In a follow-up to A History of Tammy Covers, we present: A History of Jinty Covers. And now that A Resource on Jinty has run for five years, enough discussion, feedback and uploads on the Jinty covers should have accumulated to compile such a history.
We begin, of course, with the first Jinty cover, 11 May 1974. The format is a story panel format, with panels from two of the new stories, “A Dream for Yvonne” and “Dora Dogsbody“. The panel layout is rather stiff and boxy. It is enclosed inside a border, which is part of an orange background that runs from top to bottom of the cover.
The early Jintys had numbered covers, but the first issue is not numbered. Instead, the top caption says “No. 1”.
On the left is Jinty herself, a girl with long pony tails on both sides of her head. She is a blonde on the first cover, but in later years would be regarded as having brown hair. Jinty’s first gift is a “smiley” wrist bracelet.
The first two letters of the logo are separate, but the other three are joined together in a cursive style. It feels a bit of an odd mix, but it would be the standard Jinty logo until well into 1980.
updated to add: W.P. has informed us that this layout of the lettering was chosen so the “i” would not be confused with u-shaped lettering.
The second Jinty cover continues the format and still has not started the issue numbering. It was the last to advertise the free gift that came with the new comic.
The cover for the third Jinty issue is the first to start the actual numbering. It was very unusual for girls’ title in IPC to have issue numbering. June, Tammy and later, Misty, did not have it. In contrast, DCT titles like Bunty, Judy and Mandy had issue numbering from start to finish.
Issue 3 was also the last to use panel montages for quite a while in Jinty’s history. From issue 4, Jinty switched to the comic serial cover style. It feels quite an abrupt change. Did Jinty decide to use the story panel cover for her first three issues to advertise the new comic more or was she still experimenting and trying to find her feet and style? Or was she trying various ways to break away from the cover styles Tammy (The Cover Girls) or June (story panel filling entire cover)? Whatever the reason, her early covers definitely weren’t trying to copy either of them.
There is no free gift. Instead, Jinty is holding a competition. This is probably why Jinty is calling out instead of smiling and laughing as she did the previous two issues.
The first three issues used a rather boxy panel layout, using panels from Jinty’s stories inside to promote the comic. But with issue 4 this changed to the serial cover format i.e. using the first page of a serial on the cover. The story chosen is The Jinx from St Jonah’s, who would stay on the cover for a long time, as Katie was a regular and not a serial. The choice may have been using humour to attract the readers. Whatever the reason, it was a good choice as Katie the Jinx could never go more than three panels without getting into a scrape that provides laughs and hijinks for the readers and, of course, arouse their interest.
The first page is still enclosed within the window border, which gives it more of a boxy look than a splash page impression. The cover uses four panels when it first started this format, which meant less room for larger panels.
For three issues afterward the four-panel serial cover continued, but then it wisely shifted to a three-panel serial cover, beginning with #11, 20 July 1974. This allowed for bigger panels, especially the splash panel, which made the cover look less crowded and more spaced out with room to breathe, and therefore more eye-catching.
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On occasion with the early covers Katie was pushed right off the cover when Jinty was advertising something, usually a competition. So advertising covers were also used.
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Jinty ran 52 issues before she dropped her issue numbering on 31 May 1975. Other than that, the cover layout remains unchanged.
The Jinty for 1 November 1975 was the last to have Jinty on the top left hand corner of her cover. Next issue would change the course of Jinty’s history, and her cover would change with it.
A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 
A super run through the history of Jinty’s covers! It really highlights some of the sorts of editorial / in house choices and thinking that would have been going on.
That was a fun read. So much decision making goes into covers! Re that lettering design on the first issue: It’s a deliberate choice that the I is not linked to the other letters in the Jinty logo. What happens when you join the I to the N is that you get a U shape which makes the letter combination very ambiguous. Does that word spell JUNTY? JMTY? You’d have to look at it for a second or 2 to figure it out. And that’s no good for a cover logo which needs to be immediately readable from a distance. If it was a longer word, the rhythm of the links between the letters might make it perfectly okay to join them all up, but on such a short word, there aren’t enough to make that strategy work. Floating the I between the big J and the N is The only way to make sure it’s legible. It’s also very slightly flared at the base so that the right edge of the letter is closer to the N than the top, to help make a subtle visual link between them.
Thanks for the expert input W! Our interested speculation, careful tho it may be, is no substitute for hearing from someone who’s been there and done it.