Jinty Annual 1980

Cover artist: Audrey Fawley

• Rinty (cartoon)
• The Christmas Spirit (artist Trini Tinturé)
• Can You Beat Sharp-Eyed Sharon? (artist Keith Robson)
• And Then There were Two – text story (artist Shirley Bellwood, writer Linda O’Byrne)
• Alley Cat
• Drat This Weather! (feature)
• Sally Was a Cat (artist Robert MacGillivray)
• It’s a Mystery! (quiz)
• Wrong End of the Tape – text story (artist Douglas Perry)
• Rinty ‘n’ Jinty (cartoon)
• Gymnast Jinty (artist Rodrigo Comos)
• The Bride Wore Black (artist Jim Baikie)
• The Snow Dog – text story (artist Terry Aspin)
• Noel Edmonds (feature)
• If I’d been a Princess – poem
• Superspud! Feature
• Calendar 1980 (feature)
• At the Midnight Hour… – text story
• How Fruity are You? Quiz
• The Whistling Skater – poem (Concrete Surfer artist?)
• No Time for Pat (artist Jim Baikie)
• Happy Ever After – text story
• The Winning Loser (artist Phil Gascoine)
• Meet Some Hopeless Cases (feature)
• Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag! (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• The Island of Mystery – Gypsy Rose story
• Cat’s Corner – feature
• The Town Girl – text story (artist Phil Townsend)
• Take an Egg! (feature)
• Fran’ll Fix It! (artist Jim Baikie)

The Jinty annual 1980 is a solid annual. Her own features are Alley Cat, Gypsy Rose, Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag, and Fran’ll Fix It! We learn that Fran is at her worst when she is trying to be helpful (spreading Christmas cheer) because that is when disaster is most likely to strike. Despite everything, Fran does spread cheer by making an old misery laugh at the sight of her after she tries to clean a chimney. But after this she gives up helping and goes back to fixing. Rinty is a bit unusual for having his own feature at the start of the annual. It’s just Rinty – no Jinty. Yet we get a Rinty ‘n’ Jinty cartoon later in the annual.

“Sally was a Cat” is a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story. The Robert MacGillivray artwork lends even more fun to the hilarity when sourpuss Sally Biggs wishes she could change places with her cat – and then finds the cat comes from a long line of witches’ cats and can therefore oblige her! You also have to be careful what you say around Henrietta too, in the fun-bag story. Sue wishes it could be holidays all the time instead of school, and Henrietta seizes on that in her usual alacrity. Sue changes her mind when she sees the spell has everyone else off on holiday too! No burgers, no buses, no mum to make tea, because they’re all taking a holiday. Still, Sue and her friends do end up with a holiday from school in the end because of flooding.

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“The Christmas Spirit” is lost on Julie. She is fed-up with being the butt of jokes because her surname is Christmas. She tries to find the Christmas spirit for her brother’s sake but isn’t having much luck – until she finds shelter in a snowstorm and things begin to happen. The Christmas spirit also comes to the rescue of “The Town Girl,” who is having trouble fitting into country life.

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In “The Winning Loser”, Jean and Alice Fisher try to get a replacement vase for their gran, who is comatose. Alice finds one going as a second prize in a tennis match, but has to learn to play tennis and go up against Selena, an arrogant girl who is always poking fun at her. At the tennis match, Alice starts playing a bit too well against Selena and could end up with first prize instead of the second prize she wanted for her gran. So she has to face a choice at the match – her pride or her gran?

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“The Bride Wore Black” is a demented bride still clinging to her wedding gown and feast decades after the wedding that never took place. An old cliché, but the creepiness is brought off to perfection by the Jim Baikie artwork.

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Jinty annuals have still not escaped the era of reprinting old serials from June. This time it’s “No Time for Pat”. No, it isn’t about a neglected girl. It’s a tear-jerker of a story about a girl who is living on borrowed time and using it to help a wheel-chair bound girl at the orphanage. Oddly, the June reprint has no border while the other reprints of June serials in other Jinty annuals do. Yet the Fran story does have a border.

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Other reprints include Gymnast Jinty, whom Comixminx has been wondering has been one inspiration for Jinty’s name. In this reprint, Gymnast Jinty is leading a camping trip instead of doing gymnastics. But her leadership faces a huge problem – Carol Lomas. Carol is a foolhardy girl whose lack of common sense causes all sorts of scrapes and could lead to big, big trouble – and it eventually does when Carol tries to show off while a storm is blowing up.

I wonder whether the text stories were actually written for the annual or reprints, or both. “Then There Were Two” is the only one with a credit, to Linda O’Byrne as the writer. It probably is a reprint as it is drawn by Shirley Bellwood. The same may hold true for “At the Midnight Hour” as the spot illustration artist is unknown but definitely not a Jinty artist. The spot illustrations of the other text stories were done by artists who have drawn for Jinty (Terry Aspin, Douglas Perry and Phil Townsend).

The Gypsy Rose story finally leaves Uncle Pete (The Storyteller under another name) behind. Gypsy Rose is now telling the story herself, although the story is still recycled from Strange Stories. Nonetheless, it is a sign that the Jinty annuals were beginning to outgrow reprints from older comics.