Comics for girls

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

It's 1953 and you're an eleven year old girl, dreaming about all the fantastic adventures life has to offer. What, you want a little help here? Okay, when you think of the fifties and gender roles, what do you imagine? I'd think of home-making, to be honest.

I might be wrong!

The School Friend Annual, issued from Farringdon Street, London, is what you've been given to read. Maybe by a kindly aunt.

Jean's heading to a Steeplechase, with her trusty steed Flame. She has high hopes of winning this race. WHEN..



Jean shows her what she's going to do! She is going to be craaazy brave, that's what.





She meets up with Melita again and gives her back her horse, explaining that all the bravery and credit should really go to the horse, not her.

A little later..



Oh no!

So Jean asks Melita to swap hats and scarves. Because she is crazy brave!



And sure enough, the villains mistake her for Melita and endanger her life callously.



She manages to escape though, and they shoot at her. But she out-rides their bullets and their wrath, and catches up with Melita.. during the race she figures out that Melita is riding to win her home ranch, and the villains are trying to stop her because, well, they are villainous and they want it.




And that's Jean Gray and the adventure of the Steeplechase: Flame's Finest Race.

Comics for girls! All about boyfriends and cancer. Except for when they're awesome!

Oh, and this is from an eight-page story, it's exactly a third.

Comments

[fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com]

On the one hand, this comic is great, and Jean is impressively badass.

On the other hand, this is scans_daily, so... "And soon Jean was fondling her faithful horse again?" @__@

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Hey, if it's good enough for Supergirl..

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

Jean's a copyright infringer!

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

That was pretty much entirely my thought process as well.

[seriousfic.insanejournal.com]

All I can think is how awesome it would be if Melita del Gardo were rewritten as Emma Frost. And they both wanted to ride a one-eyed stallion named Cylops I'LL STOP NOW

[grimmbear.insanejournal.com]

Wait... How did the horse get across the river and up the bank?

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

I will check in the annual and get back to you!

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

! it's in the scanned bits actually: they reached the ford further down the river, and crossed there. Sorted!

[lieut_kettch.insanejournal.com]

Well DUUUUH... Telekinetic, remember?

[grimmbear.insanejournal.com]

Do'h!
But of course.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

So in Britain, the girls got the better comics? (I say this having seen the Beano and scratched my head)

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

O, the Beano. That's one of the only britcomics that's still going, far as I know!

The boys had a lot of war comics, I think, and things like Hotspur which had some fun stories too from what I've read in my uncles' stacks in my gran's attic. The one I've nicked has a flying robot horse, so the boys did have some enviable stuff. I don't know how long Hotspur ran though, I've only looked at the girly stuff mostly!

[stig.insanejournal.com]

These days, I figure the Beano and Dandy are a terrible type of kids propaganda...by showing characters exhibiting "naughty" behaviour while also doing things such as turning invisible or powering a balloon on methane, the authors create a subconscious implication that both the ridiculous behaviour and the "naughty" behaviour are as impossible as each other.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

That sounds like a very British tactic. Though dated.

[skitty_kat.insanejournal.com]

Nah. Commando and War Picture Library too. That kind of thing.

I really should dig some of them out and post them some time. Nothing like some gung-ho tally-ho chocks-away what-do-you-mean-peace stuff. And the art is lovely, all black and white with strong jawlines and gorgeously accurate army equipment.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Ooh, please do.

[ashez2ashes.insanejournal.com]

This was really neat, thanks for posting it!

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

^-^!

Stay tuned!

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

Where's the sudsy fun?

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

For this experiment, we've substituted horse sweat for suds. Let's see if anyone notices!

[superfan1.insanejournal.com]

Ah but he mistress will, a might what to see other horse.

Awesome story, thanks for posting it.

[kaetepixie.insanejournal.com]

Wow! What art, what a story! I love it.

The Mexican girl is impressively non-stereotypical for a 50's comic as well.

Are these available in print anywhere?

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Unfortunately I don't believe so. Some of the Girls' magazines have been getting partial re-prints; Jackie and Girl have some best ofs out, and there's at least one art-book style high-quality reprint of fix of so stories from Valentine Picture Story Library (which was a romance comic for older girls, but is pretty good also).

But my favourites (such as Bunty, the British Girls' Comic) are still only available via ebay or other second-hand outlets. Theyre not rare and not too expensive if you go for the yearly albums, but single-issue stuff is hard to find from before 1990, and by then the quality had taken a dive. Even though that was whe I started reading as a tot, heh. It's also possible to find "picture story libraries", which were manga-sized, longer stories printed all at once. I guess they had lower re-read value, or were kept safer because I *think* you had to send away for them?

As for School Friend, the only time I've come across the title was in the one auction I got this annual from, so the searching would likely be harder.

It would be great if they started doing comprehensive re-prints, though, because there are so many stories and the best ones really deserve to be read again.

Giant comment!

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

There is such a connection between little girls and horse porn. I wonder if gay men feel the same way about horses?

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

The impressive thing about this is that everything the heroine does is perfectly plausible stuff that could actually be done. I mean, that doesn't sound like much, but considering that most comics are sheer fantasy (and I'm perfectly fine with that, but still), it's pretty cool that a fairly exciting story was made out of events that could actually happen, involving heroic deeds that could plausibly be done - very inspiring, in a way. (Of course, I probably would have made Melita's horse into a cyborg from outer space or something, but that's ME - I'm lucky if I can concentrate on the real world long enough to eat breakfast.)