Tammy & Misty 11 October 1980

Cover artist: John Armstrong

• Bella (artist John Armstrong) – new story
• The Black Stallion (text and spot photo adaptation) – first episode
• Sandy and Steve (artist Juliana Buch) – first episode
• The Loneliest Girl in the World (artist Jaume Rumeu) – final episode
• Looking Good Booklet part 1 – feature
• Running Rosie Lee (artist José Casanovas) – final episode
• Edie and Miss T (artist Joe Collins)
• Cut-Glass Crystal (artist Tony Coleman) – final episode
• Plain as Pearl (artist Juliana Buch)
• Dulcie Wears the Dunce’s Hat (artist Mario Capaldi)

 

This issue of Tammy is a milestone in Tammy’s history. Tammy does away with the logo she has used ever since her first issue (with some tweaks) in favour of one with a more modern and heavier typeset. She still has the Misty logo underneath, though.

Tammy also does away with the Cover Girls, who have graced her cover ever since Sandie merged with Tammy. So that’s John Richardson out of a job. The Tammy covers are using a style similar to the one that Jinty used in her early years before she started using story panels: put the opening page of a story on the cover. However, in this case it was one or two of the first panels, used as splash panels on the whole cover, as opposed to resizing the whole of the first page to fit on the cover. So the story still ran for three pages inside. For the most part it was Bella, as is the case here. Putting Bella directly on the cover must have attracted even more readers to her and to Tammy. Not to mention seeing Bella in full colour. Now and then Bella was on hiatus, so Tammy used other serials on the cover. This style was used for Tammy’s covers throughout 1981 and the Jinty merger. It ended with the 10 July 1982 issue.

The new look Tammy also has some new stories to match. The first is a new Bella story. Bella is helping Uncle Jed and Aunt Gert revive their window cleaning business after Jed’s back injury put it out of action and they have been reduced to squatting. So far Jed and Gert have not mistreated Bella the way they used to, but trouble comes in another form. A gang of hooligans blackmail Bella into one of their schemes, threatening to report her relatives for squatting. Then the scheme goes badly wrong when they are attacked by guard dogs.

Tammy also begins another adaptation, that of “The Black Stallion”. But it is the new serial “Sandy and Steve” that is the most striking, and must have caught readers by a most delightful surprise. For the first time, Tammy is running a boyfriend serial. This was really radical for the time, because at that stage girls’ comics did not run boyfriend serials. Boys and boyfriends, when they appeared, were on the periphery. It’s no wonder Sandy became so popular in Tammy. She spawned two sequels, the last of which had her finally having a boyfriend that she and her father could both agree upon. For the first story, though, Dad does not approve of Sandy dating Steve because he’s a real snob and regards Steve as “riff-raff”. So Dad begins his interfering habit of pairing Sandy up with boys that he deems suitable. Unfortunately the boy’s class and business/political connections with the boy’s parents are what dictate Dad’s choices of ‘suitable’ boyfriends for Sandy. He has no consideration for Sandy’s tastes or wishes. Heaven forbid this man ever goes into the dating agency business!

Also new is Tammy’s “Chatterbox” letters page, which includes a pen friends section.

Three serials end this week, which would open up space for more new serials to match the new-look Tammy. In “Running Rosie Lee” (abbreviated to “Rosie Lee” in the issue) the tea theme that’s been running throughout the story ends with it running up against its rival – coffee. “Cut-Glass Crystal” decides to stay on in her father’s hometown of Pitedge despite all the difficulties she has been having there.

The ending for “The Loneliest Girl in the World” is one of the most memorable ever in girls’ comics and still crops up in comic book discussions. In fact, the entry has been updated to include a scan of the episode below. Karen Chalmers finally learns the human race destroyed itself in a worldwide nuclear war and she is the last human. She begs the aliens who rescued her and tried to hide the truth from her to send her back in time before the war so she can die with her parents instead. Moreover, Karen goes back without losing her memory of what happened in the story (as happened in “The Human Zoo”), so she knows what is coming to her and her parents. The story looks like it was originally written for Misty.

Click thru

 

Something very odd happened with this week’s issue of “Dulcie Wears the Dunce’s Hat”: the episodes for this week and last week got swapped. Anyway, in the episode we do get, spiteful Annie Archer takes her tricks up the notch that so many troublemakers do, and it’s the notch that always advances the story to its climax and ultimately, its resolution. Annie is no longer content with getting kicks out keeping Dulcie in the dunce’s hat by sabotaging her schoolwork. After Dulcie unknowingly puts Annie’s nose out of joint in this episode she’s out to destroy Dulcie altogether.

Juliana Buch has started on Sandy while still drawing another of Tammy’s popular serials, “Plain as Pearl”. This could be a sign that Pearl is beginning to reach the end. Pearl Kent has taken a job as a model to raise the money to send her sick mother on holiday. However she has to keep it secret from her foster family or the daughter Claire will be jealous and start spitefully interfering. Now this makes a change, having the protagonist actually anticipating a thing like this instead of the usual format of the antagonist causing trouble for the protagonist behind her back. The episode opens with Pearl having a close call with Claire, but now there’s another problem – Mum has had such a serious relapse and is so unresponsive to treatment that she may never be fit enough for the holiday.