Tammy and Sally 14 August 1971

Palomo (artist Douglas Perry)

Little Miss Nothing (artists Miguel Rosello, Luis Bermejo, Miguel Quesada, writer Alan Davidson)

Betina and the Haunted Ballet (artist Dudley Wynne) – first episode

The Cat Girl (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)

Roberta’s Rebels (artist Rodrigo Comos, writer Maureen Spurgeon) – first episode

Our Janie – Little Mum (artist Colin Merrett)

Maisie’s Magic Eye (artist Robert MacGillivray)

A Million Pounds to Give Away! (artist Agustin Navarro, writer Maureen Spurgeon)

Beattie Beats ‘Em All (artist John Armstrong, writer Maureen Spurgeon)

The School on Neville’s Island (artist Douglas Perry)

Glen – A Lonely Dog on a Quest (artist Jim Baikie)

No Tears for Molly (artist Tony Thewenetti, writer Maureen Spurgeon)

It is now August, and to commemorate, we will have an August month Tammy round, with an August issue taken from each Tammy year. Also, selecting covers from this month guarantees a lot of nice, cheery summer covers to brighten us up. We begin at 1971, and with an August issue that starts two new stories.

It has now been seven months since Tammy started and five since Sally merged with her. Three strips from Tammy’s first issue are still going strong: Molly, Glenn, and Janie. Betina, another heroine from the original lineup, now starts her second story in Tammy’s first-ever sequel, “Betina and the Haunted Ballet”. The other story to start this week is “Roberta’s Rebels”. Though set in a boarding school, its premise sounds oddly prescient of “Land of No Tears”. Roberta Russell’s boarding school system is divided into the Supremos, the girls who get all the privileges and best treatment because they are the school sports stars, and the Serfs, who are forced to wait on the Supremos hand and foot and receive lesser treatment from school staff. Outraged, Roberta immediately sets out to stop this unfair school system by training up the Serfs to beat the Supremos. But once she sees the girls she has to train, she finds that’s going to be easier said than done. They look more like Bessie Bunter than Beattie Beats ‘Em All (q.v.).

The Cat Girl and Maisie’s Magic Eye are still going strong from the Sally merger. Both became so well remembered they have recently been given remakes in the rebooted Tammy and Jinty specials, and Cat Girl has just received her own reprint volume. Their presence also adds humour and lightweight fare to Tammy, who initially had no humour to balance the grim, misery-laden fare she was renowned for when she started. 

“A Million Pounds to Give Away!” is another story to show Tammy is finding her feet with her own lightweight fare. Biddy Lenton has to give away her late great uncle’s entire fortune (a million pounds) under the terms of his will, but it’s proving harder than expected and it’s getting Biddy into all sorts of scrapes. Shades of the future Bumpkin Billionaires! 

This week’s episode of Beattie must have given the readers some laughs, what with the antics Beattie gets up to on the racetrack to raise signatures for a petiton to stop some buildings – including her home – being bulldozed for development. She gets the satisfaction of annoying her worst enemies on the track with it as well. The petition ends up full of signatures. Strangely, nobody comments on or corrects Beattie’s spelling mistake – “support” has been spelled with one “p”.

“Little Miss Nothing” was a pivotal story in Tammy, as it set the template for the Cinderella serial in girls’ comics for hundreds of Cinderella serials at IPC and DCT to follow. “Make-Believe Mandy” and “Cinderella Smith” from Jinty were but two who owed their roots to “Little Miss Nothing”. This week, Annabel’s cruel parents kick her out, and they’re not through with her yet. Annabel’s spiteful stepsister Dora is cooking up a really nasty revenge on Annabel for getting her the well-deserved sack. 

Douglas Perry is on double duty with drawing two stories, “The School on Neville’s Island” and “Palomo”. But that’s nothing on Maureen Spurgeon, who’s writing four strips, probably more, in one issue! Incidentally, Palomo was Tammy’s first horse story, and it was so popular it scored an appearance in a Tammy annual. 

Tammy & Sally 5 June 1971

Neville’s Island/The School on Neville’s Island (artist Douglas Perry) – first episode

Glen – A Dog on a Lonely Quest (artist Jim Baikie)

Slaves of “War Orphan Farm” (artist Desmond Walduck, writer Gerry Finley-Day?)

The Cat Girl (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)

The Secret of Trebaran – (artist Giorgio Cambiotti) – final episode

Maisie’s Magic Eye – artist Robert MacGillivray

Little Miss Nothing (artists Miguel Rosello, Luis Bermejo, Miguel Quesada, writer Alan Davidson) – first episode

Betina at Ballet School

Beattie Beats ‘Em All! (artist John Armstrong)

Sara’s Kingdom (artist Bill Mainwaring)

The Girls of Liberty Lodge (artist Dudley Pout)

“Our Janie” – Little Mum (artist Colin Merrett)

No Tears for Molly (artist Tony Thewenetti, writer Maureen Spurgeon)

For the month of June we are having another Tammy round, which will profile a Tammy issue from the month of June for each Tammy year. We begin with the first June issue of Tammy in 1971.

In this issue, it’s the final episode of “The Secret of Trebaran”, one of the first stories from the first Tammy lineup. Its replacement next week is “Gandora the Golden”. Others from the first Tammy lineup, “Slaves of ‘War Orphan Farm’”, “Betina at Ballet School”, “The Girls of Liberty Lodge”, “Glen – A Lonely Dog on a Quest”, “No Tears for Molly”, and “’Our Janie’ – Little Mum” are still going strong, and it’s been four months since they started. Molly went on to become one of the longest-running regulars in Tammy, which showed she was the most powerful of the first lineup. Beattie, who joined later, is still going strong, and is the first Tammy strip drawn by John Armstrong. Cat Girl, “Maisie’s Magic Eye” and “Sara’s Kingdom”, which came over from Sally, are still going happily as well. 

Douglas Perry artwork appears in Tammy for the first time – and on the first page – with the start of Perry’s first Tammy story, “Neville’s Island”. Thirty girls from St Edburgha’s are lured to a mysterious island. And we all know what happens when girls are lured to an island in girls’ comics – it’s a trap! To make things even more mysterious, the plot is being engineered by a ominous-sounding elderly woman in a wheelchair who won’t show her face. Once the unsuspecting girls are in the trap, she says, “Now they shall begin to suffer. All of them.” But why? From the sound of it, it’s revenge for being bullied at the school, but there’s probably more to it than that. It all adds to the mystery that has to be solved if the girls are to escape. 

Also starting this issue is the first episode of “Little Miss Nothing” (written by Alan Davidson, not Pat Davidson aka Anne Digby, as has been sometimes stated). This story is noted for setting the “Cinderella” template that so many Tammy stories were to follow, the most famous of which was Bella Barlow. Update: an entry on this story has now been posted here.

“Little Miss Nothing” Annabel Hayes is regarded by her family as a nobody and they treat her as a drudge. It’s her younger sister Dora who gets the lion’s share in everything. Annabel shines at dressmaking, but her hopes of making a career out of it are dashed when the family move to be closer to Dora’s modelling school. Dad illegally yanks Annabel out of school to slog all day at the family market stall to pay for Dora’s school fees, makes her sleep in an attic, and not a word about her treatment or she’ll suffer. Wow, things are really piled on our Cinderella in the first episode alone. But then Annabel spots something in the attic that could turn things around. 

Tammy & Sally 1 May 1971

• Beattie Beats ‘Em All! (artist John Armstrong)
• Our Jane – Little Mum (artist Colin Merrett)
• My Father – My Enemy!
• The Cat Girl (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)
• The Secret of Trebaran
• The Girls of Liberty Lodge (artist Dudley Pout)
• Slaves of “War Orphan Farm” (artist Desmond Walduck, writer Gerry Finley-Day?)
• Betina at Ballet School
• Action Girl
• Glen – Loney Dog on a Quest (artist Jim Baikie)
• Maisie’s Magic Eye (artist Robert MacGillivray)
• Sara’s Kingdom (artist Bill Mainwaring)
• Castaways on Voodoo Island (artist Ken Houghton)
• No Tears for Molly (artist Tony Thewenetti, writer Maureen Spurgeon)

Hello, everyone. For something a bit different in the issue entries, we are going to have a round robin of Tammy, where one issue will be selected and profiled from each year Tammy was running.

Leading off in 1971 is the 1 May issue. We are now three months into Tammy’s run. How is it all going? Many of the stories from Tammy’s first issue are still going strong, though three look like they are near the end.

We are some weeks into the Sally merger and Sally’s contributions are still going too. The Cat Girl and Maisie’s Magic Eye are providing some light relief against the grimness of the Tammy stories that focus on cruelty and misery.

And what’s going on the stories?

Beattie wins a sports event despite dirty tricks from jealous rivals. But she is still on the run from the orphanage and her past is threatening to catch up, as she discovers when she is shown a newspaper.

Our Janie Little Mum has been saddled with an additional problem to looking after her younger siblings – helping to hide a carthorse that has been earmarked for the slaughterhouse! And on the top floor of the apartment block too!

“My Father – My Enemy!” looks like it is on its penultimate episode. Father has been critically injured from violence during the miners’ strike, and his ramblings inform Julie just why he is so horrible to them – he blames them for his wife’s death. And quite wrongly, of course. Julie is now anxious to reconcile with him, but he has one foot in the door of death.

Glen looks like he is on his penultimate episode too. After a long, epic journey, he finally tracks down his mistress June. But she has been cornered by a vicious dog, and it’s a killer!

The Castaways of Voodoo Island looks like it is approaching its conclusion too. Jackie is cornered by the dreaded Devil God, but the blurb for next week says we will learn the truth about him.

The Cat Girl discovers her father has been set up to look like an enemy spy. She’s got to get to him before the British agents do.

On Trebaran, Abel the evil sorcerer (come to think of it, he was the only evil sorcerer Tammy ever had) is after a stone in Trudy’s possession. Surprisingly, he disappears when Trudy’s friends appear, but when she wakes up the following morning, it’s her friends have disappeared. Where have they got to?

The Girls of Liberty Lodge and their headmistress Miss Valentine are in a barge race against the rival school, Hardington School, which is run along the harsh, sadistic lines of Miss Steele, who hates Miss Valentine’s guts . As usual, Hardington plays dirty tricks against Liberty, but it backfires with Liberty finding helpers who get them to the finishing line first. And they have a new pupil – Lady Angela.

Kate frees one of the slaves of War Orphan Farm with the help of “Mad” Emma. Kate declines the offer to come too, because she wants to stay on and free more slaves. But nasty Ned and the evil Ma Thatcher have spotted the escape. What can Kate do to stop them?

Molly is also helping to liberate mistreated orphans, this time at an orphanage. The cruel staff look like they’ve conned Binks the chauffeur into helping them, but when they attack Mistress Clare he lashes back at them, and they get arrested. Well, that’s the end of the cruel treatment at the orphanage.

Betina is suspended from ballet lessons after being wrongly accused. Her confidence is so shattered that she has decided to pack her bags.

Sara is one step closer to finding the ruby that will cement her claim to the throne of Hunzir, but is warned to beware “the fat bearded one”. By the looks of things, he is the one heading up the mountain in a jeep to cut her off.

 

Pat Mills: Interview

Pat Mills is someone who has already contributed lots to our knowledge of girls comics of this era, but even so there are still some gaps in our knowledge of what he wrote, and always plenty more questions to be asked. With thanks to him for his contributions now and in the past, here is a brief email interview.

1) In previous discussions you’ve identified the following stories in girls’ comics as having been written by you. Are there any stories missing from that list that you can remember? Some other stories have been attributed to you – also listed below – which you’ve either specifically said you didn’t write, or which haven’t been included in those previous discussions. It would be great to clarify this once and for all, if we can.

Known stories (Jinty)

• Girl In A Bubble (1976)
• Land of No Tears (1977-78)
• Concrete Surfer (1978)

You have also said before that you wrote a horse story, without identifying which one it was. Might it be “Horse from the Sea”? Or perhaps “Wild Horse Summer“?

Pat Mills: No. Doesn’t ring a bell. It’s possible I did the horse story for Tammy, but it wasn’t very good.

Tammy

• Ella on Easy Street?
• Glenda’s Glossy Pages?

Pat Mills: Charles Herring wrote Ella which I hugely admire. I wrote Glenda. Also – Aunt Aggie, School for Snobs, and Granny’s Town, but not all episodes.

Misty

• Moonchild
• Roots (Nightmare)
• Red Knee – White Terror! (Beasts)

Pat Mills: Think “Red Knee” was mine if it was the spider story. Also “Hush Hush Sweet Rachel” – art by Feito.

And some Jinty stories you didn’t write but which are often attributed to you: “Knight and Day” (now confirmed as not yours), “The Human Zoo” (I think this is thought to be Malcolm Shaw’s), “Wanda Whiter Than White“, “Guardian of White Horse Hill” (you’ve previously thought this is likely to be Malcolm’s too).

Pat Mills: No, none of those are mine.

2) I appreciate that it’s harder to remember which stories were written by other people, if you even knew these details at the time. If there are any stories that you know the writers of, we are always up for adding to our store of attributions! We know that co-workers of yours such as John Wagner, Gerry Finley-Day, Malcolm Shaw, Charles Herring wrote for girls comics, in case that helps to trigger any memories. Did you also perhaps know Jay Over, Ian Mennell, Benita Brown, Maureen Spurgeon? (Some of those names are listed in the era when Tammy printed creator credits between 1982 and 1984, meaning we do have some story credits already in hand for that time.)

Pat Mills: Charles Herring was great – Ella and similar stories.  Pat and Alan Davidson wrote stories like Little Miss Nothing – Sandie and the equivalent in Tammy. They were top writers and that style of ‘Cinderella” story was hugely popular, but I don’t think they ever worked for Mavis. [In fact we do know that Alan Davidson wrote for Jinty, though Pat Davidson did not.]

John Wagner created and wrote “Jeanie and her Uncle Meanie” for Sandie, I think.  John was an editor on Sandie, but Gerry was the founding editor.

I wrote “Captives of Madam Karma” in Sandie.

John Wagner and I wrote “School of No Escape” in Sandie. (That was not bad) And “The Incredible Miss Birch” for Sandie. (Not our finest hour!) And I must have written at least one other story of this kind for Sandie.

I also wrote “Sugar Jones” and other stories for Pink, and “9 to 4” for Girl.

3) In Steve MacManus’ new book on his time in IPC / Fleetway, he talks about stories being measured in terms of the number of panels in the story: so for instance at one point he refers to a ‘twenty-two picture episode’ and at other points to a ‘thirty-picture script’. Is this something that you too remember from your time at IPC Fleetway? Did it happen at DCThomson too? I was interested in this because it seemed like a surprising way to think about comics, rather than in terms of page count.

Pat Mills: Yes. Steve is spot on. It’s a big subject. A thirty picture story in girls comics would theoretically deliver a lot of story. But it would be crammed and old fashioned. So I changed all that on 2000AD with less images on the page and started to apply it to Misty.

4) You’ve talked before about girls comics working differently from boys comics, and Steve MacManus recalls you saying that in a girls story the heroine would beat a bully, ride in a gymkhana, and still get back home in time to make her motherless family a hearty tea. Clearly girls comics were very full of plot! And you were a big part of rewriting a bunch of boys stories to make them fit the girls comics model more closely. Can you talk in a bit more detail about how this worked, in other words, what the mechanism was, more exactly? Is it a case of using fewer action sequences, more surprise reveals, lots of scene changes…?

Pat Mills: The big principle of girls comics that I applied to boys comics was “emotion”. Sometimes this worked well, but it needed applying in a different way. More “cool”, perhaps. Some girls principles didn’t adapt well:  jealousy for instance. Girls loved stories involving jealousy – boys didn’t. Hence “Green’s Grudge War” in Action wasn’t a hit.  Similarly, mystery stories work well in girls comics, boys didn’t give a damn about mystery. Hence my “Terror Beyond the Bamboo Curtain” in Battle, boys didn’t care what the terror was. It wasn’t a failure, but not the hit we hoped for.

However, where girls comics scored ENORMOUSLY was in having realistic stories that didn’t talk down to the reader. My “Charley’s War” is really a girls comic in disguise. Its popularity lies in it applying girls comic principles NOT boys comic principles – e.g. emotion is allowable in the context of World War One.

I was never that sold on “girls adventure” where there wasn’t a strong “kitchen sink”/Grange Hill factor. I think when Jinty went in for science fiction adventure it led the field, but not so sure about regular adventure which could seem “old school” – to me, at least. This was a factor everyone battled with on girls and boys comics, avoiding “old school” and creating stories that were “cool”.  Thus I would describe “Cat Girl” in Sally as uncool and old fashioned. Some of the Misty stories fell into that category – historical stories, for example.

Many thanks again to Pat Mills for his time, and for his memories and thoughts on this.

Sally 21 June 1969

• Farm Boss Fanny (artist unknown)
• The Cat Girl (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)
• Little Lulu – cartoon strip
• Legion of Super-Slaves (artist unknown)
• The Castle Kids and the Very Important Cow (artist unknown)
• The Girl from Tomorrow (artist unknown)
• Des and Dink – cartoon strip
• Tiny Tania in Space (artist Rodrigo Comos?)
• Daddy Come Home (artist unknown)
• Maisie’s Magic Eye (artist unknown, but later drawn by Robert MacGillivray)
• The Justice of Justine (artist unknown, but later drawn by Mike Noble)
• Thunk – cartoon strip
• Four on the Road (artist unknown)

Sally began on 14 June 1969. She started off with a strong emphasis on adventure, fantasy, SF and super-heroine stories. Later some of these elements gave way to more traditional stories on orphans and ballet. Memorable strips included “Maisie’s Magic Eye” and “Cat Girl”, both of which would be absorbed into Tammy. Sally merged with Tammy on 2 April 1971, making her the first of six titles that would be absorbed by Tammy during her 13-year run.

The merger was unusual in that Sally was older than Tammy, which had barely been out two months before swallowing Sally. Tammy hadn’t even finished all the stories from her first issue yet! This is a complete reversal of the usual pattern in which the older comic absorbs the newer one, very often a fledgling that has not proven profitable enough to last. It is thought that Sally had taken a bad hit in her sales due to a long absence from a 10-week strike, whereas the new Tammy was booming. Ironically, Sally is now enjoying a whole new status as a collector’s item and her issues command high prices.

I do not have the first issue of Sally, so I present the second (nice budgies, anyway!) to represent some Sally context in Jinty’s family tree at IPC.

Sally has two stories where kids go up against grasping schemers, and the antics have comical overtones. The first is “Farm Boss Fanny”, where Fanny locks horns with Gerald Garlick, who is out to buy her farm. The other is “The Castle Kids and the Very Important Cow”. Susan Porter and friends – which include a cow they rescued – help Mr and Mrs Lemington from being unfairly evicted from the castle by barricading it. But what’s so important about the cow? Ask the two men who are out to get their hands on it.

SF strips are both serious and comic. On the humour side is “Thunk”, a dog-like alien who has made friends with Penny Jones. “The Girl from Tomorrow” is more serious: a 23^rd century girl has landed in 1969 after messing about with her uncle’s time machine, and is now on the run with a reformed pickpocket. Another is “Tiny Tania in Space”, who has permitted herself to be miniaturised and taken to an alien planet in order to escape an abusive guardian – only to find the alien is putting her on show at a science conference! But others howl in protest and one is out to rescue Tania. We are told that Tania will return to normal proportions next week, so should the title really have included the “tiny” bit if Tania was only to be miniaturised for three episodes? Finally, there is “Legion of Super-Slaves”. Sounds like some sort of super-hero thing gone wrong? Something is definitely wrong with the mind of “The Grand Termite” if he kidnaps girls to be used in a slave colony called “The Ants”, and they are only allowed to join if they survive his deadly tests!

The super-heroine theme is high as well. The most memorable is “The Cat Girl”, where Cathy gains cat-like super-powers after donning a magic cat suit and sets out to help her PI father, who is currently running up against his arch-enemy, The Eagle. Cat Girl would be one of two Sally strips to go into the merger. The other super-heroine, “The Justice of Justine”, proved less durable and was eventually dropped. Justine is given magic items that turn her into a super-heroine, including a magic mirror that tells her where she is needed each week.

The other Sally story to go into Tammy was “Maisie’s Magic Eye”. Maisie Macrae has acquired a magic brooch fashioned from a piece of meteorite. At this stage the brooch has hypnotic powers; whenever it glows, it makes people do whatever Maisie tells them. Trouble is, the brooch doesn’t glow all the time and its power tends to cut out at the worst possible moment. Later the brooch would have powers to make anything Maisie says come true, such as transforming two difficult teachers into Romeo and Juliet. Trouble is, it can also do the same with things Maisie says in the heat of the moment, such as calling her friend Lorna an ignoramus.

There are two non-super heroine stories as well. “Daddy Come Home” is a World War II story where evacuees find themselves put into a cruel home with Mrs Grimble, who mistreats her dog as well and the children set out to save it. The other is “Four on the Road”, where two Italian children are told to take two dogs to a rich American in Naples. It sounds like a pretty odd assignment. But there must be a reason for it, which will no doubt be revealed in due course. This story, by the way, was reprinted in Jinty annual 1975.

And of course there are cartoon strips. Thunk has already been mentioned. The other two were “Des and Dink” and “Little Lulu”. Lulu made it to Tammy, and would make an appearance in an annual.