Last Tammy Ever Published: 23 June 1984

• Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)
• No Use to Anyone! (Eduardo Feito)
• Sadie in Waiting (artist Joe Collins)
• The Forbidden Garden (artist Jim Baikie)
• Secret Sisters – first episode (artist Maria Dembilio)
• A Walk in the Country – feature
• Pam of Pond Hill (artist Bob Harvey, writer Jay Over)
• Jemima and the Arabian – a Pony Tale (artist Veronica Weir)
• Top Girls! – Feature (Mari L’Anson)
• I’m Her – She’s Me! (artist Phil Gascoine)
• Cora Can’t Lose (artist Juliana Buch)

This is the last issue of Tammy ever published – for the wrong reason in that Tammy simply disappeared after this, leaving all the stories inside unfinished. In particular, former readers are still frustrated to be left dangling on the penultimate episode of “Cora Can’t Lose”. The final episode was set for the next issue, but there never was a next issue. Only a few months later did Tammy reappear, but in logo only, which appeared on a few issues of Girl.

What happened? From what another Tammy enthusiast, Marionette, has pieced together from former IPC, Tammy was due for cancellation anyway, but not until August. Presumably, Tammy was then to merge with Girl. Then, after this issue was published, there was a strike that took many weeks to settle. By the time it was, the Tammy editors decided not to pick up where they left off because it would have taken even longer to finish the stories. So everything here was dropped and left unfinished, to the eternal frustration of former Tammy readers.

Tammy was not the only title to disappear because of the strike. The same went for “Scream!”, which was only on its 15^th issue when the disaster struck. (Despite this, “Scream!” has become a cult favourite and its issues can command high prices.) But unlike Tammy, “Scream!” was allowed to continue in Eagle and finish things off. Presumably Girl did not have the room to complete Tammy’s stories because she was nearly all a photo-story comic. But IPC still had a duty to the Tammy fans to let them know how the stories ended, which they did not meet. Unlike “Scream!”, there is no evidence of the unpublished material appearing in Tammy’s holiday specials. Nor has there been any followup addressing the issue with interviews or publishing unpublished/reconstructed material. Tammy’s remaining annuals did not take the opportunity to publish any of the material either, except perhaps the Button Box stories; instead, they went for reprints. Another possibility could have been a special final issue that included the last episode of Cora and potted summaries for the other stories, but that wasn’t done either.

It is also telling that Tammy has dropped the Princess logo all of a sudden. Princess had only merged with Tammy in April, so dropping the logo of a merging comic in such a short space of time is disturbing. It hints at the direction Tammy was going with her sales and what was in store for her had the strike not intervened.

So just what inside was left dangling? First, Bella finds a coach who offers to get her back into proper gymnastics – on condition that she quit the acrobatics she has done with Benjie. But this will mean letting Benjie down. Bella is left with a tough choice to make, but we never find out what she decides. Ironically, it is virtually 10 years to the day here that Bella started: she first appeared on 22 June 1974.

In “No Use to Anyone!”, Kirsty gets some tips on how to train her puppy, Clumsy. But now the blind Clumsy has been trapped by a herd of cows, and Kirsty is terrified of cows. We never find out how she rescues Clumsy.

“Sadie in Waiting” had come over from Princess, and it brings Grovel, the first villainous butler since Pickering of “Molly Mills”, to Tammy. Grovel is out to win the “Servant of the Year” award in his usual fashion, which does not include working hard or honestly.

In Tammy’s reprint of “The Forbidden Garden”, Gladvis has started blackmailing Laika over her water theft. This is about to include forcing Laika to do a dreadful job in the dreaded industrial zone, with water instead of money for wages. Perhaps the reprint of “The Forbidden Garden” had something to do with Princess, which had reprinted several old serials from Tammy and Jinty in her final issues, including “Stefa’s Heart of Stone“, “Horse from the Sea” and “The Dream House”. However, it is a bit surprising that Tammy chose to start reprinting a long serial when she was set for an August cancellation, and it is unlikely that Girl would have had the room to finish the story. So one wonders how the reprint would have been finished off. In the previous issue, the story had a double-up spread, but that is not the case here. Perhaps once Cora was finished, there would have been more double-ups until the merger.

“Secret Sisters” starts in this issue, but sadly never got beyond episode one. Jill Paget is an adopted child who wishes she had siblings. Then she finds out she has three sisters who were adopted separately and wants to find them. Next week is supposed to include a “surprise move”, but we never find out what it is.

In “Pam of Pond Hill”, Pam is set to move on to Tess Bradshaw, the third classmate she is going to stay with while Pam’s family are away. But all of a sudden Tess says she can’t have Pam and even slams the door in her face. The blurb for next week tells us that we are going to find out what is wrong with Tess, but we never do.

(Click thru)

Pam’s last episode 1

Pam’s last episode 2

Pam’s last episode 3

Incidentally, Pam’s various sleepovers with her classmates have developed their characters and home lives in surprising ways. During her stay with Goofy, Pam was surprised to find that Goofy could be extremely determined when he fixed his mind on beating something. The trouble is, that determination could take him to obsessive levels. Pam’s stay with Di (Diana) has changed the life of Diana’s mother for the better. She is going to be less house-proud, just to satisfy the demands of her husband, and he is going to be less demanding of her.

There is no Button Box story in this issue. Instead, we have the last Pony Tale ever published, “Jemima and the Arabian”. The Arabian is proving a bit too spirited for the stablehands until the horse strikes a surprise friendship with a cat called Jemima. Next week we are promised a complete tennis story, but we never get it.

Also lost was the last episode of “The Button Box”. It is not known how far this one was in production, but Alison Christie was going to end it with Bev Jackson discovering she has regained the use of her legs while reaching for a button. Thereafter, the button is her all-time favourite. Presumably this last episode was scripted for the real final issue of Tammy, which was due in August. At least we know The Button Box would have been given a definite conclusion instead of just ending on a regular episode.

“I’m Her – She’s Me!” is Phil Gascoine’s last, and incomplete, story for Tammy. Nice Paula Holmes and nasty Natalie Peters have somehow switched bodies after a strange lightning strike. Natalie is all set to explore new avenues of nastiness under her new identity while Paula is desperate to get help. She finally does so in this episode, where she manages to convince her ballet teacher of what happened. But then they strike new problems – Natalie has now gone and broken one of the legs in Paula’s body, and then Natalie’s unfit father shows up and is trying to drag Paula, in Natalie’s body, back home, where he has something unpleasant in mind for her. We never find out if the ballet teacher manages to rescue her, how the girls get their bodies back, or, for that matter, just how that bolt of lightning caused them to switch bodies in the first place.

(Click thru)

And now we come to the most frustrating part of Tammy’s sudden disappearance – the penultimate episode of “Cora Can’t Lose”, with no final episode ever coming after. When this story came out, it really had me hooked and I was anxious to find out what was going to happen in the final episode. From the sound of comments on the Internet, so were a lot of other readers.

Cora Street has gone on an obsessive sports cup-winning frenzy to win the respect of her parents, who kept putting her down for not winning sports trophies as they did when they were at school. But this is putting Cora’s life in danger because she cares more about winning the trophy her mother failed to win than seeking treatment for a head injury that is currently affecting her vision and hearing and will ultimately kill her if left untreated. Not even the identikit issued by the hospital in this episode brings her to her senses. And now the injury is causing another problem: it may have caused Cora to unwittingly spike her main rival during an event. If she’s right, she could face disqualification and be out of the running for the cup.

Final note: The ending of “The Forbidden Garden” is known because it is a Jinty reprint, and a summary of the story can be found on this site. If anyone has any information on how the other unfinished stories would have ended, they are welcome to drop a line here.

Can a computer program help us identify unknown writers? 4

Right now I am sorry to say that I haven’t had great success with the computer program that I was hoping would help us to identify unknown writers. I’m by no means declaring it to be impossible or unrealistic, but I think I will need to ask for help from the experts who wrote the program and/or who do more of this sort of analysis on a day to day basis.

My initial trials were to see if I could test a Jay Over script known to be by him against another one known to be by him, so as to see if the program could pick out a ‘known good’ example. It did do that pretty well, but it may be that I calibrated the program options too closely against Jay Over. I haven’t got to the stage of being able to say that this series of tests, done in this way, gives you a good chance of identifying this text by a known author. (Unless that known author is Jay Over, she says slightly bitterly.) And if I can’t do this reasonably reliably, there is no point (as yet, at least) in moving on to trying out unknown author texts.

In my last post about this computer program, I ran a series of 10 tests against a Jay Over text, and the program reliably picked out Jay Over as the most likely author of that text out of a supplied set of 4 test authors. It was much less reliable in picking out a test Malcolm Shaw text out of the same set of test authors: only 5 of the 10 tests suggested that Malcolm Shaw was the best fit. I have now tried the same 10 tests with an Alan Davidson text (“Jackie’s Two Lives”), and with a Pat Mills text (“Girl In A Bubble”). This means that all four of the test authors have been tested against a text that is known to be by them.

• Unfortunately, in the test using an Alan Davidson text the program was even worse at picking him out as the ‘best fit’ result: it only did so in 2 of the 10 tests, and in 4 of the tests it placed him in last, or least likely to have written that test text.
• In the test using a Pat Mills text, the program was rather better at picking him out as the ‘best fit’ result, though still not great: it did so in 4 out of 10 tests, and in 3 of the remaining tests he was listed second; and he was only listed as ‘least likely/worst fit’ in one of the tests.

The obvious next step was to try with a larger group of authors. I tried the test texts of Jay Over (“Slave of the Clock”) and of Malcolm Shaw (“Bella” and “Four Faces of Eve”) against a larger group of 6 authors (Primrose Cumming, Anne Digby, Polly Harris, Louise Jordan, Jay Over, Malcolm Shaw).

• With the Jay Over text, only 7 of the 10 tests chose him as the ‘best fit’, so the attribution of him as the author is showing as less definite in this set of tests.
• With the Malcolm Shaw texts, only 1 and 3 tests (for “Bella” and for “Eve” respectively identified him as the ‘best fit’ – not enough for us to have identified him as the author if we hadn’t already known him to be so. (He also came last, or second to last, in 4 of the first set of tests, and the same in the second set of tests.)

I should also try with more texts by each author. However I think that right now I will take a break from this, in favour of trying to contact the creators of the program. I hope they may be able to give me better leads of the right direction to take this in. Do we need to have much longer texts for each author, for instance? (We have generally been typing up just one episode for each author – I thought might be too much of an imposition to ask people to do any more than that, especially as it seemed sensible to try to get a reasonably-sized group of authors represented.) Are there some tests I have overlooked, or some analytical methods that are more likely to be applicable to this situation? Hopefully I will be able to come back with some extra info that means I can take this further – but probably not on any very immediate timescale.

In the meantime, I leave you with the following list of texts that people have kindly helped out with. You may find (as I have) that just looking at the texts themselves is quite interesting and revealing. I am more than happy to send on any of the texts if they would be of interest to others. There are also various scans of single episodes sent on by Mistyfan in particular, to whom many thanks are due.

• Alison Christie, “Stefa’s Heart of Stone” (typed by Marckie)
• Primrose Cumming, “Bella” (typed by Lorrbot)
• Alan Davidson, three texts
  • “Fran of the Floods” (typed by Marckie)
  • “Jackie’s Two Lives” (typed by me)
  • “Kerry In the Clouds” (typed by me, in progress)
• Anne Digby, “Tennis Star Tina” (typed by Lorrbot)
• Gerry Finley-Day, “Slaves of War Orphan Farm” (typed by Mistyfan)
• Polly Harris, two texts
  • “Monkey Tricks” (typed by Mistyfan)
  • “Midsummer Tresses” (typed by Mistyfan)
• Louise Jordan, “The Hardest Ride” (typed by Mistyfan)
• Jay Over, two texts
  • “Slave of the Clock” (typed by me)
  • “The Secret of Angel Smith” (typed by me)
• Malcolm Shaw, five texts
  • “Lucky” (typed by Lorrbot)
  • “The Sentinels” episode 1 (typed by Lorrbot)
  • “The Sentinels” episode 2 (typed by Lorrbot)
  • “Bella” (typed by Lorrbot)
  • “Four Faces of Eve” (typed by Lorrbot)
• Pat Mills, two texts
  • “Concrete Surfer” (typed by me)
  • “Girl In A Bubble” (typed by me)
• John Wagner, “Eva’s Evil Eye” (typed by Mistyfan)

 

 

Tammy’s 10th Birthday Issue

Cover artist: Robert MacGillivray

Characters/serials on the cover: Sandy Rawlings; Molly Mills; Belinda Bookworm; Wee Sue; Bella Barlow; Mary Moldesworth from Bessie Bunter?; Push-along, Patti; Bessie Bunter; Miss Bigger

•  Bella (artist John Armstrong)
• The Black and White World of Shirley Grey – first episode (artist Diane Gabbot, writer Jake Adams?)
• Push-along, Patti (artist Juliana Buch)
• Wee Sue (artist Robert MacGillivray)
• Help Yourself to a Holiday – competition
• Molly Mills and the Echoes from the Past – new story (artist Douglas Perry)
• Edie and Miss T (artist Joe Collins)
• Tune-In (feature)
• Belinda Bookworm (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)
• Imaginary Abbie – Strange Story from the Mists (artist Eduardo Feito)
• Rita My Robot Friend (artist Tony Coleman)

While it is out of the garage, I am going to discuss the issue where Tammy celebrated her 10^th birthday (sadly, this is something Jinty never reached). Tammy certainly pulls out the stops to celebrate: her commemorative cover; Edie and Miss T redecorating their rooms with 10 years’ worth of Tammy; Miss Bigger taking Wee Sue and her friends on a special tour to the Tammy office; and Molly reflecting on her 10 years at Stanton Hall (once Pickering points out she had been there that long). And of course it wouldn’t be complete without celebratory competitions.

When revisiting past Tammy characters, we see that the focus is on ones who are currently running (Belinda Bookworm), have appeared in comparatively recent years (Thursday’s Child, Cindy of Swan Lake), or whose memory still lingers on (Olympia Jones, Babe of St Wood’s). The only really early Tammy character to reappear is Cat Girl. There are no Slaves of ‘War Orphan Farm’, Aunt Aggie, School for Snobs, Beattie or any of the characters from the first years.

Wee Sue has a very special commemorative story, reproduced below. Miss Bigger takes the class on a tour of King’s Reach Tower to see how Tammy is produced. Sue ends up in the copy room where she falls asleep trying to read 10 years’ worth of Tammy. Her dream takes her to flashbacks of Tammy characters, old and new, and finally Tammy’s birthday party. The Tammy stories referenced to in the Wee Sue story are, in alphabetical order:

Babe of St. Wood’s

Belinda Bookworm

Bella Barlow

Bessie Bunter

Cindy of Swan Lake

Goldie Alone

Jeannie and Her Uncle Meanie

My Terrible Twin (not mentioned, but the protagonists are recognisable)

Molly Mills

Olympia Jones

Push-along, Patti

Sandy Rawlings (three stories appeared in total, individually titled)

The Cat Girl

Thursday’s Child

(click thru)

Wee Sue celebrates Tammy’s 10th birthday 7 February 1981

Wee Sue celebrates Tammy’s 10th birthday 7 February 1981

Wee Sue celebrates Tammy’s 10th birthday 7 February 1981

Wee Sue celebrates Tammy’s 10th birthday 7 February 1981

However, the Molly story does reflect back on the early days and hints at how different the tone of Tammy was back then. Molly not only remembers the time she arrived at Stanton Hall but also how much more cruel Pickering was back in the early days.  Indeed, the Molly strip has become tamer now in comparison to what it was in Tammy’s early years. It has clearly been toned down. Pickering is still a bully who picks on Molly, but the stocks, beatings, dungeons and cold duckings in the lake are now a thing of Tammy’s past, thank goodness. Even the catty Betty and Kitty, who played a dirty trick that nearly got Molly sacked on her first day, have lost their cattiness and are more friendly with Molly.

(click thru)

Tammy herself has been toned down as well. When she was first launched, she revelled in stories filled with darkness, cruelty, torture and suffering. But readers loved it and her sales rocketed. Stories with the Cinderella theme or slave theme (girls used as slaves in one form or another) abounded, and a number of them, such as “Slaves of ‘War Orphan Farm’” and “The Four Friends at Spartan School” really pushed the envelope with the tortures their heroines went through. But by the late 1970s these had all faded. All that remained of them was Bella Barlow, who is still badly treated by Jed and Gert Barlow, although she has just rescued them from hard times.

But Tammy had not gone all light and soppy. Her current stories, “Belinda Bookworm”, “Push-along, Patti” and “Rita My Robot Friend” all feature heroines who are being bullied/ostracised at school and trying to rise above it. Tammy’s new story, “The Black and White World of Shirley Grey”, will also feature some extremely vicious and horrifying bullying in the weeks ahead.

It has been just over a year since Misty merged with Tammy. The Misty logo is smaller now and there have been fewer spooky stories than when Misty joined. But the Strange Stories from the Mist continue, as do Edie and Miss T and the Misty horoscope.

Tammy and Misty 19 January 1980

Cover artist: John Richardson

• Bella – new story (artist John Armstrong)
• Daughter of the Desert (artist Mario Capaldi)
• Sister in the Shadows (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)
• Spider Woman – first episode (artist Jaume Rumeu aka Homero Romeu)
• Edie and Miss T (artist Joe Collins)
• Put Yourself in the Picture! – Quiz (artist Juliana Buch)
• Wee Sue (artist Robert MacGillivray)
• Friend Pepi – Strange Story from the Mists (artist José Ariza?)
• Make Headlines, Hannah! (artist Tony Coleman)
• Cindy of Swan Lake (artist Ana Rodriguez)

Sometimes we deviate from the main topic to bring attention to topics that are related to Jinty. So this entry goes off-topic to discuss the issue where Misty merged with Tammy.

The merger brings one change to the Tammy logo – the floral patterns disappear and the font becomes solid, straight red.

The merger still resonated years later – mostly because a number of Misty readers were not happy with it and wanted the original back. The short-lived Best of Misty Monthly that appeared some years after the merger was a response to the demand for the return of Misty. A “Best of” monthly was something neither Tammy nor Jinty ever had, though Girl (series 2) did get one as well. Even today, there are efforts to bring Misty back in one form or other.

Updated to add: efforts to revive Misty are now meeting with some success, with reprint volumes, The Scream & Misty Halloween Special, and Misty stories being reprinted in Bite Me!

At the time, the merger itself must have been something of a disappointment for a number of Misty readers because there was not much Misty in it (it was for me, and I was a Tammy reader). Things did not improve much once Tammy’s current serials finished, which would have made more room for overt Misty material. “The Loneliest Girl in the World”, “The Sea Witches”, (possibly) “A Girl Called Midnight”, “Danger Dog” and “The Shadow of Sherry Brown” look like they may have come from Misty. Some of them, such as “The Loneliest Girl in the World”, were undoubtedly Misty. But in other cases it can be hard to say if the spooky story was Misty or Tammy; after all, Tammy ran spooky stories too. Later on, Misty’s text stories returned; they must have taken the advice of one reader who suggested it. Mini-serial spooky stories, such as “The House Mouse”, also appeared occasionally, just as they did in the original Misty.

Misty arguably made her mark more in the Strange Stories, which became “Strange Stories from the Mist”, with Misty herself being rotated with the Storyteller. Miss T and Edie merged into one cartoon, which is a simple matter, because Joe Collins drew them both. They are a bit of an odd couple (ordinary girl and witch), which perhaps made the cartoon even better. Once Snoopa joined in the Jinty merger, they became “The Crayzees”.

Misty also brought a darker tone into Tammy, which was still felt even during the Tammy and Jinty merger, when “Monster Tales” started. There was no way either Tammy or Jinty would run anything like that – it had to be Misty. Perhaps “Monster Tales” was originally conceived for Misty, but there was no room until Bessie, Wee Sue and Molly Mills were amalgamated into one feature “Old Friends”, which they shared in rotation.

Some letters from Tammy readers indicate that the incorporation of Misty must have been a shock to them. Several commented that they found her spooky theme not only unsettling but unrealistic as well. Indeed, “Spider Woman” (a sequel to “The Black Widow” from Misty) must have given them all nightmares full of spiders. Spider Woman is an insane scientist who could well have been the first villain in Tammy to be out for world domination. Even more frightening, the story plays on the common fear of spiders to heights that Tammy readers had never seen before. We see spiders capable of eating people alive and leaving only the bones, giant spiders, poisonous spiders, and even a serum that can turn a human being into a spider!

The merger issue also has a very interesting quiz that shows that Tammy and Misty made serious efforts to accustom readers to the tone of the two different comics. Here readers are not only invited to imagine themselves in the places of the heroines in the story, but are also informed about the stories that will replace the currently running “Cindy of Swan Lake”, “Sister in the Shadows”, “Daughter of the Desert” and “Make the Headlines, Hannah!” This is the only case where I have seen upcoming stories being revealed in this way. Normally we are not informed about any new stories until the week before they start. The quiz also informs us that Bessie Bunter has been demoted from a regular weekly strip to a character “who you’ll meet from time to time”.

(Click thru)

In later weeks, Tammy and Misty ran another feature to get readers further acquainted with Tammy regulars (two of whom, Bessie and Molly, were not even appearing at the time). This was “Misty’s House of Mystery”, a game where Tammy regulars Sue, Bella, Bessie and Molly are caught in Misty’s House of Mystery, which is full of horrors such as blood showers and man-eating plants! The game is reproduced below. Imagine Jinty regulars going through a thing like that….

(Click thru)

And in this issue, Bella starts her bid for the Moscow Olympics by entering the world qualifier in Texas, with the help of her coach and her wealthy guardians, the Courtney-Pikes. Sounds like Bella’s hopes for the Olympics are better than in her 1976 Montreal Olympics story, where she had to make her way alone without even a passport, but only got as far as participating in the opening ceremony. But unexpected expenses that cause money shortages, unhelpful Texan coaches, and the sudden withdrawal of the Courtney-Pikes without explanation are already leaving her up the proverbial creek without a paddle before the event even begins.

Jinty and Lindy 16 April 1977

Stories in this issue:

• Creepy Crawley (artist Trini Tinturé)
• Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag! (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• Gypsy Rose: Fear In The Forest (artist Keith Robson)
• Spell of the Spinning Wheel (artist Jim Baikie, writer Alison Christie)
• Alley Cat
• The Darkening Journey (artist José Casanovas)
• Made-Up Mandy (artist Audrey Fawley) – last episode
• Kerry In The Clouds (artist Emilia Prieto, writer Alan Davidson) – first episode
• Mark of the Witch! (artist Phil Townsend)
• Green Fingers are Fun! – feature

This is the last issue labeled with “Jinty and Lindy” – from next issue the title of the comic will revert back to being simply “Jinty”. It also marks a transition in cover styles – the previous issue’s cover had a design based on interior story panels but done in a rather boxy, rigid style. From this issue onwards, Jinty started to use a softer design style, based on interior panels but outlined with a loose line picked out in colour. The title of the comic is still put in a straight-edged box, but from next week this too changes, to a beautiful splash of blue behind the gold lettering. This is a cover that has great memories for me as heralding a fantastic run of the comic.

In “Creepy Crawley”, Jean is finding out the power of the scarab brooch, and how it will change her so that she can beat her rival, Mandy. Yes: it makes her lie, cheat, and risk injury to her rivals. Nice!

The Gypsy Rose story this issue is a werewolf story, drawn in the evocative style of Keith Robson. Gypsy Rose helps to solve the mystery of the savage wolf which has attacked sheep in the Black Forest.

“Spell of the Spinning Wheel” is in full flow: nasty rival Della has left Rowan asleep listening to the hum of her hair-dryer – but luckily it is a battery-powered one which runs down, letting Rowan wake up and join her in training. But the humming bees that Rowan comes across next won’t let her wake up as quickly – even when her head is hanging dangerously near to the fast-flowing stream!

It’s the last episode of “Made-Up Mandy” and all comes right in the end. Mandy remembers her adventures and mentors a new girl who may end up going down similar lines. Next week it will be replaced by “The Robot Who Cried!”

“Kerry In the Clouds” starts this week, replacing “Freda, False Friend!”. (As that latter story was drawn by Phil Gascoine and this new one is drawn by Spanish artist Prieto, this means that we are in a relatively rare issue without any Gascoine art.) We have recently found out the writer of this story – Alan Davidson – and I reprint the opening episode for your enjoyment. If you look at the recent post by Pat Davidson, you will also see the first type-written page of script for this story.

click thru

click thru

Jinty 14 May 1977

• Creepy Crawley (Trini Tinturé)
• Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag! (Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• Dads! Competition results
• Jamie! (artist Phil Townsend) – Gypsy Rose story
• Curtain of Silence (artist Terry Aspin)
• Make a Play-Changing Tent – feature
• Alley Cat
• Fans…Friends or Foes? – feature
• The Darkening Journey (artist José Casanovas)
• The Robot Who Cried (artist Rodrigo Comos, writer Malcolm Shaw)
• Kerry in the Clouds (artist Emilia Prieto, writer Alan Davidson)
• Spell of the Spinning Wheel (artist Jim Baikie, writer Alison Christie)

The cover has a very interesting design. Instead of the more common two panels it incorporates three, in a fan shape radiating from a sun that emphasises it being a “sizzling” comic.

In this issue, Jinty closes her competition “If Dad Did”, where readers won money if their letters on the jobs they wish their fathers could do were published. Letters published here imagine their fathers as potters, US presidents, lotto winners, dustmen, disc jockeys, gymnastics trainers and Romany gypsies.

In “Creepy Crawley”, warning bells are now ringing that the power of the scarab brooch is getting beyond Jean’s ability to control it. Sheila is the only ray of hope, because she has caught on to what is going on. But what can Sheila do when she does not even believe in herself?

A fisherman asks for trouble when he appropriates Henrietta for his own use. And when he puts his fish bait (worms and maggots) in Henrietta – well!

It’s part two of “Curtain of Silence”, and several plot threads emerge in this episode that are clearly going to shape the story. First, selfish Yvonne is in for a surprise (and so is everyone else) when she arrives in Mavronia – her rival Olga is almost a dead ringer for her! Second, a gypsy woman warns Yvonne to go quickly because she foresees “bad things” for her. Sounds like good advice, but the arrogant Yvonne isn’t taking it. Third, her arrogance is making her very unpopular with her teammates.

The Gypsy Rose story is one of Jinty’s rare forays into the subject of World War II, and it ends on a more tragic note than most of Rose’s stories.

Katy the robot makes a mistake that threatens to give her away – she uses too much strength on a bar and bends it. Can she worm her way out of this one?

“Kerry in the Clouds” is on cloud 9 right now, because she is becoming famous under Gail Terson. But she does not realise that Gail is taking advantage of her head always being in the clouds…

Thumper and Beaky have a narrow escape and are on their way to Julie again. But they’d better hurry, because doctors are not risking an operation on Julie while she is pining for Thumper too much.

Rowan tries to replace the evil spinning wheel with a harmless model. As a result, she finds herself in danger of falling down a quarry and is hanging by a thread, er, tree stump. It looks like the mist caused the accident, but Rowan is convinced it is the evil spinning wheel. If so, will it succeed in killing her this time?

Further updates from Pat Davidson

(comment sent by email)

I have found another of Alan’s stories for your computer tests – and this one is actually noted and dated as being for Jinty. “Kerry in the Clouds” ran from April 1977. Copy of the script’s p. 1 of Instalment 1 is attached for interest. This may not have been one of his best as by this time he was focusing more on writing books. It’s perfectly true, as correspondents have recently pointed out, that a writer had to be very prolific to make a good living in the comics market.

I’ve located a few more of Alan’s scripts but I’m unable to identify the publications, as he wrote for so many different ones, including Tina in Holland and Editions Aventures et Voyages in France. I do remember, as mentioned previously, that he particularly enjoyed writing “Fran of the Floods” and “Valley of Shining Mist” and these were both for Jinty. As for any others, it will be interesting to see what the computer comes up with.

Art by Emilia Prieto – penname of Cándido Ruiz Pueyo

—

[editorial comment] Pat, I’m sure that if you are able to supply titles of stories, the combined knowledge of readers of this blog and other related internet sites will help to identify the publications!

“Kerry In The Clouds” is not one of the best-remembered of all Jinty stories and I think it is probably true to say that it is not on the same level as “Fran of the Floods” or “Jackie’s Two Lives”. I do have a soft spot for it though.

Richard Neillands

Sample Images

Little information is available on Richard Neillands. He was known to be a prolific artist in the 1970s and 1980s, though he was seen more frequently at DCT, and an incomplete list of his DCT stories can be found here. He was a regular artist in Mandy, Judy and Tracy with serials like “Unhappy Families”, “The Girl with No Shadow” and “Polly’s Painted Smile”. On Tammy, Neillands drew some Wee Sue stories, but was not a regular or long-lasting Wee Sue artist. He was probably used as a filler artist. [Edited to add: he was a filler artist in Sandie also.]

On Jinty, Neillands drew one serial, “Darling Clementine”, and a humorous regular, “Bizzie Bet and the Easies”. Bizzie Bet was an energetic girl who tries to get the lazy Easies off their butts every week, but the Easies always win in the end. Bizzie Bet lasted about six months (27 episodes), which although reasonable, did not make her a long runner compared to Jinty’s other humorous regulars such as “Gaye’s Gloomy Ghost” or “The Jinx from St Jonah’s”.

Richard Neillands stories in Jinty

• Darling Clementine (1977-78)
• Bizzie Bet and the Easies (1979)

Stories in other titles:

• Some fill-in episodes in “Bonnie’s Butler” (Sandie, 1972)
• Some Wee Sue episodes (Tammy)

Guy Peeters

Sample Images

Guy Peeters is a very popular, long-standing artist in girls’ comics. Regrettably, he has no entry at all at Lambiek Comiclopedia and no other information on him is currently available, except for a listing of his works on Catawiki. It is only due to the Tammy credits that his name is known, but it is possible that it was a pseudonym.

Peeters was a very prolific artist at DCT, with his artwork appearing in Nikki, Mandy, Judy and M&J among others. His best-known work at DCT is arguably Penny’s Place, which started in M&J and then moved to Bunty with a merger. An incomplete list of Peeters stories at DCT can be found here.

At IPC, Peeters made his strongest presence in Jinty, particularly in regard to her SF stories. SF was one of his strengths, and his style really brought several of Jinty’s SF classics to life, including “Land of No Tears” and “Worlds Apart”. Peeters also brought off sport well, but only did one sports story for Jinty, “Black Sheep of the Bartons”. It is rather surprising that he also drew a ballet story, “Slave of the Swan”, and also a complete story, “Forget-Me-Not at Christmas”, which contained period elements, as his style is less suited to ballet and period stories than other artists.

In Tammy, Peeters’ artwork appeared more intermittently. He drew nothing for Misty, despite his aptitude for SF. But he did draw one of Tammy’s best-remembered SF classics, “E.T. Estate”. This was during Tammy’s credit run, which gives a name to this hugely popular artist.

Guy Peeters Jinty stories

• Carnival of Flowers – Gypsy Rose story (1977)
• Land of No Tears (1977-78)
• Slave of the Swan (1978)
• The Human Zoo (1978-79)
• “I’ll Make Up for Mary” (1979)
• Pandora’s Box (1979)
• Black Sheep of the Bartons (1979)
• Forget-Me-Not at Christmas – complete story (1979)
• Worlds Apart (1981)

 

Credited Guy Peeters story in Tammy (click thru)

Pat Davidson writes

(comment sent by email)
I was interested to read about your computer programme designed to identify authors. If you need another story to test, Alan was the author of the brilliant “Paint It Black” – although this was for Misty, not Jinty [faint carbon copy of one of his invoices attached]. I have carbon copies of some of his actual scripts for various publications, when I can find them, although I know these will be equally faint.

—

[editorial comment] Of course I need hardly say that any scripts or further information on Alan Davidson and what he wrote will be extremely welcome! The words ‘eager anticipation’ come to mind.