Jinty 14 January 1978

Come Into My Parlour – artist Douglas Perry

Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag! – artist Hugh Thornton-Jones

Two Mothers for Maggie – Jim Baikie

Alley Cat – artist Rob Lee

Waking Nightmare – Phil Townsend

Willy de Ville – feature 

Rinty ‘n’ Jinty – cartoon

Darling Clementine – artist Richard Neillands, writer Alison Christie

Susanna’s Snowstorm (Gypsy Rose story) – artist Keith Robson 

Land of No Tears – artist Guy Peeters, writer Pat Mills

Race for a Fortune – artist Christine Ellingham

The Wild Horse – feature 

Jody has become evil thanks to an additional spell from the witch Mother Heggerty. She now believes she is capable of anything, regardless of how terrible it is, and is loving every minute of it. How is she going to break free of Mother Heggerty’s power when right now she doesn’t even want to?

Cassy gets even more of a taste of how totalitarian this Land of No Tears is. She learns the Hive Inspector, who’s about to pay a visit, has powers to take you away: “No one knows where to, but you never return!” Shades of the Gestapo! Miranda is terrified she will meet this fate if the Inspector finds out she is secretly seeing her mother, and she breaks off with Cassy. Meanwhile, the ruthless Perfecta breaks off with her own friend to train every waking hour for the Golden Girl Award. Cassy is shocked to see the former bosom pals “walking away from each other like robots!” 

Ella bravely sets out to learn to waterski to win the competition for Clem, in the face of everyone who’s against her because they think she deliberately caused Clem’s accident. But her first attempt at waterskiing is such a disaster she’s lucky she didn’t hurt herself.

The same can also be said for sneaky cousin Rodney when he steals Katie’s roller skates to overtake her in the “Race for a Fortune”. But he soon finds he’s nowhere near as good on them as she is. He goes careering down a hill and lands on the back of a rodeo steer with her! Roller skating is back in the hands of the expert by the end of the episode. Thanks to his little stunt she has taken the lead again, and she’s gotten a lot of money out of it as well. 

In “Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag!”, a thief breaks into the school, his first attempt at crime. But his remark that he could become the world’s leading cat burglar really is asking for it with Henrietta around, especially when she’s the first thing he tries to steal. Needless to say, his first attempt at crime is his last by the end of the episode.

In the Gypsy Rose story, Susanna is given a snowstorm and finds it has a tale to tell, with each instalment appearing every time she shakes it. The trouble is, the tale is scaring her to death. Gypsy Rose tells Susanna that she must either follow it through to know how the tale ended or put the snowstorm away. Susanna decides to follow through because she must know (not to mention us readers) what the ending is, but what will the final shake of the snowstorm reveal?

Maggie’s sleazy stepfather shows what an abuser he is when he gets so mad he locks her in the coal shed without food or water. Then he refuses to let her see her TV debut, so she has to go to a TV shop in pouring rain to see it. Maggie has a good mind to tell Miss Keyes about the abuse, but she’s staying quiet because Mum doesn’t want word to get around.

Alley Cat is back. Arch-enemy Spotty Muchloot picks on him for first aid practice, and now poor Alley Cat looks like an oversized cocoon. But can he still turn things around?

Phil finds out the girl she saw being bundled off in the middle of the night is named Carol, and her mother is clearly not telling the truth about things. Phil manages to wheedle Carol’s current address out of the mother, enabling her to write to Carol. Carol’s reply is a coded message for help. The plot thickens!

John Richardson: Comics Bibliography

Goof from the Comics UK Forum has kindly supplied a list of the comics work done by John Richardson over the years.

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Misty
Serials:
End Of The Line… 12/08/78 – 18/11/78

Short Stories:
Red Knee – White Terror! (Beasts Story) 4/2/1978
Green Grow The Riches – O! 18/2/1978
The Dummy (Nightmare Story) 25/2/1978
The Secret Of Lan-Shi… (Beasts Story) 11/3/1978
The Haunting (Nightmare Story) 18/3/1978
Napoleon Comes Home… (Beasts Story) 25/2/1978
Miranda 22/4/1978
Stone Cold Revenge 6/5/1978
Sticks And Stones 20/5/1978
A Spell Of Trouble (Nightmare Story) 15/7/1978
Titch’s Tale… (Beasts Story) 29/7/1978
Dance Of Death 5/8/1978
Yet Another Teacher For Molly! (Nightmare Story) 16/12/1978
Examination Nerves 23/12/1978
A Girl’s Best Friend 30/12/1978
The Sad Eyes Of Sorrow 13/1/1979
Happy Birthday, Spooky Sue! 20/1/1979
Pot Luck 10/3/1979
The Curse Of The Wolf 31/3/1979
The Choice Of Silence 14/4/1978
The Uglies 14/4/1978
One Hour In Time 12/5/1979
The Disembodied 26/5/1979
A Stain On Her Character 23/6/1979
Framed 14/7/1979
The Writing On The Wall 21/7/1979
Time To Spare 18/8/1979
Inside Story 25/8/1979
Mrs Grundy’s Guest House 29/9/1979
The Pig People 1/12/1979
Smile 5/1/1980
Black Sunday Summer Special 1978
Old Ethna’s House Holiday Special 1979
The Pipe Dream of Marty Scuttle Holiday Special 1979
The Swarm Annual 1979

Tammy
Serials:
The Duchess of Dead-End Drive 2/03/74 – 16/03/74

Short Stories:
Moonlight Prowler 17/7/1982
Shock Treatment 20/11/1982
Carla’s Best Friend 15/1/1983
(Reprint from Misty “A Girl’s Best Friend”)
The Turning Point 12/3/1983
Donkey’s Years 17/9/1983
Fair Shares 24/12/1983?

Strange Stories:
This is Your Life 14/6/1980
The Beauty Contest 6/3/1981
Monster Movie 28/3/1981
Lost for Words 11/4/1981
The House of Leopards 9/5/1981
Water Under the Bridge 13/6/1981
The Carrier Bag 22/8/1981
Quicksilver 16/9/1981
Down to Earth 10/10/1981
Safe as Houses 17/10/1981
Unmasked 20/12/1981
Star Born 26/12/1981
The Burry Man 20/3/1982
All the Fright of the Fair ?
(?) The Pharaoh’s Daughter’s Stand-In (?) ?

Monster Tales:
The Gargoyle 16/1/1982
The Guardian 27/2/1982
Old Bug’s Last Trip 15/5/1982

Series: Wee Sue:
Weekly episodes 14/09/74? – 1982?
(Main artist from September 1974 to March 1977?)
1 story Annual 1977
1 story Annual 1979
3 stories Annual 1982
1 story Annual 1984
1 story Summer Special 1975
1 story Summer Special 1976
3 stories Holiday Special 1982
1 story Holiday Special 1983

Text Stories:
…Through Rose-Coloured Glasses Annual 1982
Star of Wonder Annual 1982

Comic Covers:
The Cover Girls 20/08/1973 – 04/10/1980
Annuals 1979 – 1982, 1984
Holiday Specials 1979 & 1980

Filler Artist:
Eva’s Evil Eye 31/8/74(?) – 07/09/74

Jinty
Series: Could It Be You? (or Is This Your Story?)
(Reprints from the June series) 1976 – 1977

Gypsy Rose Stories:
The White Blackbird (reprinted Strange Story) Holiday Special 1980
The Yellow Dress (reprinted Strange Story) Holiday Special 1980

Bunty
Serials:
Phantom of the Fells 348 (12/09/64) – 358 (21/11/64)

Judy
Picture Story Libraries:
Green for Danger No 237 (January 1983)
Dora’s Dragon No 254 (June 1984)

Mandy
Serials:
The Girl with the Black Umbrella 300 (14/10/72) – 313 (13/01/73)

Other:
Stella Starr – Policewoman from Space Annual 1974
Stella Starr – Policewoman from Space Annual 1975

June
Series: Could It Be You?
Some of the weekly episodes Early 1970’s?
1 story June Book 1973

Series: Lucky’s Living Doll
Filler artist for the weekly series 30/09/1972 – March(?) 1973
2 stories (reprints) June Book 1982

Strange Stories

When the Clock Stopped (1/1/1972)

The Haunted Room (18/3/1972)

Princess Tina
Filler Artist:
Clueless – The Blunderdog 22/4/72, 29/4/72, 27/5/72, 15/7/72

School Friend
Short Stories:
The Misfit (possibly reprint from longer story) Annual 1973
Elfrida of the Forest Annual 1975

Scream!
Serials:
Terror of the Cats 24/03/1984 – 28/04/1984
The Nightcomers 05/05/1984 – 30/06/1984

Short Stories:
A Ghastly Tale! – Green Fingers 7/4/1984

Pink
Short Stories:
Miss Get-What-She-Wants Annual 1975

Mirabelle
Serials:
A Song for Andrella ? 1977 – ? 1977
Later episodes, following Horacio Lalia (serial started 19/02/77)

Buster
Filler Artist:
The Leopard from Lime Street ? – ?

Jinty 30 April 1977

• Creepy Crawley (artist Trini Tinturé)
• Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag! (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• Cassie and the Cat – Gypsy Rose story (artist Terry Aspin)
• Mark of the Witch! — final episode (Phil Townsend)
• Alley Cat
• The Darkening Journey (artist José Casanovas)
• The Robot Who Cried (artist Rodrigo Comos, writer Malcolm Shaw)
• Kerry in the Clouds (artist Cándido Ruiz Pueyo, writer Alan Davidson)
• Spell of the Spinning Wheel (artist Jim Baikie, writer Alison Christie)
• Don’t Forget to Remember! (craft feature)

This issue is from a great period of Jinty’s run. It includes a number of real classic stories that have stood the test of time and memory (“Creepy Crawley”, “Spell of the Spinning Wheel”, and “The Robot Who Cried” being the obvious stand-outs) and all in all is a really solid read.

“Creepy Crawley” shows the how mean the main character Jean Crawley can be: she goes to see her rival Mandy who is recovering from the bee stings that the scarab brooch caused to happen. But even when not under the control of the scarab badge Jean allows her jealousy to control her, enough so that she voluntarily goes back to wearing the scarab and letting it give her ideas on how to get the better of Mandy. And it’s not just limited to ideas – the scarab’s control over insects means that Mandy’s beautiful wooden sculpture is eaten by termites before it can beat Jean’s pretty painting in the school art competition.

In the Gypsy Rose story “Cassie and the Cat”,  Cassie rescues a cat from some bullies, but the cat is far from what it seems. Enjoy the creepy story, atmospherically drawn by Terry Aspin, at the end of the post.

It is the final episode of “Mark of the Witch!”, and outcast Emma Fielding redeems herself by saving rich girl Alice Durant, the girl who she’s persecuted in revenge for the persecution that Emma herself has suffered at the hands of the local villagers. As they keep each other afloat in the raging river, Emma takes a moment to think “It’s funny.. I could die, but I feel sort of happy! Happy to be fighting and struggling with Alice instead of against her!”

“The Robot Who Cried” is an invention of the bushily-moustached Professor Targett – codenamed KT5, she escapes from the laboratory and discovers that she can pass for a real girl – assuming she can sort out how human emotions like friendliness or loneliness work in real life, of course.

In “Kerry In The Clouds”, Kerry Langland is taken under the wing of famous actress Gail Terson, but Ms Terson clearly has an agenda of her own. There are echoes of the story “Jackie’s Two Lives”, also written by Alan Davidson – both feature a poor girl with ambitions beyond her station, manipulated in sinister ways by an older woman. Spanish artist Cándido Ruiz Pueyo provides some very stylish hairstyles and clothing.

“Spell of the Spinning Wheel” is a rare foray of Alison Christie’s into a spooky mystery story – I wish she had done more of it, it was very memorable. Rowan Lindsay is sporadically struck down by a mystery tiredness – she’s worked out that it is related to hearing humming sounds but she hasn’t persuaded anyone other than her dad to believe her yet, and the doctors have now forbidden her from running again.

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Jinty 26 September 1981

Cover artist: Mario Capaldi

• Freda’s Fortune – first episode (artist Trini Tinturé)
• All over a farthing… – text story (artist Mario Capaldi)
• Child’s Play – Gypsy Rose story (artist Phil Townsend)
• Gaye’s Gloomy Ghost (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• Holiday Hideaway (artist Phil Gascoine)
• Tansy of Jubilee Street (artist Ken Houghton)
• Winning Ways – sports tips
• The Sweet and Sour Rivals – last episode (artist Carlos Cruz)
• Worlds Apart (artist Guy Peeters)
• Snoopa (artist Joe Collins)

This is one of the last few issues of Jinty before the merger with Tammy. As a result it is full of penultimate episodes (Holiday Hideaway, Worlds Apart), a final episode (The Sweet and Sour Rivals) and complete or nearly complete stories (the Gypsy Rose story, and the first half of the two-parter Freda’s Fortune).

Freda wins a pony in a raffle – a stroke of luck for her, as she has longed for one since she was a toddler, but also some bad luck because not only does she have to find somewhere to keep it and food to feed it, she also earns the envy of snobbish Susan who will stop at little to throw a spoke in her wheel.

The text story “All over a farthing” has a struggling girl give away a lucky farthing to the school charity appeal, only to find that it brings luck back to her and her unemployed father in an unexpected way.

The Gypsy Rose story, “Child’s Play”, is a new one this week, drawn by Phil Townsend (though the subsequent week’s issue will have a reprint of a story by Trini Tinturé from 1977). I reprint it below.

“Holiday Hideaway” is coming to an end – the family in hiding prepare to ‘return from holiday’ which will mean they have to continue to lie to their friends by pretending they have been away on a cruise ship holiday all along. But the episode ends by a reveal that they can’t possibly have been on the ship – the liner never left England in the first place! How will Hattie Jones and her family keep their heads up now?

This is the last episode of “The Sweet and Sour Rivals”: at the school fair Mandy and her friend Suzie Choo face off against Abigail Beaton whose family run the town’s snootiest restaurant. As often happens with schoolgirl rivalries, the envious antagonist overreaches herself and the good girl(s) have to save the day, including the antagonist herself. This time the jealous rival entices a horde of hungry dogs to all the food stalls, risking her own parents’ food stall as well as the Choo’s one; and Suzie saves the day by building a wall of plates to keep the dogs away. Yes, it’s a Great Wall of China (groan).

In “Worlds Apart” the six schoolgirls are transported from brainy Clare’s world into scaredy-cat Jilly’s world – one inhabited by horror monsters. Read all about it in the summary of that story, linked to above.

Page 1, “Child’s Play” – Gypsy Rose story

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Jinty 15 October 1977

• Destiny Brown (artist Rodrigo Comos)
• Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag! (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• Guardian of White Horse Hill (artist Julian Vivas)
• Alley Cat
• The Goose Girl (artist Keith Robson; writer Alison Christie)
• So What’s New with David Essex? (feature)
• Rinty ‘n’ Jinty
• Stage Fright! (artist Phil Townsend)
• Lilies for the Bride – Gypsy Rose story (artist Christine Ellingham)
• Fran’ll Fix It! (artist Jim Baikie)
• Cursed to be a Coward! (artist Mario Capaldi; writer Alison Christie)
• Autumn Treasures! (craft feature)

If you’ve read Mistyfan’s superb, thorough rundown of the cover styles that Jinty had over the years, you may remember this issue being noted as the last one which had a separate blue background behind the logo. (Following issues had the logo incorporated into the body of the cover design itself.) However, we had not yet posted about the issue itself, which I am remedying here.

Destiny Brown is trapped in a number of ways – having run away to find her father, her purse was stolen and she had to sleep rough. Not surprisingly she was quickly set up to be exploited by some rough types, especially once they realize they may have struck gold, if she really can predict the future with her second sight. Poor old Destiny – dragged away by these dodgy geezers, just as she has bumped into her father, who is likewise being dragged away by – who is *he* trapped by? It looks like the police, but is it really so? The art, by Rodrigo Comos, is clear and classy, if perhaps slightly old-fashioned looking for the time.

The letters page includes a list of the winners of a recent competition: the first ten correct entries won a KODAK Instamatic camera, while the 60 runners up won a giant full-colour poster of Starsky and Hutch. Looking at the names of the winners carefully, most of them are, unsurprisingly, traditional English, Irish, or Scottish girls names; but there are one or two less usual entrants hidden in the mix, indicating some small diversity of the readership. Pushpa Hallan is one of the ten winners of the main prize, and C. Thiyagalingam is one of the 60 winners of the runner-up prize. Perhaps even less expectedly, there is also one boy’s name included: Adrian King.

Orphan Janey is adapting to being fostered by the Carters – but when she sees a beautiful white horse, they think she is making up stories to impress them. What Janey doesn’t yet realize is that no-one else can see the horse apart from her – and nor will any photos of the horse show it, either! It’s all tied up with the local beauty spot, White Horse Hill, which is threatened by the destructive plans to build a motorway.

Brenda Noble is a bird-lover who is campaigning against the local sport of goose shooting in the village she lives in with her mother. Her mother hates birds as she blames them for her husband’s death – and soon she enacts her plans to take the two of them to Edinburgh away from the wee ‘backwater’ village.

“Stage Fright” is an odd mystery story: stylishly drawn by Phil Townsend, the protagonist Linda is being made by Lord Banbury to train as an actor in order to win an acting trophy that has been in his family for generations. But who is locking her into places, stealing her costume, and watching her from afar?

The Gypsy Rose story this week is drawn by Christine Ellingham, who until recently we were only able to list as the ‘unknown artist of Concrete Surfer’. What a pleasure to be able to correctly credit this lovely art! Delphine is a lively girl who works in a florist’s shop. She has an irrational fear of lilies, but the rich customer who falls for her wants a centrepiece of those same flowers, to be put together with her very own hands. Not only that – once he proposes to her, Delphine finds out that his mother’s name is Lily, and she is due to sleep in the lily room. All omens that tell her that soon she will meet the spirit of the lily – in death.

The evil fortune teller who is the villain of “Cursed To Be A Coward!” manages to get Marnie Miles thrown into a rickety old boat in the middle of a pond – luckily she gets fished out but the fortune teller’s determination to make sure that blue water will get her yet is pretty sinister.

The craft suggested for this week is to collect up ‘autumn treasures’ such as the heads of cow parsley, twigs with berries, or pretty leaves, and to make dried arrangements of them in vases, or pictures, or perhaps even jewellery of the tougher seedpods of ash keys or beech nut cases. The pictures accompanying the feature make it all look rather pretty, but I would assume that beech nut cases in particular would be rather scratchy to turn into jewellery!

Jinty & Penny 4 July 1981

Cover artist: Mario Capaldi

• Pam of Pond Hill (artist Bob Harvey, writer Jay Over)
• Food for Fagin (artist Trini Tinturé)
• When Time Stood Still (artist Mario Capaldi) – text story
• The Lap of Death (artist John Armstrong) – Gypsy Rose story
• Gaye’s Gloomy Ghost (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• How Independent are You? (writer Maureen Spurgeon?) – quiz
• Tansy of Jubilee Street (artist Peter Wilkes)
• Angela’s Angels (artist Leo Davy)
• Worlds Apart (artist Guy Peeters)
• Horse Drawn Transport – feature
• Dracula’s Daughter (artist Mario Capaldi)
• Seaside Souvenirs – feature

 

Girls’ comics didn’t bother much with Independence Day, but this issue of Jinty does as it’s bang on 4^th of July. In honour of the occasion, Jinty presents a quiz on how independent you are: clinging ivy, sturdy oak tree or prickly pear? We also learn 4^th of July is Sir Roger’s birthday, so 4^th of July doubles for him as a birthday celebration.

Tansy is looking forward to an independence day of a different sort – the day in July when the summer holidays begin, which she has labelled “Freedom Day”. It’s a camping holiday for the Taylors, but of course there is no independence from the usual mayhem with Simon and Peter around.

In Samantha’s world there is anything but independence for the other five girls. Although Samantha’s father is on the throne, it is she who rules her world as a vain, power-mad tyrant and has everything and everyone cater to her beauty. But when Samantha uses Mo as a stool, Mo openly revolts against her. Samantha, who never liked Mo to begin with, responds by clamping her in the stocks – and she is to stay there until she’s nothing but a skeleton.

Pam wants to pursue music, but finding the right instrument is causing problems. After failures with the tuba and trumpet, she finally settles on the trombone with Gran’s help, but we get a hint her music problems won’t end there.

Fagin finally pushes Mum too far and she makes good her threat to put him in the dogs’ home. Even so, Olivia is still struggling to find the food to feed that appetite of his as the dogs’ home looks like it can’t.

The text story is straight out of Misty. Annabel Hirst, a beautiful but arrogant model, has a curse put on her as a punishment that will cause her to “wither and die” at midnight upon the full moon. As the time approaches, Annabel is reluctant to make an appearance because her appearance seems to be withering…

The Gypsy Rose story is another recycled Strange Story. Jean Forbes is a big speedway racing fan and the mascot of her brother’s team. Then she gets a strange dream that something terrible is going to happen to her brother on the speedway. How will this test her status as team mascot?

A boy named Sam is being a real nuisance for “Angela’s Angels”. He’s always trying to get into hospital with phony claims of being ill. He only does it because the hospital is a better place for him than his own home but Angela throws him out. Then Sam’s x-ray reveals a real illness and he needs to be treated immediately – so they have to find him, fast!

Treating pupils like little kids is one of the things Lydia really hates about her father’s ideas of grammar school discipline. But it’s not just the pupils he’s treating like little kids – he’s doing the same with the Castlegate teachers as well. He’s butting in on their lessons and trying to force them teach things his way. How rude! The teachers get so aggravated that they go into an emergency meeting on how to deal with him. The pupils are doing the same with a council of war. My advice: go on strike and mass demonstration against him. Make sure it gets full press coverage! And show the governors: what the hell were you thinking in appointing this gargoyle from the boys’ grammar school as headmaster?

Jinty and Lindy 29 January 1977

Stories in this issue:

• The Ring of Death – first Gypsy Rose tale (artist Jim Baikie)
• Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag! (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• Sceptre of the Toltecs (artist Cándido Ruiz Pueyo / Emilia Prieto)
• Starsky and Hutch, the best of mates! (feature)
• Made-Up Mandy (artist Audrey Fawley)
• Freda, False Friend (artist Phil Gascoine)
• The Big Cat (artist Ana Rodriguez)
• The Mystery of Martine (artist Trini Tinturé)
• Alley Cat (artist Rob Lee)
• Mark of the Witch! (artist Phil Townsend)

This issue gives us the first of a long line of Gypsy Rose stories – a spooky storyteller series which gives the Jinty editors the flexibility of commissioning a number of different artists and writers and running the resulting stories as they suit best. Most of the stories include Gypsy Rose as an active participant in the tale and helping to resolve the mystery; but later on a number of spooky stories from other titles had a panel of Gypsy Rose art pasted over the other storyteller so that it could be rebranded as a Jinty-style story. I have uploaded “The Ring of Death” into the Gypsy Rose summary post, so do head over to that to read it. You will notice some art that is repeated in subsequent Gypsy Rose stories, such as the image of her seated figure, displaying her patchwork skirt to best advantage.

Malincha’s wicked uncle Telqotl is plotting ways to trap her and to steal the golden sceptre. The two girls manage to give him the slip at the museum but they are soon trapped in a department store and he has managed to put out all the lights by mystic means!

Mandy Mason, the humble caretaker at an elegant beauty salon, ends up going to a posh safari park by accident and has a chance to turn herself into Raquel, the fearless white huntress. But at the end of this episode she is trapped in a cage with two adult lions running towards her as she holds a cub in her arms! Audrey Fawley draws lovely human figures but sadly the lions just look like round bouncy creatures who aren’t very convincing to my eyes.

It is also the first episode of “Freda, False Friend”. Freda’s father is a police officer; he seems to have suddenly got a promotion as the family move to a posh big house and start driving in a swanky new car. It all turns out to be a ruse though – he wants her to make friends with Gail, the girl next door, because the police have suspicions about Gail’s father. Very unpleasantly for Freda, she is being made into a spy against her will!

In “The Big Cat” Ruth saves a stag from being hunted by the local staghounds, but for her pains she is driven off from the village that she has been working in. It was a very unfriendly village, with people who hated to see strangers come along, but still it was a depressing thing to have happen.

Martine is claiming that the ballet school is her house, even though it was sold to Miss Bond some time previously. The worry of what is happening to her sister causes Tessa’s ballet dancing to suffer, and her relationships with her classmates are also suffering. But the most dangerous thing is the chance it gives her jealous rival, to score over her!

Emma Fielding is torn between believing in Alice’s attempts to be friends, and her father’s bitter denouncing of those attempts as just charity. The spiteful local girls look like they want to make it all go wrong for Emma, too.

Jinty and Penny 4 October 1980

Cover artist: Mario Capaldi

Stories in this issue:

• Pam of Pond Hill (artist Bob Harvey, writer Jay Over)
• Girl the World Forgot (artist and writer Veronica Weir)
• Gaye’s Gloomy Ghost (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• Tears of a Clown (artist Phil Gascoine)
• Tansy of Jubilee Street (artist Ken Houghton)
• ‘A Call for Help’ – Gypsy Rose story (artist Terry Aspin)
• Behind the Screen: Return of the Saint
• Sue’s Daily Dozen (artist José Casanovas) – first episode
• Winning Ways 27: Tennis – the Forehand Drive (writer Benita Brown)
• Child of the Rain (artist Phil Townsend)

Pam’s friend Tracie is all of a tizzy – she’s terrified of her mum walking out on the family. The obvious question is, why would she do that to them? It’s a serious worry: her mum is increasingly fed up with her home life and actively threatens to leave them. Of course it’s causing Tracie no end of worries on a daily basis but it also means there is no way she wants to come on the class trip to France. Pam’s cheerful mother thinks it’ll never come to that point, but when Tracie gets home after school one day and finds that her mother has packed a bag and got on the 3 o’clock bus it seems like quite a different matter!

Shona is the “Girl the World Forgot”, trying to survive on a deserted Scottish island. Some seals give her a pleasant surprise and she forgets her worries in swimming with them. But when the night comes and she is alone in the croft she has found, she seems not to be alone after all…

Kathy is trying hard to prove herself as a runner to her classmates and her teachers, but bad luck and the bullying nature of the horrible Sandra Simkins mean everything is against her. Even the obstacle race is a shameful experience for her – so bad that she vows to run away. At least her speed in running will help here there!

The Gypsy Rose story is clearly drawn specially for Jinty as it’s by Terry Aspin throughout in a matching style. Kay’s little sister Jenny has an imaginary friend called Mary who rings her on the toy phone – but one night the toy phone really does ring and Mary pleads for help because the hospital she is in is burning down! It turns out to be a hospital for toys, very fittingly. Gypsy Rose introduces the story and rounds it off at the end, rather than being one of the characters in the story itself as she sometimes is – but her appearance outside the burned toy factory in the last two panels makes it clear that she inhabits the same world as the stories she tells, that is, they are really real as far as she is concerned.

In the first episode of “Sue’s Daily Dozen” Sue Baker is feeling left-out as the only newcomer to the village. In the house that her dad is busy doing up, she finds a mysterious set of items that help her to integrate into village life – an old cooking pot, a ‘Daily Dozen’ book, and a spoon. Suspiciously witchy-sounding? But the first recipe, of some little cakes, turn out smashingly – but they do seem to be causing people who eat them to act a little… oddly.

Jemma West learns yoga from her serendipitous guest but when the rain comes down again she still can’t control herself enough, and she loses a big chance.

Jinty and Penny 12 July 1980

Cover artist: Mario Capaldi

• Pam of Pond Hill (writer Jay Over, artist Bob Harvey)
• Gaye’s Gloomy Ghost (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• The Dark Tower – Gypsy Rose story (artist unidentified)
• A Spell of Trouble (artist Trini Tinturé)
• The Venetian Looking Glass (artist Phil Gascoine)
• Behind the Screen – All Creatures Great and Small (feature) – first episode
• Tansy of Jubilee Street (artist Ken Houghton)
• Winning Ways 17 – The Long Jump (writer Benita Brown)
• Minnow (artist Peter Wilkes)
• Blind Faith (artist Phil Townsend)

Mario Capaldi’s action-oriented covers are always a sight to behold. This diver looks almost unrealistically excited, and certainly very enthusiastic to be jumping off that very high platform!

Pam and friends find out that one of the people in her class is probably a shop-lifter, giving people stolen items so as to buy friendship. What will happen next? We are promised disaster to follow Pam’s attempts to help.

The Gypsy Rose story is a reprint, with a very badly bodged image of Gypsy Rose drawn over that of the original story teller. The rest of the story is a slightly old-fashioned spooky story: a girl is kidnapped to get her to reveal the whereabouts of her scientist father, and stranded in a dark tower where no one will find her. A ghost and a locket are the means of her rescue.

Angela White threatens to turn things upside down in the household of Carrie Black, trainee witch. This light-hearted tale has a witchy family with a clumsy outsider foisted on them – Angela is a distant cousin and must be given a home. Unlike in some stories, neither the Blacks nor the Whites are cruel or malicious, but it will take a long time nevertheless for them to get along with each other.

In the letters page one reader writes in to ask for more science fiction stories, because she enjoyed “The Human Zoo” and “The Forbidden Garden” so much. More power to you, Jennifer Murray of Manchester!

This is the penultimate episode of “The Venetian Looking Glass”. Lucy Craven is totally under the power of the evil spirit – she thought she was defeating it by breaking the mirror, but the three pieces of the mirror turn out to have three times the power! Lucy runs down the corridor of the castle and takes her evil ancestor’s revenge by setting it alight to burn. Will her cousin Rosalind be able to stop her or to put out the flames?

“You’ve just tuned in to the first of our occasional series on your favourite TV programmes” – with lots about telly success All Creatures Great and Small. Much of it is interviews with Christopher Timothy, who played James Herriot, but there is a nice photo with Peter Davidson who played Tristam and who is now probably rather more famous as one of the actors who played Dr Who.

Minna is sneaking around behind her mother’s back, to find a signature that she can copy onto the form for joining the swimming club she is set on. She finds a mysterious photo that shows her parents dressed as swimming champions – and later she finds an olympic medal in her mother’s handbag! Minna has a mystery in her past, all right – and it comes out again in the swimming club when she has a sudden flashback of waves thundering and crashing – and the sea drowning her like it did her father!

Clare finds some shelter to keep her and Cromwell out of the night, and even sets up some jumps to start to train Cromwell again. But a raging bull might put paid to all of that…

Jinty and Penny 6 September 1980

Stories in this issue:

(Cover artist: Mario Capaldi)

• Pam of Pond Hill (artist Bob Harvey, writer Jay Over)
• Girl the World Forgot (artist and Veronica Weir) – first episode
• Tears of a Clown (artist Phil Gascoine)
• The Swim For Life: A Jinty and Penny Special Story (artist John Armstrong)
• Tansy of Jubilee Street (artist Ken Houghton)
• Unscheduled Stop – Gypsy Rose story (artist John Armstrong)
• Mork ‘n’ Mindy: Behind The Screen (Feature)
• A Spell Of Trouble (artist Trini Tinturé)
• Child of the Rain (artist Phil Townsend) – first episode

Many thanks to Derek Marsden for the copy of this issue, which he kindly sent on to me.

Pam is on a roll – her ‘witch ball’ brings her luck or so she thinks, and indeed it seems to be the case. By returning it to its rightful owner, her school benefits from help to go on a school trip to France (which leads us on to a whole other set of stories).

“Girl The World Forgot” starts this issue. Initially it looks like an adventure story with a castaway plot, but later on it turns spooky. It is beautifully drawn by Veronica Weir, and through a comment on this blog we found out that it was also written by her too – one of only a very few cases where we know the artist and writer were the same person.

Kathy Clowne is bullied by Sandra Simkins, as so often in her time at school. This time Sandra paints Kathy’s face in greasepaint to make her up in clownface. Not realizing that this has happened, Kathy snaps when a teacher comments ‘What have you done to your face?’ and of course a punishment now looms – even though really it is all Sandra’s fault.

“The Swim For Life” is referred to as a ‘special story’ – it’s a complete two-page story that is presumably reprinted from an earlier title, but unusually it doesn’t fit into the mold of a Strange Story which was normally changed into a Gypsy Rose one. This one is a straightforward adventure story with a brave dog saving the brother and sister who went out in a speedboat and got into difficulties. There are no supernatural elements though, unlike in the Gypsy Rose story “The Unscheduled Stop” – which is likewise by John Armstrong. In this latter story, Jenny Shaw’s parents are arguing non-stop, until an unscheduled train stop shows her the reason in their earlier history for their bitterness, and a way to fix their future.

The letters page this week includes a letter from Sophie Jackson, a science fiction fan, who loved “Land of No Tears” and asked for more SF like that story and “The Human Zoo”. She also specifically said how much she liked the artist who drew both stories and also others such as “Black Sheep of the Bartons” and “Pandora’s Box”, and wanted more by that artist. Perhaps this was part of the reason why the Jinty editors commissioned “Worlds Apart”, also drawn by Guy Peeters?

(I also take this opportunity to comment on the fact that the form that you were supposed to send in with your letters, saying which your favourite stories were, has an issue number printed on it which is otherwise not shown elsewhere. This issue is number 320.)

Finally, it’s also the first episode of spooky-mysterious tennis story, “Child of the Rain”. Drawn by Phil Townsend, this story is flavoured with elements of the South American rainforest, which lends it particular interest in my eyes as I was living in South America at precisely this time. Despite this attraction, I have to admit it’s not the strongest story ever. Jemma West is a keen tennis player and hates the rain because it stops her playing – that is, until an accident in the rain forest, after which she starts to love the rain and to find it gives her extra strength and energy. It shares some similarities with “Spirit of the Lake” (mystery / supernatural elements, and sporting details) which we think is likely to have been written by Benita Brown – I wonder therefore if this story also might have been penned by the same writer.