Rather than posting about an individual issue (I shall be getting back to the early 1974 issues shortly once family life gives me a moment to concentrate), today I am posting a quick head’s-up about a book that is out now. It is called “Remembered Reading: Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood“, by comics scholar Dr Mel Gibson. I haven’t yet read it to be able to recommend or critically analyse it, but I am hoping to get a review copy so I can do so. From the table of contents (which you can see via the link above) it looks absolutely up my street, covering the historical context along with how the readers from then remember the comics now. So I am looking forward to it both to see what new material I learn from it and to see how it treats the topics I already have a definite view on!
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A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 
That might be an interesting read. But as the price is rather steep, I will wait with purchasing it until I know it covers the IPC titles well, and not like the book of Susan Brewer goes on and on about the ones from DCT, and just mentiones Jinty etc. just briefly.
I shall be sure to look at that element in a review.
Yes, it would have been nice to have more discussion of the titles, particularly on their backgrounds. I wonder what kind of book we could produce on Jinty with what we’ve gathered? Or maybe someone will use us as a source.
That would be great, wouldn’t it? It would be interesting to have information about sales figures. Did they change much after the mergers with Lindy and Penny (which would mean readers of the two chose for Jinty after their comic ceased to exist), and was the merger of Jinty with Tammy justified, or was Jinty still doing well enough on her own.
I think it’s quite difficult to choose the right focus & depth. I’m now more interested in other titles than I initially was (starting off I was really only interested in Jinty, and a little bit in Tammy and Misty) but I don’t really think it is sensible to focus on just one title, as I would have been tempted to do previously, because you’d narrow your possible readership a lot. Also it doesn’t give a good sense of the cultural context either. So I think you have to talk about the way that publishing worked at the time, the kinds of choices that the publishers made or didn’t make, the kinds of reactions that readers had. At the same time, the stories and the art are absolutely central so they have to be a big part of any book on the subject; inevitably you’re going to choose stories that aren’t going to be every reader’s cup of tea, so how you choose the specific stories to look at is also a difficult call I think.
At least with a blog you have unlimited space to write! 🙂