Girl & Tammy 25 August 1984 – (non) merger issue

The Return of Splat! (photostory sequel) – first episode

Olly Decides! (artist Trini Tinturé) – complete story

Let’s Go Pop! – feature 

Wham! – Pullout 

Village of Shame (photostory)

Patty’s World (artist Purita Campos)

The Final Curtain (photostory) – final episode

Help Me! – Problem Page

For the final issue in our Tammy August round, welcome to the Girl and Tammy non-merger issue on 25 August 1984. This is the issue where Tammy would have properly merged with Girl if not for the strike that cut her off on 23 June 1984. 

Instead of a proper merger, all that appears is the Tammy logo. There is no Tammy content anywhere in the issue. It’s business as usual for Girl. Girl readers must have wondered what the Tammy logo was doing there, and where the hell Tammy was inside if she was merging with Girl. On the cover here, something is written in pencil: “first combined issue”. From this, it is confirmed the official cancellation of Tammy was set for 18 August 1984 with issue 699. A new photo story starts this issue, possibly to replace whatever had been planned from Tammy.

What the final issue of Tammy would have looked like can only remain forever in speculation. As there was not much room in Girl for the Tammy merger, it is fair to deduce that everything in Tammy would have finished by the final issue, with probably Bella Barlow and/or Pam of Pond Hill carrying on in Girl. How long either of them or anything else from Tammy would have lasted in Girl is anyone’s guess, especially as Girl was given a total makeover on 6 October 1984.

The Tammy logo appeared on the Girl cover, denoting the token merger, until 29 September 1984. Then a new look Girl was launched.

Princess Tina 27 May 1972

Cover artist: Purita Campos

• Stop ‘n’ Chat with the Tina Gang (writers Linda, Jeffy (Jennifer) and Horace) – feature
• Patty’s World (artist Purita Campos, writer Phillip Douglas)
• Clueless – the blunderdog (artist John Richardson)
• No Swimming Allowed! (artist Santiago Hernandez)
• Pop People (feature)
• Princess Tina cookbook cover – feature
• Briony Andrews (artist Rodrigo Comos) final episode
• Ross – Student Nurse (artist Colin Merrett)
• The Happy Days (artist Andrew Wilson, writer Jenny Butterworth)
• Summer Line-up (feature)
• Problem Pony (artist Edmond Ripoll)
• Freedom Island (artist Juan Solé Puyal)
• Fifty Tote Bags to Win! (competition)
• Make this with Jeffy (real name Jennifer) – feature
• Princess Tina Cook Book – feature
• Flower Arranging – feature
• Janey (writer Jemma) – text story
• “Fire!” (by Horace) – text story
• Jinny below Stairs (artist Julian Vivas)
• Tina Aims for the Top! (artist Candido Ruiz Pueyo)
• Tell us about it – letters page

We continue our exploration of older titles with a look at Princess Tina. Princess Tina started on 23 September 1967 by merging Princess (first series) and Tina. Well, it makes more sense than “Princess & Tina”. In 1973 Princess Tina merged into Pink (best remembered for Sugar Jones, the scheming celebrity you love to hate, though you have to love her for being a sex symbol). 

Princess Tina is a larger size than her contemporary sisters. Princess Tina is also striking for giving credit to some of her writers and her creative teams. These tend to be the writers who write features such as Jeffy (Jennifer), who puts up cut-out dress patterns and text stories, and Horace, writer of the Horace Scope (horror scope). Now that is a nice touch, showing a human face to the creative team. There are even photos of these writers attached to the features. Horace also took part in the artwork; Stop ‘n’ Chat says he painted the cover you can cut out for the Princess Tina cookbook (which has been removed from this copy).

(click thru)

 

The Princess Tina covers were drawn by Purita Campos and featured happy girls doing very happy, everyday things; in this case they are eating watermelon. Many Princess Tina covers found their way into reprints on other covers, such as the Katy series and the Dutch Tina.

Princess Tina is best remembered for Patty’s World and The Happy Days. This particular issue is the last to feature Patty’s World in black-and-white. Next issue Patty is going to be produced in colour, “in all its shades from happy sunshine yellow to the blues”. Ooh, nice! In the story itself, Patty is looking forward to leading a majorette’s parade but has to cancel out because of a funeral. At least such a sombre thing should be out of the way in time for Patty to start enjoying her colour episodes.

In “The Happy Days” Sue has to find a missing will but the dog has torn it up. Let’s hope the dog hasn’t eaten it too! At least trying to find the dog helps a man in trouble.

In this issue, John Richardson makes one of four appearances as filler artist for “Clueless – the Blunderdog”. The other dates Richardson drew Clueless are 22 April, 29 April and 15 July 1972. The Richardson artwork for Clueless in this issue appears below.

“No Swimming Allowed!” is, as you might expect, an unreasonable ban on swimming. In this case it’s a headmistress imposing it on an entire school (because her fiancé drowned) instead of a parent or guardian imposing it on the protagonist. Of course the swimming continues in secret, with help from a surprising source: an aristocrat named Lady Squires. She and her husband have wangled it so the team will compete for the junior swimming trophy match, but the unpleasant head girl is suspicious.

Briony Andrews, a shy but good-natured girl who has elevated from “country mouse” to a confident model, finishes her story this week. But next week she starts another, “Designed for Danger”, so she must have been popular.

Jan Ross, a student nurse, is wrongly dismissed thanks to a forgetful nurse, Sister Mott. But now she finds Mott’s forgetfulness is having even more dangerous consequences: forgetting the warning that her car brakes are bust – and now she’s driving it!

“Problem Pony” is such a problem that Hazel Green has run away with him. His problem is that nobody can ride him unless his dog pal, Dodger, is near him. Then, when Dodger runs off, problem pony does the same. This will most certainly mean he will gallop into trouble.

“Freedom Island” is home to a school where children of UN delegates can be free. All the same, one girl, Pauline, is unhappy and sets off – in shark-invested waters. Even after being rescued from all those sharks, Pauline just won’t say why she tried to run off.

Jinny below Stairs is a good-natured maid who agrees to help a fellow maid, Mary, hide her brother Bert, who is on the run from the police. But doing so gets her into trouble and she is now in danger of being sacked. Then there is even worse danger – Bert is forced to come up to the house and it looks like the horrible housekeeper is about to catch them all red-handed.

In “Tina Aims for the Top!”, Tina has been ordered to find out why girls are leaving an office training course at Maire Castle. Tina suspects it is because the trainer, Fay Petrie, is up to tricks. Caught snooping in Fay’s office, Tina has no choice but to confront her with her suspicions. What is Fay going to say next week?

Girl II #151, 31 December 1983

• Splat! (photostory)
• Animal Poem (feature)
• Fun Fashion: Going in Disguise (feature)
• Tippy’s Special Pool (artist Eduardo Feito)
• A Special Friend – text story (artist Jenny Gable)
• Beauty Resolutions: I Promise… (feature)
• The Kitty Café Cats (artist Joe Collins)
• The Secret Society of St. Nicola’s (photostory)
• Flower’s First Days (feature)
• Patty’s World (artist Purita Campos)
• Slaves of the Nightmare Factory (photostory)
• Help Me! (problem page)
• Police pinup (feature)

This issue of Girl II was published on New Year’s Eve 1983, so it is not surprising there is a New Year’s resolutions feature. The Kitty Cats are also having a dispute over their New Year’s resolutions – the first one of which turns out to be “We promise not to argue”. Meanwhile, Patty hasn’t even got up to Christmas Day yet, and Christmas Eve is anything but merry because Patty’s stepfather has fallen foul of a road accident.

Splat the alien needs a food called “blengrens” in his alien language – which turn out to be peas – in order to remain a convenient doll size and not his usual 10 metres. But he might have been better off growing back to 10 metres after all because he’s now been kidnapped by Rita Harrison and Thelma Crow, the worst enemies of his friend Wendy Collins.

Nobody realises “Tippy’s Special Pool” is being used for dumping chemical waste, which has now poisoned Tippy the otter and his friend Frances. Can it all be cleaned up in the final episode next week?

“The Secret Society of St. Nicola’s” swears to help a new pupil when the headmistress does not allow her to keep her pet at the school. Still, the headmistress’s position is understandable when you consider the pet is a crocodile!

The plight of the “Slaves of the Nightmare Factory” grows even bleaker after escapee Ellen Crawley dies in suspicious circumstances. In punishment for her escape, the girls are given even higher dress quotas to meet. At least the toady is punished too, by losing her privileges and having to share the girls’ rotten diet. Then Natalie falls dangerously ill, but the crooks’ only response is to shut her in the Punishment Box because she was too ill to meet her quota. Amanda is shut in there too. On the other hand, this enables Amanda to discover that fate has played a cruel trick on the man who is the mastermind of it all, and it could cause everything to explode in the crooks’ faces.

Esther Y Su Mundo, vols 1 & 15

I have recently been to Madrid and saw two relevant comics items when I was out there. One was a free item, sponsored by Telefonica, about Paralympic swimmer Teresa Perales. (Digital version available via this link.) It’s a very interesting and well-done comic overall, although as an anthology there are abrupt transitions in style from the serious to the humorous to the positively silly. The overall tone is pretty serious in that it recounts Perales’ achievements and tribulations as a Paralympic athlete, but it also has plenty of time for humorous and revelatory asides on on the difficulties as a wheelchair user of making one’s way through a world designed for able-bodied people.

The first story in the comic was by Purita Campos, the very popular artist on Patty’s World. This caught my attention and got me to look twice at the free comic in the first place, but it also meant that I had Campos and her popular creation in mind when I went into a bookshop a day or two later, at which point I asked if there was a collected edition of the Spanish edition of Patty’s World – “Esther Y Su Mundo”. Indeed there was – a handsome reissue of at least 15 volumes of the story, advertised as “One of the great classics of Spanish comics in a new re-coloured edition”. I bought volumes 1 and 15, so as to be able to get a sense of how the comic has developed over the years since its first pages were published in 1971. I am not sure what year of original publication Vol 15 relates to, ie how long a time-span is represented in my two selected volumes; certainly a number of years, but I suspect not the full original publication span of 1971 – 1988.

They are solid, substantial-feeling editions: 96 pages long, which is slightly less than the 114 pages of the Rebellion Misty reprint (and substantially less than the 192 page whopper reprint of Monster), but the hardback binding, handsome red cloth covering of the spine, and the full colour cover and insides, make for a very enticing package. The price is pretty comparable to the UK reprints I mention above – around £15 – £16, with fluctuations depending on the exchange rate with the Euro. The end papers are a greyscale montage of images from the various years covered in the volumes, and showcase Purita Campos’ beautiful art very nicely.

“Patty’s World” is not something I knew anything at all about until quite recently, and I hadn’t ever read any of it either in the original version or in translation. The first volume starts with Patty Lucas (or Esther Lucas as I will now think of her, having only read the Spanish version!) just turning thirteen. Lots happens to her in the pages of the comic – the pace is quite different from the 14 – 18 episodes of what I think of as a typical girls comic story. This story doesn’t build up and up to a dramatic finale – in this first volume, Esther fights with her family and her best friend and then makes up again, gets into trouble when someone thinks she is shoplifting, worries about her mother getting remarried, pines after a boy from her school, and has a mutual hate society going on with nasty Doreen. It’s all down to earth and (more or less) realistic, apart from the frenetic pace that it all goes at.

It’s not the sort of story that I normally go for very much; and for me the first volume was more of a curiosity item than something that hooked me. However, Volume 15 felt like it would do more for me – it develop story arcs a little more slowly and gives them more time to breathe. I think the stories are also actually better, too: the first arc in the book is genuinely amusing (Esther and her friend Rita swop lives for a day and it gets very silly). It also clearly has more of an edge, though this is really an extension of what we saw right at the beginning. One of the things going on in Esther’s life at thirteen is that her father died some years previously and her mother is considering remarrying, with all the adjustment that this brings. And in Volume 15 Rita’s mother is shown to have died in a previous volume, and her father has since remarried – the stepmother role is shown in a positive light even though tempers can flare. It’s all very human and warm. I think the focus on boy-chasing would put me off if I was embarking on a prolonged read, but overall I can certainly see how readers could end up living in this world and greatly enjoying the characters and the stories.

Of course for many people the draw will also be the art. Purita Campos is great at fluid, expressive characters of all ages, but her protagonists as they move from being girls to young women are her particular focus of course – and she imbues everyone with their own distinctive looks and ways of being, from flirty Rita and annoying Doreen to girl-next-door Esther. The girls are sassy and sexy without crossing a line, the boys are rather cute, and it’s all fun.

Will we ever see a UK reprint edition? The title that it originally appeared in, Princess Tina, started to be published before the 1971 cutoff date that places it outside of Rebellion’s ownership, but the story and the character was published after 1 January 1971. The fact that the Spanish edition has gone through numerous reprintings and new editions clearly indicates that those rights must be clearly established by someone, even if the UK rights have historically been somewhat tangled. The Spanish readership seem to have an ongoing love for this character: the back cover blurb acclaims the comic as a ‘great classic of Spanish comics’ which has been loved by ‘three generations of readers both male and female’. The UK doesn’t have anything like as strong a memory or feeling about this story, though there will certainly be many with fond memories of it in this country. But if this story and this character – which after all is actually set in the UK, with right-hand drive cars, British bobbies, and double-decker buses! – is so popular in Spain with a general audience, it has perhaps the strongest chance to break into that teen market than any of the other Rebellion content acquisition. That is, so long as this is even part of that purchase…

Esther Y Su Mundo volume 1 and volume 15. 96 pp, 17.95 EUR (around the £15 – £16 mark at current exchange rates). Story by Phillip Douglas, art by Purita Campos

Girl and Tammy 25 August 1984

• The Return of Splat! (photo story) – first episode
• Animal Poem – competition
• Olly Decides! (artist Trini Tinturé) – complete story
• Let’s Go Pop! Regular feature
• The Kitty Café Cats – cartoon (artist Joe Collins)
• Wham Pinup – feature
• Village of Shame (photo story)
• Patty’s World (artist Purita Campos, writer Phillip Douglas)
• The Final Curtain (photo story) – last episode
• Help Me! – problem page

We continue exploring the context of Jinty’s family tree with Girl. IPC published Girl from 14 February 1981 to 1990. Later IPC published the Best of Girl Monthly, which reprinted stories from the original comic.

This was the second series called Girl; the first was a comic that ran from 1951 to 1964. Another photo story/picture story comic, Dreamer, merged with Girl in 1982. Tammy was scheduled to merge with Girl in 1984 but was instead dropped after a strike, leaving her stories unfinished. None of the Tammy stories carried on in Girl. Only the Tammy logo made it, mysteriously appearing on Girl’s cover (as is the case here), some time after Tammy disappeared with no explanation. It appears about the time Tammy was originally scheduled to be cancelled, so it was probably meant as a token gesture. All the same, Girl readers must have been puzzled by the sudden appearance of the Tammy logo. In 1990, Girl merged into My Guy.

Note: As Tammy came out Monday and Girl Thursday, my theory is that Tammy, being originally meant to be cancelled in late August, was set for cancellation 22 August and readers instructed to pick up the week’s issue of Girl on Thursday 25 August.

Girl II was largely a photo story comic, but always included two picture stories. One was the regular, “Patty’s World”, which made its way into Girl after going through several other titles. The other picture story was a serial or complete story. The photo stories were in black-and-white. Strips included “Nine to Four” (written by Pat Mills), “The Haunting of Uncle Gideon”, “No Mother for Marty”, “The Pink Flamingo”, “Slaves of the Nightmare Factory“, “The Evil Mirror”, “Wish of a Witch”, “The Runaway Bridesmaid”, “The Perfect Pest” and “To Catch a Thief”.

Most of the photo stories were about school, boyfriends, horse riders, gymnasts, theatre and ballerinas. But some photo stories did have a supernatural theme, such as “Wish of a Witch”, where a girl is given a ring that can grant seven wishes. But she gets greedy and also wastes several wishes because she is not using the power thoughtfully. “Splat” and its sequel, which starts in this issue, are among the few Girl photo stories to delve into science fiction. Occasionally the photo stories used the theme of tortured and abused heroines as well. One, “Slaves of the Nightmare Factory”, was about a racket where girls are abducted and used as slave labour in a dress factory – in the 1980s.

The early Girl annuals are noteworthy in that they reprinted serials from Tammy, Jinty and Misty. These include “Tricia’s Tragedy”, “Secret of the Skulls” and “Journey into Fear…” – which was a badly abridged reprint, with about half of the material cut out. The annual would have done better to use a shorter serial or one that lent itself more readily to abridging.

And now we turn to the issue that has been chosen to represent Girl. In this issue, we see the start of a sequel to an earlier Girl story, “Splat!”, about a space alien. Splat returns in response to a call for help from his Earth friend Wendy. But another alien has landed too. Is it friend or foe?

It is the final episode of “The Final Curtain”. It is the final curtain in more ways than one because Julian Berridge, who has been giving Sherry Martin acting lessons, dies on stage after helping her give the performance of her life.

In “Village of Shame” the Walker family are on holiday at a fishing village – only to find it mysteriously empty. Except for some bank robbers who are now holding them hostage! But the bank robbers could be in trouble too if there is some supernatural force responsible for the empty village. And it’s not much of a holiday for Patty either – she has discovered the holiday chalet her family booked got destroyed in a cliff collapse! And the place they do end up in delivers another whammy – Patty’s arch enemy Doreen Snyder is there too!

“Olly Decides!” is a complete story, where a dog has to end up choosing between the girl who has taken him over and loves him, and his previous owners who have suddenly turned up to claim him.

References

http://ukcomics.wikia.com/wiki/Girl_(1981-1990)

http://britishcomics.wikia.com/wiki/Patty’s_World

http://britishcomics.wikia.com/wiki/Girl_(IPC)

Girl Picture Library

Girls’ picture libraries. The monthly Commando-style digests where girls could read a complete 64-page story every month as a supplement to their regular weekly comic. Thrillers, humour, drama, horror, supernatural, heart-breakers, fantasy or science fiction stories were told in a once-a-month, one-volume complete story.

The picture libraries also provided stories about favourite regulars such as The Four Marys, Wee Slavey and The Comp. Occasionally there were variations in the formula, such as a story being told over two picture libraries, or a picture library featuring several short stories instead of one complete one. One example was “Scream!” (not to be confused with the IPC comic of the same name), which told five scarey stories to make you scream.

Picture libraries were a long-running staple of four of DCT’s titles: Bunty, Judy, Mandy and Debbie. The Bunty picture libraries lasted 455 issues. This is not surprising as Bunty herself is the longest-running girls’ title in history. The Mandy books finished at the same time as the Bunty ones, but at 277 books. Judy produced 375 books and Debbie 197 books. Towards the end of the run reprints appeared although original stories continued.

In IPC the girls’ picture library had a more unusual and uneven history. June and Princess Tina were the only titles to produce any long-running ones. In fact, the June picture library eventually recycled the old Princess logo to become the wordy title, “June and School Friend and Princess Library Picture Library“. Maybe this was why “Picture Library” was dropped on the cover at some point after #458, though the spine continued to say “June and School Friend and Princess Picture Library” to the end of its run.

Tammy and Jinty were never given any picture libraries although they lasted the longest after June. Yet the photo-story comic, Girl (series 2) was given her own picture library. This lasted for just 30 books. Miniscule compared with the rich histories of the June picture library and its counterparts from DCT. But what gives Girl Picture Library its place on this blog is that although some of the libraries were original material, many of them also reprinted material from Jinty and Tammy.

Most of the reprints appeared under revised titles, some of which were awful and showed little thinking. For example, “Vision of Vanity Fayre” from Tammy was reprinted in Girl Picture Library #2 under the the extremely lame title of “Dear Diary”. Strangely, the last three Girl picture libraries reprinted Tammy stories under their original titles.

There were some oddities and even downright sloppiness in the run, which may indicate what sort of budget or editorship that the series was running to. For example, the cover of #16 (reprint of “My Heart Belongs to Buttons”) changes the appearance of the heroine. Readers must have been surprised or irritated when they opened the issue and found the brunette heroine inside bearing no resemblance to the girl on the cover. And the girl who appears on the cover of #25 (reprint of “Shadow on the Fen”, above) has the wrong hair colour – she is blonde on the cover but is a brunette in the story. The witchfinder too looks different – he looks younger and has a fuller face than the craggly gaunt face rendered by Douglas Perry. Still, it is a beautiful, haunting cover.

A more striking oddity was “Sue’s Daily Dozen” being reprinted over two volumes: “Spellbound” and “Bewitched”. But there was no indication in “Spellbound” to say “to be continued”. Readers must have wondered why the story suddenly stopped abruptly. The remaining pages are devoted to “Tiny Tina”, which is Wee Sue under a revised title. “Cathy’s Casebook” also appears in two volumes: “Cathy’s Crusade” and “Dr Cathy”. But the reprint is even odder in that “Dr Cathy” does not come immediately after “Cathy’s Crusade” – “The Old Mill” is in between them.

Naturally, some material and panels had to be cut or modified to make the reprints fit into 64-page pocket size volumes. For example, “Moments of Terror”, which reprints “Waves of Fear”, deletes Priscilla Heath and the orienteering club sequences. Both of these played a key role in the resolution of the story in its original run – realising that the panic Clare Harvey had while her friend was drowning in a cave was a claustrophobia attack and not the cowardice that has made her the most hated girl in town. The revelation is now made by Clare’s mother after Rachel tells her about the trick Jean pulled – playing on Clare’s claustrophobia – to get her expelled.

On the other hand, the editing also mercifully reduces some of Clare’s ordeal; for example, the hostility Clare receives from the townsfolk has been removed completely. Some of the bullying at school and the harsh treatment Clare gets from her parents has been deleted as well. The editing is pretty seamless, but there is one glitch: when Clare is pushed to the brink of suicide, she thinks the business at the club was the last straw. With the orienteering club deleted, readers must immediately have wondered “what club?” or “what’s missing here?”. They would know it’s been reprinted from somewhere else because there was always a caption saying “previously published” for the reprint material.

Cutting out material also had the unfortunate effect of removing key turning points in some plots. For example, the reprint of “Thursday’s Child” removes the scene where an evil flag forces a man to nearly saw his own hand off. Yes, it’s gruesome. But in the original run it was what made the villainess, Julie, who had been using the flag’s power to conduct a revenge campaign against her future mother, Thursday, come to her senses and realise the flag had to be destroyed.

Below is a list of the Girl Picture Libraries, along with their original titles and appearances. The only one that has not been identified is “Penny’s Best Friend” in #8. It could be that this was an original story as not all the Girl Picture Libraries carried reprints, but I need to confirm this.

1. Patty’s World – reprinted from Tina
2. Dear Diary – Vision of Vanity Fayre from Tammy
3. Patty’s World – reprinted from Tina
4. The Dolphin Mystery – The Disappearing Dolphin from Jinty
5. Cathy’s Crusade – Part 1 of Cathy’s Casebook from Jinty
6. The Old Mill – original
7. Dr Cathy – Part 2 of Cathy’s Casebook from Jinty
8. Penny’s Best Friend – contents unknown
9. Circus Waif – Wild Rose from Jinty
10. Stormy Seas – original
11. Moments of Terror – Waves of Fear from Jinty
12. The Shadow – Mike and Terry from Jinty
13. Princess Wanted! – The Perfect Princess from Jinty
14. The Black Sheep – Black Sheep of the Bartons from Jinty
15. I’ll Never Sing Again! – Nothing to Sing About from Jinty
16. A Second Chance – My Heart Belongs to Buttons from Jinty
17. Winner-Loser! – No Medals for Marie from Jinty
18. Spellbound! – Part 1 of Sue’s Daily Dozen from Jinty, plus A Wee Sue story from Tammy reprinted as Tiny Tina
19. Bewitched! – Part 2 of Sue’s Daily Dozen from Jinty, plus a Strange Story, “A Monumental Detective” reprinted as “The Crook Catchers”
20. The Inheritance – Race for a Fortune from Jinty
21. The Fortune-Teller – Cursed to be a Coward! Jinty
22. Tina’s Temper – Temper, Temper, Tina! from Tammy
23. Fame and Fortune – Make Headlines, Hannah! from Tammy
24. Wonder Girl – Betta to Lose from Tammy
25. The Witchfinder – Shadow on the Fen from Jinty
26. Sweet and Sour – The Sweet and Sour Rivals from Jinty
27. Carol in Camelot – Carol in Camelot St from Tammy
28. The Happiest Days – Tammy
29. Thursday’s Child – Tammy
30. A Girl Called Midnight – Tammy