Cover artist: Juliana Buch
Sandy – A Girl Like You (artist Juliana Buch)
Olympia Jones (artist Eduardo Feito, writer Anne Digby)
Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)
Wee Sue (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
Perfect Pets – feature
The Breaking of Faith (artist Giorgio Giorgetti) – first episode
Tune-In (feature)
Bride of the Devil (artist Hugo D’Adderio) – Strange Story from the Mists
Stella Stirrer (artist Tony Coleman)
Edie and Miss T (artist Joe Collins) – cartoon
Bessie Bunter (artist Arthur Martin)
Linda’s Fox (artist and writer Ron Tiner)
Now we come to 1981 in our Tammy June month round. The Cover Girls have disappeared and we are in the era of the splash panel story covers. Most often, Bella had the spot on this cover, but Sandy has it at the moment. When the cover changed, a new look Tammy logo was introduced (above).
The Misty logo has shrunk on the cover, a clear sign the Misty merger was on its way out in Tammy. Misty was still co-presenter of Strange Stories from the Mists, and this week she tells the legend of Evelyn Carew of Potter Heigham (below), rendered with gorgeous Hugo D’Adderio artwork. The same legend was profiled in the original Misty, on her page of British folklore and legends. Many readers sent in contributions for prize money.
The team-up of Miss T and Edie was the most durable of the Misty merger. The pair became a trio when Snoopa came over from Jinty to form “The Crayzees”, and it lasted until Princess II merged with Tammy in 1984.
Adding extra delight to Tammy is the “Tune-In” feature, which gives us funny and informative stories and gossip about TV and pop stars.
Bessie Bunter was relegated from regular appearances to fill-in ones when Misty joined, but this week she does make an appearance. Molly is on break, which gives more room for serials. Hugh Thornton-Jones is doing Wee Sue this week, the strip where his artwork appeared the most often in Tammy. Olympia Jones, the smash-hit story from 1976, is back by popular demand and enjoying an equally popular repeat. “Linda’s Fox” is one of the girls’ serials we know to be both written and drawn by the same person. In this case it is Ron Tiner. This was the only serial Tiner drew for Tammy, along with a couple of Strange Stories.
Sandy, another popular Tammy character, is on her second story in Tammy (a third followed in 1982). In her original story, Sandy was the first Tammy story about boyfriends and dating, which was a novel thing for Tammy to do at the time. The days when boyfriend serials were commonplace in girls’ serials were still many years ahead, up at DCT. Sandy’s second story still features boyfriends, but it is not a story arc like the original. It is a series of scrapes and troubles of one sort or other. Some of them are new problems, but others stem from Sandy’s still-persisting problems from her first story, particularly her interfering father, and not having found a suitable boyfriend since she lost the one from her first story.
In her latest story, Bella has run away from the cruel Barlows and fallen in with a circus. She finds circus is not for her, nor is it the best way to keep up her gymnastics. However, she’s stuck with it for the time being, as the circus badly needs her while it is under threat from an enemy.
Giorgio Giorgetti’s new story is “The Breaking of Faith”. He had been a regular Tammy artist for several years, but he passed over later in 1981, so this was his final year in Tammy. His last Tammy story was “Jump, Jump, Julia”.
“Stella Stirrer” is a revenge on the bullies story, where a new kitchen maid at a posh boarding school uses the kitchen to hit back at the snobs who pick on her. But in revenge stories, things have a nasty habit of getting out of hand. So far this has not happened, but the story is still in its early episodes. The later episodes will tell.
A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 