com]

No, no, just making sure I heard right. It's got... connotations. (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bunt)

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

}:O

Well luckily this Bunty far pre-dates that.

Thank you for the knowledge, though!

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

I'm more worried by the fact that YOU know that words connotations than the connotations themsleves! :)

[bingojones.insanejournal.com]

A gentleman must be acquainted with all areas of discourse.

[skitty_kat.insanejournal.com]

I thought that was 'gunt'.
Not for nothing was Phil Jupitus rolling around on the floor giggling hysterically.

[taggerung301.insanejournal.com]

ha, this is great!

except for that last scan of the lamb - it looks rather sinister o_O

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Wait til you see the giant rabbit who is also a space-ship that doesn't understand Christmas.

[danielolsen.insanejournal.com]

Ryo-Ohki, is that you?

Great minds obviously do think alike.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Cyberlamb needs human blood to function!

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Within the story he makes an old lady and some clowns fall down on ice at high speed. You may be right.

[nymphgalatea.insanejournal.com]

Bunty! I loved the Bunty when I was wee. I was a huge fan of "The Four Marys". I desperately wanted to be Mary Raleigh.

(Superlamb is a bit scary though. Don't remember that feature in any of the annuals I was given)

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

One of the other stories from this annual I plan to post is a Four Marys (of course). I was wondering if I should give them a whole post of their own, with several strips. They deserve it, really. And it's interesting to watch the changes of hairstyle and uniform down the decades.

[red_cyclone.insanejournal.com]

Me too, my favourite bit of the comic.
God, somewhere there is a really old picture with me surrounded by all the issues I had, each week I'd read that and my dad's 200AD, a very mixed introduction to comics.

[barnesarama.insanejournal.com]

i) Girls in armour hit every single one of my buttons. Rawr!

ii) Didn't Pat Mills and a lot of the early 2000AD staff get their start writing comics like Bunty? The way I heard it is that used the early issues of 2000AD to vent all the built up pressure of violence and general bad behaviour that they'd built up writing wholesome stories for wholesome girls.

Wikipedia says yes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Mills).

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

The problem with all of the girls' anthology comics I have is that there are no artistic (including writing) credits unless the artists themselves found a way to sneak their signature in the art somewhere (rare). It drives me nuts because some of the artists in particular are fantastic, and some of them I'm sure I recognise from elsewhere.

But haha, if that's true, the world owes Bunty double. Imagine 2000AD minus all that pent-up aggression.

[red_cyclone.insanejournal.com]

Wow, I did not know that. So, my reading both at the same time actually made more sense that at first sight.

[fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com]

"Flo Tuck?"

Wait, were friars supposed to be celibate, or not?

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, I wondered at that too. Maybe she's a tribute legacy rather than a blood relation? Then again, he was not above gluttony or wrath, so maybe he succumbed to lust as well.

[danu-mactire.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

Friars take a vow of chastity but not celibacy. And while chastity can mean 'no sex' it doesn't have to.

[runespoor7.insanejournal.com]

Friars in the Middle Ages tended to be rumoured as being pretty much anything but celibate, ascetic, and peaceful.

[fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com]

Friars in the Middle Ages tended to be rumoured as being pretty much anything but celibate, ascetic, and peaceful.

As seen in the Heptameron, for example, where friars were presented as lechers at best and rapists at worst. I know.

But since many such accounts were written by Protestants whose goal was to demonize the Catholics of their day, I tend to take such rumors with a grain of salt.:/

[runespoor7.insanejournal.com]

Protestants weren't the only sources of that representation; peasants regularly became angry at monks, because they imagined their life as being luxurious and idle - of course, they were right compared to their life.

Moreover, it wasn't done always to make the other side look bad; in Rabelais' epics, the lecherous war-loving wine-drinking monk is one of the most endearing characters. In Friar Tuck's case, I think it's part of the second tradition.

[fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com]

Oh yeah, that monk in Rabelais was awesome. "The greatest monk who ever monked since the monking world monked its first bit of monkery!"

However, I would argue that he, too, was in fact written in part to make Catholic monks look bad. He was deliberately cast as an extremely a-typical monk, an anti-monk if you will, compared to whom real monks were sordid and lame.

Of course that sort of sentiment isn't as noticeable in Rabelais since he makes fun of pretty much everyone.

[sistermagpie.insanejournal.com]

The girls in these stories always make me feel like I wasted my childhood. I never saved any perfume families, much less also brought handmade gloves back into style and saved families from ruin or rode bionic lambs.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Tch. What were you doing?

If it involves ballet and bodily injury or the thwarting of rich snobs, you are still safe.

[juniper200.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

Could you please post more of Superlamb? My mother would simply love to see it.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Seriously?

I would love to! I'll get on it tomorrow. :]!

[leikomgwtfbbq.insanejournal.com]

These comics are pretty cool. I wonder why I didn't get such cool girls' comics when I was a kid. I was often stuck with stuff like Barbie comics or Betty and Veronica, which I always hated. Maybe my parents just didn't put the effort into finding the good stuff for me on Christmas.

Also, Superlamb looks... demonic. Wonder if he's friends with Monty Python's Vorpal Bunny.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Where'd you live? That could've been the problem!

[leikomgwtfbbq.insanejournal.com]

North Carolina, USA. Which was probably exactly the problem. XD

[endis_ni.insanejournal.com]

I didn't read much Bunty, but I loved Mandy. Similar sort of principle, in that it was full of stories for girls, but as far as I remember it didn't sell as well.

And now I'm remembering such uncertainly-written treats as Valda (http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/v/valda.htm)!

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

The speediest downhill skier of all time! That's specific.

[batcookies.insanejournal.com]

I used to love Bunty too, and now I can't find a single one of my old issues. Arrrgh! Thanks for sharing this. Bliss.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

I know the feeling, the ones I actually bought weekly (monthly?) I haven't seen for years, there are all ebay'd in the past year. :(.

But I'm glad to provide nostalgia! ^-^!

[dejadrew.insanejournal.com]

Whee! Bunty! Bunty! I'm Canadian, but I was lucky enough to discover these in a library when I was living in Saudi Arabia for a while when I was eleven. The ex-pat compound's library basically consisted of whatever had been donated by patrons over the years, I think, but at some point some kindly Brit donated a big stack o' Bunty annuals. Between those and the complete Sherlock Holmes collection, I was kept entertained enough to ignore the heat stroke.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Normally it annoys me when people mess around with folk heroes like that ('It's like Robin Hood, only with girls/dragons/gnomes/robots!'), but in this case, it actually works, because it's more like a progression of the story rather than a recasting of it. Also, those are very realistically drawn girls - quite often, when girls in their early-to-mid teens (which I presume is the age group that these girls are supposed to be in) show up in comics these days, they're either supermodels with breasts like cantaloupes or vaguely androgynous waifs that look like oversized ten-year-olds. These, on the other hand, look like girls you could actually encounter while walking down the street - quite refreshing.
Ye Gods, SuperLAMB? Just when you think you've seen every single way in which Superman could possibly influence something...

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, I love that it actually proves that it's possible, to draw girls (and women, mothers and teachers and mentors appeared) looking appropriate.

There was also a feature called Supergirl. I don't know how they got away with it or how long it lasted, but it's wacky so I might post some, actually.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Probably because DC copyright lawyers rarely pay much attention to back-up features in British girls' comics - the same basic fact that has kept the Turkish film industry afloat for all these years.
And yes, go ahead - variations on a concept are always interesting.

[skjam.insanejournal.com]

I remember Bunty from when I was stationed at RAF Upper Heyford in the early 80s. Don't remember if I still have any of the issues.

[(Anonymous)]

I spent ten years drawing for Bunty and Nikki and most of DC Thomson's other girl's comics before breaking into 2000AD and US comics. There's scans of a few pages on my blog...

http://surebeatsworking.blogspot.com/

Sean Phillips

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Sir, I would like to shake your internet hand. Really. Thanks for your work, cos as far as I can tell you were probably drawing the book I was enjoying the first time around.

[nymphgalatea.insanejournal.com]

Thank you mate. You & all your fellow artists provided me with hours of entertainment back in the day. And caused me to go on to spend far to much money on comics now I've grown up. You're awesome!