Cover artist: Mario Capaldi
- Pam of Pond Hill (writer Jay Over, artist Bob Harvey)
- Gaye’s Gloomy Ghost (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
- The Romany’s Reading – Gypsy Rose story (artist Jim Baikie)
- A Spell of Trouble (artist Trini Tinturé)
- Tansy of Jubilee Street (artist Ken Houghton)
- Behind the Screen: John Craven’s Newsround
- Minnow (artist Peter Wilkes)
- Winning Ways 19 – Gymnastics: the Bridge or Crab (writer Benita Brown)
- Blind Faith (artist Phil Townsend)
This is rather a browned copy of the issue, though to be fair the colouring of the cover image also has a beige background which helps give that impression.
Pam is dealing with a tricky situation: her schoolmate Hazel has been shoplifting and all the class has had a share in the stolen goods – will the blame rebound on them too? And – what drove Hazel to do it? Her home life seems far from happy, given the wee glimpse of her parents that we see.
There is a half-page advert for “Tears of a Clown” which starts in the next week’s issue: a hard-hitting tale of some cruel bullying of a misfit girl. It feels a slightly ‘in between’ issue in some ways – we had the last episode of “The Venetian Looking-Glass” in the previous week, and the episode of “Gaye’s Gloomy Ghost” is the one which is shortened by half a page to fit in the advert. The Gypsy Rose story is a substantial four-pager by Jim Baikie: a girl who helps an old gypsy woman is rewarded by being given a fortune reading. She will be in an accident but will be rescued by a ship. Surprisingly this turns out to happen while she is stranded in a desert – she is rescued by a camel, which of course is also called ‘the ship of the desert’.
Both the Gypsy Rose story and the episode of “A Spell of Trouble” have a fairly large first panel and only 6 panels on the first page: the page layout is far from being a straightforward grid, too. I wonder if that means that Jinty was experimenting with less conventional comics storytelling at this point? Not that episodes of “Concrete Surfer” some two years earlier, for instance, hadn’t also challenged the more staid conventions too, but it is relatively noticeable when there are two stories doing this one after the other. The Blacks are given an ultimatum: no non-witches can live with a witch family, under pain of losing their magic powers – so Carrie and her mum have to turn Angela into a witch, quick sharp!
The feature on TV programs is this week covering the very popular “John Craven’s Newsround”. Interestingly, they explain that there was only about 25% overlap with the main news of the day – the majority of the news stories were written specifically for the children’s show.
In “Minnow”, Minna remembers more about her mysterious past that her mother refuses to talk about – her friends tease her by splashing her with waves but this is her trigger for panicking – in her panic she remembers drowning and seeing faces surrounding her in a mist. Next week she is to be furthered threatened, by strangers at the pool!
Cromwell the blind horse is being given up to the police, but he and Clare are rescued by the blind daughter of the farmer who caught them…
A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 
I feel Tears of a Clown was inspired by Waves of Fear, which ran some months earlier. They share some similarities, including the same artist.
Yes, I agree. Both are hard-hitting stories about bullying and have a similar ‘feel’.
It could even be that Tears of a Clown was written shortly after Waves of Fear, but the editor didn’t want two bullying stories running so close to each other. By the way, Tears of a Clown attracted a lot of popular comment in the letters page. One reader commented that the final episode had her in tears and she thought it was one of Jinty’s best ever. It was one of my favourites too.
The protagonist is something of a no-hoper but I never got fed up with having my heartstrings tugged, unlike with “I’ll Make up for Mary” or similar guilt-trip stories – she is endearing, if you like.
Guilt trip stories run the danger of wearying out your patience because so often you want to yell at the girl, “Oh for God’s sakes, will you shut up about it being all your fault!” This was the case with Tammy’s “The Black and White World of Shirley Grey” where Shirley kept blaming herself for her friend Tricia’s accident, although her parents and friends kept telling her she shouldn’t and it was Tricia’s own stupid fault by tempting fate once too often by practising her diving in such a dangerous place.
Even the theme of running is common between the two stories.
Ah, so it is. Further indication it was the same writer?
Yes, it feels to me like that is quite likely.
The Hazel shoplifting story is a realistic one because there are similar sad cases in real life.