- The Jinx from St Jonah’s (artist Mario Capaldi)
- Tricia’s Tragedy (artist Ana Rodriguez)
- Merry at Misery House (writer Terry Magee)
- The Miser’s Ghost (text story)
- The Kat and Mouse Game (artist Jim Baikie)
- Dora Dogsbody (artist José Casanovas)
- Cinderella Smith – first episode (artist Trini Tinturé)
- Bet Gets the Bird! – first episode (artist Phil Gascoine)
- Daddy’s Darling (artist Phil Townsend, writer Alison Christie)
- Slave of the Mirror (artist Carlos Freixas)
- Do-It-Yourself Dot
After so many years, I finally came into a complete copy of this issue. My old copy had pages missing.
Now I have a complete copy, I can read The Kat and Mouse Game episode in its entirety. Kat’s trick succeeds in getting Mouse expelled, but then Kat realises she still needs to take advantage of Mouse to continue the role of the Tiger in the ballet as Mouse can perform it better than she can. But we are told that Kat is going to play one trick too many next week. Ah, the thing that has been the downfall of many a troublemaker in so many stories. And now that I can read the Dora Dogsbody episode, I see an ex-sergeant major is trying to run the dogs hotel in military fashion and even the unpleasant Siddonses are unhappy about it. However, the arrogant sergeant-major does not meet his Waterloo until next week.
As the cover shows, Kate the Jinx tries her hand at ballet, but it meets with her usual disaster. The same goes when she tries supposedly harmless things for a hobby like turning pages for the school orchestra or stamp collecting.
Merry escapes from Misery House (and it’s about time!). But last week we were warned that fate was going to play a cruel trick on her. And it is now revealed to be amnesia. How can Merry stay on the run and keep one step ahead of Misery House if she’s lost her memory?
Two new stories start: “Bet Gets the Bird!” and “Cinderella Smith”. Bet saves Rosy Posy the parrot from a cruel man and brings her to her boarding school. But we can see Rosy Posy is going to bring hijinks to Bet’s school, and she starts by being mistakenly enrolled as one of the pupils! And as the title of the latter suggests, we have a new Cinderella-type story. Cindy Smith goes to stay with her cousins while Dad goes away. Cindy thinks it’s going to be great because the cousins are so wealthy and they have animals. But she did not count on her cousins being so horrible, and already they’re laying into her with a cane and giving her a ghastly room. And next week Cindy starts school in second-hand clothes when her cousins can more than afford to buy her a whole new uniform.
The “Slave of the Mirror” tries to get rid of the mirror. But she should have guessed she wouldn’t be able to get rid of the haunted mirror that easily. “Daddy’s Darling” isn’t proving popular in school because her father’s over-protective treatment of her has her classmates thinking she is a snob. And now another evacuee is arriving in the household, but what is Dad going to say? He was not happy with one evacuee to begin with.
In “Tricia’s Tragedy”, Tricia begins to learn the reason for the feud between her family and Diana’s. But Dad is being thrown out before he can properly explain – now what have Diana’s parents got to hide? And it casts even more suspicion on the events that are binding Tricia to Diana.
A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 
Love you guys, just cannot believe the work and the research that goes in your posts. Thanks. But would love to know something about June and Schoolfriend, they were available to me in the 60’s and I relished every issue I could borrow, beg.
No June blog as far as I know. Maybe someone should address it.
Sorry, as Mistyfan says there isn’t that much out there about June. We do know that it was edited by Mavis Miller who also edited Jinty, so there will have been some similarities of editorial purpose. There were also some artists in common.
There is a June collector at comicsuk who is planning to write something about June once he’s plugged some gaps in his collection. So something may come yet.
Great cover! These early issues include various that I don’t have so I will be particularly interested to see posts about them.
Unfortunately my collection of this period is too sketchy for me to write posts on the stories in question.
Never mind, I shall be glad just to see the covers & contents of them!
Talking of June, I was going through some old Junes I just acquired. It looks like Phil Gascoine was a regular on the June team; his June stories included “Tea-Trolley Nurse” and “The Twin She Couldn’t Trust!”. I wonder if it is a case of Gascoine shifting from the June team to the Jinty team, perhaps covering himself against the Tammy & June merger. Jinty started about a month before June folded and he wasn’t drawing anything in June at that period, so the transition couldn’t have been too difficult. He didn’t come over to Tammy with the Tammy & June merger; that came years later with the Tammy & Jinty merger.
Thank you very much for replying to my mail, mistyfan have you ever come in contact with Mimi the Girl Mesmerist and Vanessa from Venus, I just loved these two. Thanks once again.
Yes, I have come across them. Jinty even reprinted some Vanessa in one annual as “Minna from Mars”.
You could ask about Mimi and Vanessa at http://www.comicsuk.co.uk
There’s been discussion about June over there, particularly on Lucky’s Living Doll, and you could start your own threads to get info on Mimi and Vanessa.
I suspect there was some correlation between the birth of Jinty and the end of June. Maybe Jinty came into being because they decided June was on the way out? Jinty inherited June’s editor and many of her artists, but was not just an imitation of June. The first issue said they put a lot of thought into Jinty’s first stories and asked girls all over the country what they liked to read, so they were serious about making Jinty successful. Maybe there was a connection with why June died and their not wanting to tempt fate?
Thank you Mistyfan, are there any reprints of Mimi and would it be possible for you to tell if the Mina from Mars is in your archives.
Thanks
Sonia
I have no idea if Mimi was reprinted. But here is the link for discussion of Vanessa aka Minna from Mars in the 1976 Jinty annual https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/jinty-annual-1976/. A number of old June serials were reprinted in the early Jinty and Tammy annuals. They include She Couldn’t Remember!, Sheilagh’s Shadow and Patsy on the Warpath (reprinted as Patsy and the Beast of Banchester, a title I personally like better) among others.
Mistyfan thank you ever so much. I read the posts pretty regularly, it has brought my childhood back. Thanks. If you find a Mimi anywhere I would be grateful. Truly a beautiful Blog