This issue marks the start of the Jinty classic, “Fran of the Floods”, a tale that has more relevance in today’s climate change environment and rising sea levels than when it was first published in 1976. Rising temperatures and melting ice caps are causing non-stop rain worldwide, and flooding problems are everywhere. Fran Scott is treating it as a joke, but Dad senses it’s something more like the Apocalypse.
Ping-Pong Paula ends this week. Paula is in hospital in a coma after a road accident, but not even this brings her quarrelling parents together. It takes a telling-to from a nurse that they have to put everything aside and go in together if they want Paula to recover for things to come right at last.
Poor Nell can’t do anything right. This week she tries to protect Sara’s horse Mister Flicker because she mistakenly thinks he will be destroyed. But her ignorance in horse care has resulted in him becoming seriously ill. More tears for the girl who’s “Too Old to Cry!”.
Lyndy Lagtree, who has finally escaped from the “Slaves of the Candle” racket, realises the villainous Mrs Tallow is out to steal the Crown Jewels and is hot on her trail. Unfortunately, she fails to stop Mrs Tallow from putting her plan in motion at the Tower of London.
In “Friends of the Forest”, Sally and Maya are trying to keep a tame deer, Star, from the circus. Sally is discovering how Maya lives in the forest – in a tree house. But it looks like the welfare busybodies don’t approve of this. They grab Sally, thinking she’s Maya.
In “Song of the Fir Tree”, our fugitives catch up with their old friend Rachel from the concentration camp, who’s now a bit of a fugitive herself. But their enemy Grendelsen catches up too, and now he’s got all three at gunpoint.
Hazel finds out why Black Crag Mountain is angry – greedy developers are out to disturb the dead as they dynamite the old mine workings for silver, and they’ve been scaring the villagers off their land to do it. No wonder the mountain’s a bit pissed! Wouldn’t we be?
That self-righteous prig Wanda White is too much this time. She’s kept Susie awake all night by reading “Pilgrim’s Progress” aloud – her nightly habit of reading a self-improvement book – through those thin walls between them. It’s the last straw in Susie working herself into exhaustion, and the exhaustion gets Susie into trouble in gym class next day.
Dot’s putting on a bit of weight and is making do-it-yourself gadgets to lose it. She eventually turns to a do-it-yourself Turkish bath, which solves the weight problem. Trouble is, Dot forgot to undress first!
Katie is getting a cup of tea for her friend Sue, who is in hospital. Should be straightforward? Not when you’re the Jinx from St. Jonah’s. And that’s just the start of the jinxing that gets Katie banned from the hospital. The ban isn’t stopping Katie from getting some sweets to Sue – but with a fishing pole? Oh dear, watch out for jinxing hijinks at the hospital next week!
The Jinty & Lindy merger is in its second week. Lyndy Lagtree is determined to escape from Mrs Tallow’s House of Candles despite being framed by her for theft and now the most wanted person in London. Her first attempt fails, but she picks up a vital clue about the racket. Unfortunately Mrs Tallow is on the verge of discovering this, so Lyndy has to think of something fast! Meanwhile, Nell’s escape from Mrs Arbuthnot’s horrible orphanage is more successful. So far, no problems, and she’s landed on her feet in a cake shop. Can Nell keep one step ahead Mrs Arbuthnot, the cruel matron who can lie her way out of anything?
In “Song of the Fir Tree”, Solveig and Per have made their way to a more savoury orphanage, but they are forced to go on the run again when Grendelsen catches up. Unfortunately this causes another missed opportunity to reunite with their father.
Hazel’s just about reached the end of her rope with her haunting, but now it’s taking another turn in a churchyard. Will it be for the better or worse?
Miss Marvell breaks the hearts of everyone in the community when she uses her death dust to destroy valuable trees that were memorials to fallen soldiers. The water lily is next on the list for the antidote to Miss Marvell’s death dust. Easy to find, but not easy to obtain with her around!
In the two running stories that came over from Lindy, Hettie High and Mighty is proving herself just as slick as Mrs Arbuthnot. She is playing so foully on the hockey field that poor Janie has taken a nasty crack on the head. Then Janie finds out Hettie is doing it all on purpose after switching their names with the reporters watching the match. So she will get the blame for what Hettie did! In the other story, Finleg the Fox, Una finds a stash of money in his den. It could only be stolen money, but who stole it, and what does it have to do with the stranger who’s been found dead?
In “Barracuda Bay”, our heroes escape the villainous Kane’s underwater base thanks to a timely earthquake. But now they face a tidal wave set off by the explosives he set to destroy his base. This move has also rebounded on Kane, whose getaway submarine got jammed in the door from the quake.
Myra Glegg has been playing rotten tricks on Ping-Pong Paula, but at least Paula now knows why – Myra is her latest ping-pong rival. Showdown time.
You would think babysitting a pot plant couldn’t be any trouble. Not when the damn thing is so big it reaches the ceiling, has very fussy demands, and the Jinx from St Jonah’s is in charge of it!
The Journey Story or Quest was a popular story theme at certain points in Jinty and in other titles. Indeed, at some points in 1976, it would have been possible to be reading an issue of Jinty which included three or even arguably four journey stories in the same week’s comic (see 24 April 1976 for an example). It’s a story framework which allows the creators to vary the setting and characters as much as they like, and to experiment with a range of local touches if desired (Scottish kilts, Welsh mountains, or European stereotypes could be brought in depending on the story). Within a Quest theme the dramatic tension is kept up, too – the protagonist is always thinking of the thing that keeps them on the journey – the danger they are avoiding or the goal they are trying to reach.
The journey story is of course focused around a lengthy journey, but it is also something of a quest, as the protagonist has someone she needs to find or something she needs to do before she can stop journeying. She does not just head out for the fun of it or to see the sights; there is some motivating reason for her to keep moving. Apart from the journey element, the other themes of the story can be fairly varied: there are journey stories in Jinty which are rooted in science fiction, humour, love of aninals, and more.
Core examples
“Song of the Fir Tree” (1975-76). This story has siblings Solveig and Per traveling across Europe after they are released from the concentration camp they were held in during WWII. They travel from Germany to Norway under their own steam, constantly having to keep one step ahead of their enemy Grendelsen (though at the same time, unknown to them, their father is chasing after them also).
This was the first journey story printed in Jinty. Clear precursors outside of British girls comics are “I Am David” and “The Silver Sword”, both of which feature long journeys and have child protagonists dealing with the aftermath of WWII.
“Fran of the Floods” (1976). After her home town is overwhelmed in flooding, Fran Scott travels the length of an apocalyptic Britain to see if her sister is alive and well in Scotland. This popular and well-remembered journey story is one of survival against the odds and courage in the face of barbaric behaviour on the part of other survivors.
“Bound for Botany Bay” (1976). Betsy Tanner is transported to Australia; in addition to the lengthy sea journey, once she gets to Botany Bay she runs off and travels across dangerous countryside, eventually finding her father who was sentenced to transportation earlier on.
“For Peter’s Sake!” (1976). Set in the 1930s, Carrie Lomax has a brother who is seriously ill. Her grandmother’s pram has rocked many babies back to good health in a seemingly miraculous way and she hopes that it will do the same for little Peter. However, Carrie and the pram are in Scotland and the rest of her family is in London, and she needs to push the pram all the way back to him on foot.
“The Darkening Journey” (1977). Thumper has been separated from his owner Julie, who is moving house with her family, across Britain to the west country. To add to the pathos, both of them are going slowly blind: Julie because she needs an operation to cure her, and Thumper because of an accident at the time they were separated. Together with his friend Beaky, a clever talking rook, he travels towards the setting sun to see if he can be reunited with his beloved owner.
“Race For A Fortune” (1977-78). This is a humourous take on the journey story: Katie McNabb must race her snobby cousins in a journey to inherit her skinflint great-uncle Ebeneezer’s money. The one who reaches Ebeneezer’s home village of Yuckiemuckle first, starting out from the south of England with no money to help them, will win the race and the terms of the will. Katie and her cousins battle it out, each overtaking the other at various points on their travels.
“Somewhere Over The Rainbow” (1978-79). This is the longest, most epic of all the journey stories in Jinty (indeed so long is it, at 36 episodes, that to date I have quailed before the mighty task of writing a story post for it!). Dorothy and Max are an orphaned brother-sister pair who run away from the state care they are put into when their mother is killed. Inspired by the Wizard of Oz song, they travel from the south of England all the way to Scotland, hoping to find happiness at a care home called Rainbow’s End.
Updated to add: a post on this story has now been added.
Edge cases and uncertainties
The core stories listed above all feature epic, dangerous, and long journeys as a central aspect of the story. There are other stories in Jinty which feature travelling on the part of the protagonists, but without it being such a central part of the plot.
“Then There Were 3…” (1976). This is more of a mystery story: ten girls hire a narrowboat and travel on the water for some time, but the plot primarily focuses on the mystery of what is behind the occurrences that spook the girls. Is it something supernatural in origin, or is it down to a purely human villainy?
“The Big Cat” (1976-77) When her grandmother dies and she is evicted from the gypsy camp she lives in, Ruth travels with the big cat Ayesha that the story is named after. We do not currently have a story post about this to confirm if this is more of a journey story, or a fugitive story where the protagonist runs away and spends time in hiding rather than in travelling towards a clear goal.
Not to be confused with…
There are plenty of stories that include an element of journeying or travelling, such as those ones where the main character runs away: for instance Jinty‘s first issue includes the story “A Dream for Yvonne“, where Yvonne runs away from the circus to become a ballerina. She does not travel throughout the story unceasingly until she reaches her goal, though: she runs away multiple times, loses her memory, is threatened by jealous rivals, and is eventually accepted by both her family and the ballet school. The journeying is not the main point of the story, but rather her challenge lies in how to be accepted by family and friends.
Likewise in many stories there is a dramatic finale where the protagonist runs away either to elicit sympathy or to enact some specific deed: Gail in “Gail’s Indian Necklace” and Lee in “Daddy’s Darling” are two such examples from Jinty‘s early days. I am not counting these either, as the main focus of the story is again not on the journey itself, which is pretty limited in the span of story time that it takes up.
Fugitive stories may overlap considerably with the journey story, but again the key question in my mind is whether the fugitive keeps running, or mostly hides away somewhere. “Always Together…” (1974-75) has an orphaned family (well, almost – read the story summary for more detail) who run away from the welfare state mechanisms which are threatening to split them up. They do not keep running continuously, but instead camp out in a few locations and fend for themselves throughout the bulk of the story.
There are a few stories with castaways (“Desert Island Daisy“, “Girl The World Forgot“): if you are going to be cast away on a desert island you can hardly avoid having travelled, somewhere along the lines! But the focus is then on the predicament of the main character, not on a prolonged journey. The same goes for “Alice In A Strange Land” which has a transatlantic plane journey at beginning and end of the story, and a dramatic crash landing in an early episode, but which does not focus on those elements in the core plot.
Elsewhere…
Journey-themed stories were of course not confined to the pages of Jinty, though the April 1976 spike in popularity of these stories is perhaps only seen in this title. The following stories are not meant to be a complete list of journey stories, but just to give a flavour of the prevalence and the variety of them across both IPC and DC Thomson. (Many thanks to Mistyfan for providing scans of the below and other stories, and also to Lorrbot and the Girls Comics of Yesterday site, which I checked for mention of journey stories.)
Glen, A Dog on a Lonely Quest (Tammy, 1971)
Janet and her Travellin’ Javelin (Debbie, 1974)
Towne in the Country (Tammy, 1976-77)
The Ride-Away Randalls (Debbie, 1978)
The Wandering Starrs (Bunty, 1978-79)
One Girl and Her Dog (Tammy, 1978-79)
Jumbo and Jet (Tracy, 1981)
Jet’s Incredible Journey (Suzy, 1986)
Other thoughts
This post is already rather long, but I have more thoughts about the theme. Another post will follow, discussing aspects of how journey stories actually worked in more detail, looking at some of the stories mentioned above.
This post is inspired by a number of creator attribution discussions from recent months, not all of which have made it onto the blog yet (and some of which are hot off the press!). Yesterday I had a lovely, fun meetup with the daughter of Trini Tinturé, who is very delightfully based in the same city as me for at least some of her working time. I dug out some old issues to show Maris Tinturé some of her mother’s Jinty stories in situ, and this was the first one where I spotted a story attributed to Trini.
Maris leafed through it once, twice, and couldn’t find any art of her mother’s. Was it just too much of a skim-read to spot it after all this time? No – I pointed out the specific story I had in mind, “Too Old to Cry!”, and the immediate reaction was, ‘but that’s not hers!’ – and a quick cameraphone piccy and email confirmed it. This story looks enough like Trini’s art for me to never have questioned the attribution that came handed down to me, probably from David Roach originally, but to the most familiar of eyes it is as unlike her art as one face is like another. Below is the episode of the story from this issue – compare it to a piece of definite Trini artwork like the sample pages of Creepy Crawley. (But I think that you will be likely to have to look very closely to be sure, unless you are very familiar with her artwork.) [Edited to add – Trini now says that this story is hers after all! This is upon reflection and, especially, her review of the second and third pages of the story. Here are her own words about it (translated by her daughter Maris): “I would much rather say that this bad work is not mine, and it would be easier for me to do so. But, unfortunately, I have to admit it is. Shame, shame! It looks like the main character had to have a ‘special’ feel, and special indeed I made her! She looks horribly tuberculose. I don’t remember the story or the characters at all. (And at the bottom of the last page the texts points to the continuation in the following week, meaning it’s a serial: no clue at all.) But there are traits in the other characters that give me away mercilessly. Nobody can copy certain kinds of folding and line… The way of drawing stones, the backgrounds… the older people… (Or maybe it was a cooperation between me and Dracula, who knows!)
But the date 1976 certainly does not fit. It is quite possible that they originally put aside the story and only published it years later, who knows why. There was a lot of entanglement [with] publishers. These bad pages smack of my earliest works for Scotland’s schoolgirl series, for example. Fortunately my style changed very soon.
There’s nothing more I can add. It is bad work, but it is mine.”]
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This issue also includes an episode of “The Haunting of Hazel” which we have likewise previously attributed to Santiago Hernandez. However, on looking at the 2017 post on “Santiago Hernandez or José Ariza” Trini has this to say: “Barracuda Bay” is definitely Hernandez. “Golden Shark” possibly, but much earlier work perhaps. “The Haunting of Hazel” is unlikely to be Hernandez.” So I have likewise changed the attribution of that story on this post, in order not to confidently show it as being by Santiago Hernandez.
Finally, one other story in this issue is from an artist that we have long referred to as unknown – the unknown artist who drew “Merry at Misery House”. A sighting by “Goof” on the UK Comics Forum gave us a valuable reference to the name “B Jackson” as the artist credit accompanying the illustration for a text story in the ‘Daily Mirror Book for Girls” 1971. Further detective work by David Slinn (a contact of David Roach’s) and by David Roach has given a long list of stories and titles that “B Jackson” seems to have worked on. This will follow as a blog post on this site, with apologies for the delay in getting to this denouement.
But will the attribution of B Jackson prove long lasting, or could it be falsified or proved inaccurate in some way? All that I’ve seen on the blog so far goes to show that there is no 100% guarantee of anything – the word of an expert is very valuable but there’s nothing to compare with a direct line from the creator themselves, if at all possible.
Lee Simons is the daughter of a wealthy businessman, though not all is smooth sailing in their lives: her elder brother Peter was knocked over and killed while riding his bike and a year later, Lee’s mother dies of an illness that presumably she was not strong enough to fight off due to sadness. Lee and her father only have each other now – well, actually, Mr Simons has got the munitions factory and the large house too, not that Lee is all that bothered about those things. She would rather make her own life and choose her own friends – at least, this is the case by the time she is thirteen and has had five years of stifling over-protectiveness to cope with.
At the beginning of the story, though, the war gives her unexpected hope. First her governess resigns in order to join the land army, meaning that Lee has to go to the local village school; and then she pulls a fast one by volunteering to host an evacuee (something that her father was very against). She gets more than she bargained for – evacuee Maggie Hope is billeted on them but so is Maggie’s little brother, Joe – the family he had been going to were unable to take him after all. Lee is over the moon to have friends staying, but her father keeps them apart at every opportunity. He sends Lee to school in a chauffeur-driven car and makes Maggie and Joe walk behind even when it is raining; the other school kids taunt and despise Lee for that, even though Maggie sticks up for her. Mr Simons is susceptible to public opinion though, and when he eventually realizes it will look bad for him to keep doing that, he sends Maggie and Joe to school by car as well – but a different one, so that Lee is still kept away from the two ‘guttersnipes’ as he thinks of them.
And so the tussle goes – Lee intervenes with her father to protect and help the two Hope kids, Mr Simons protects and coddles his daughter but in a narrow, stifling way that keeps her isolated from other experiences and emotions, and Maggie and Joe bring more and more excitement into Lee’s life, willy-nilly. Even sending a food parcel to Maggie’s mum in London is a struggle, and it only happens because Mr Simons doesn’t want to look bad in front of others when a newspaper reporter sees Lee trying to post it.
Some fights are won by the kids and some by the father, at least initially. Allsorts, Maggie and Joe’s dog, is sent from London and the kids hide it in the air-raid shelter but of course it is not long before it is found – luckily before he is sent back, he saves Lee from a falling brick wall and so Mr Simons agrees to let the dog stay. Maggie and Lee both write an essay in class about their mothers – Maggie’s is chosen for a class prize because it is so emotionally written. The prize is a tour of a local factory – specifically, Mr Simons’ factory – and he ignores Maggie and only talks to Lee, as if she had won the prize herself. But the factory workers chat to Maggie and take to her, even choosing her as their social club queen.
They have a whip-round too, and Maggie wants to spend the resulting windfall on getting Joe a train set – but with the war on, there is none to be had in the shops for any money. Finally, a moment for Mr Simons to show a different side – out of the blue, he gives Joe the train set that Lee’s dead brother never got to use. Not that he’s softening towards them, mind you!
One incident causes her father to harden further rather than the reverse. Lee is tasked with opening an event – a sale of work – but on the way there , an RAF plane is downed and her clothes are all ruined, either by using them to aid the RAF pilot directly or because she is running across rough land and they are scratched and torn. Despite her heroism the result is that Lee is taken out from the village school and made to have lessons at home again – taken by a snobby maid who has been working at their house but who is a qualified teacher. Miss Johnson (former maid Daisy) is a nasty piece of work, but Lee is not left alone with her for long, because air raid damage conveniently closes the local school and so Maggie and Joe need to join the lessons, much to the disgruntlement of Miss Johnson and of Mr Simons. Young Joe proves to be quite a terror, teasing Miss Johnson with their dog, with a mouse, and with scurrilous caricatures, so quite soon Daisy heads off in a temper. Lee is delighted and although Mr Simons is cross, he is more upset by it being the anniversary of his wife’s death, leading him to snap even more nastily at the two evacuees.
It’s the anniversary of Joe’s father’s death too though, and they find him crying in the village graveyard. Maybe Mr Simons is softening after all – he puts his arm around Joe and even gives some money for the kids to go to the cinema – but it is only temporary and he very quickly turns up at the cinema and separates the two groups so that he has Lee all to himself. Nor will he invite Ma Hope over to visit the two kids, despite Lee’s pleas – but new maid ‘Mrs Watkins’ turns out to be Mrs Hope under an assumed name, come to be with her children. Lee takes to her instantly but they have to make sure that Mr Simons doesn’t find out and send her packing. Of course it is not long before the inevitable happens (a comic set-piece has Ma Hope soaking her feet in a warm bowl in front of the fire when she thinks the master is out for the evening, only to be interrupted by Mr Simons and posh guest).
So Mrs Hope is back in London when further air raids hit the East End, and of course her children are distraught with fear for her. Mr Simons bows to public pressure and has his chauffeur drive them back to their old area to check, but doesn’t allow Lee to go along with them and is not particularly upset when the two run away from the chauffeur to go on looking for their Ma. Lee of course is the next to run away, to find her dear friends – and although it looks like their mother is dead, she vows to stay and look after them so that they are not alone. Fat chance that Daddy will let her alone though: he drags her out and gives the Hopes the ultimatum that they can come to the hotel that the Simons will be at for the subsequent 24 hours, or they can stay and be left to their own devices.
It wouldn’t be a girls’ picture-story without a dramatic ending, of course – so as soon as that ultimatum delivered, Lee finds herself looking with horror at the house that the Hopes are in, as it burns down! Lee runs into the burning building and of course is immediately struck down – while she struggles for her life, Mr Simons has time to realize what a caring and unselfish child he has raised despite himself. And when she comes round, a week later, her new room mate turns out to be Mrs Hope, who is not dead – a wall fell on her and she was injured but not killed by the air raid that Maggie and Joe heard about. In turn, Mrs Hope hears about Maggie and Joe’s deaths in the penultimate episode. The final episode, however, has all being well – Lee and Mrs Hope are both discharged from hospital, Mr Simons continues with his change of heart and invites Mrs Hope to stay with them in the country, and although she says no (most vehemently) once Maggie and Joe are found, safe and sound after all, the grand house is turned in to a Convalescent Home with Mrs Hope as the House Mother. It is no longer only Lee who is Daddy’s Darling, but a wider group including Joe and Maggie and the other kids who will come to escape the war.
Thoughts
This is a long-running serial – not quite one of Jinty‘s longest (see more discussion on this post about story length) but nearly half a year’s worth of story. I don’t remember reading it when it first came out as I was a bit too young, but it must have been a successful product of the Alison Christie – Phil Townsend creative team to have run to that length. Some elements are a little repetitive, as is the danger with something of this length – Daddy’s single-minded attention to only his daughter’s comfort changes only towards the end of the serial and there are perhaps a little too many cases where Lee mourns his lack of caring towards others in similar wording to the earlier examples. But of course this is something that is more obvious on a re-read after the fact than at the time of original publication.
There were only relatively few stories in Jinty that feature the Second World War: “Daddy’s Darling”, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”, and “Song of the Fir Tree“. (The first two are known to be written by Alison Christie and drawn by Phil Townsend, so of course it raises questions whether “Song of the Fir Tree” might also be, but it was not listed as such by Alison Christie in her earlier interview.) It feels to me as if in the case of this story it is more of a backdrop than a theme – the other two stories are about war, or about things that wouldn’t have happened without the war, whereas this story is really about a stifling over-protective parent. So this makes it more similar to another Christie story, “The Four-Footed Friends“.
In “The Four-Footed Friends”, the protagonist struggles with her stifling mother, who lost a child to illness and wraps her daughter in cotton-wool as a result; in “Daddy’s Darling” it is the father who is the antagonist that the daughter has to struggle against. This feels unusual: I know of a similar story, Tammy’s “My Father – My Enemy!”, where the socially-conscious daughter saves the workers at the mine owed by her Victorian father (thanks to Mistyfan, in the comments, for supplying further details) but not many others where the father is the blocker. “Dracula’s Daughter” is the obvious exception to that, but it is generally mothers or other women / girls who are the villains and antagonists in girls’ stories. There are a couple of examples of mystery stories where the villain is eventually revealed to be the father (photo-story “Slaves of the Nightmare Factory” is one such) or where a husband and wife team are equally to blame, but other than that, the antagonists are more typically headmistresses, female teachers, bully girls, mothers / step-mothers, grandmothers, aunts.
Mr Simons is not particularly evil but he is spectacularly clueless throughout. He does soften towards the two evacuees before the end, but his change of heart is depicted as somewhat out of the blue as it only really comes to pass in the last couple of episodes. In other ways the story develops quite nicely over its length: Maggie Hope is drawn as scrawny and plain to start with, and she becomes much more well-favoured by the end. Is that supposed to be as a result of better feeding than she’d get in the East End of London, or because Phil Townsend forgets to draw her quite as plain as at the start? Either way it works pretty well and matches the growing friendship of the two girls.
The Valley of Shining Mist (artist Carlos Freixas, writer Alan Davidson)
Song of the Fir Tree (artist Phil Townsend)
Do-It-Yourself Dot (artist Alf Saporito)
“The Green People” (artist Phil Gascoine) – last episode
Barracuda Bay (artist Santiago Hernandez)
Ping-Pong Paula (artist Jim Baikie)
Katie Jinks’s school is competing against the nearby boys’ school, to see who does best at ‘gender-swapped’ tasks – so Katie and pals are making a concrete pathway for their school, and the boys are cooking a cordon bleu meal, which the victors get to eat! Of course, her equal-opportunity jinxing sees her ruining the chances of both groups equally – the boys win, but Katie’s antics end up with the boys locked in a store-room unable to eat their fine supper – so naturally the girls have to self-sacrificially eat it up… The tagline for upcoming stories advises readers that ‘there’s a long story starring Katie in the new Jinty Annual‘ (which turns out to be drawn by Audrey Fawley rather than Mario Capaldi).
Ballerina Barbie gets a shock as she is dancing before an audience – her sight returns and she can dance with more joy than ever! But she isn’t able to get to her sister quite in time to see the beloved face that she hasn’t seen for so many years.
Lucy and Yvette need to come up with a cunning plan to save Corn Dolly from the prison that Miss Marvell has put her in – the doll is powerless herself, surrounded as she is by black magic items in the local museum. But the brave and resourceful girls swop the doll for a very similar one that they have bought. Miss Marvell is fuming once she finds out of course, and threatens that ‘next time, there will be no half measures!’.
Debbie is stunned at the next request that Mrs Maynard makes – to bring her £100! A huge amount of money for the poor girl, of course, representing the entirety of her winnings at the talent contest. And she’s already spent her winnings, too! She sadly goes round returning the items she’d bought, but meanwhile her cruel family come up with ways to stop her from giving the money to Mrs Maynard. Will this mean that Debbie can never see her kind, if odd, mentor again?
Per and Solveig are still being pursued by Grendelsen, with much trekking through the woods. There’s natural dangers in the woods as well as Nazi stalkers though, as the kids are threatened by a wild boar and by a fierce dog too.
“The Green People” comes to an end this week. Moura’s aunt Zella has betrayed the peaceful underground people in a pact with the surface dwellers who want to build a motorway on the moor – but she finds that the dangerous monster Krakengerd is not as easy to control as she had thought. All ends well and the green people’s secret – and their lives – are safe.
“Barracuda Bay” sees Susan Stevens captured and trapped underwater, with her air running out. Will her partner Martin find and rescue her in time? This thriller is slightly old-fashioned in style and quite reminiscent of the Sandie story “The Golden Shark”, which also is a diving-based thriller with a female lead who has good hair. The art on “Barracuda Bay” is much tighter and more neatly-finished, though less obviously by the same artist as “The Haunting of Hazel” (which starts in the next issue). “The Golden Shark” gives a much clearer artistic link between the two stories that were reprinted in Jinty, which I was slightly surprised by.
Finally, “Ping-Pong Paula” has Paula suffering from lack of sleep, in the dodgy digs that her mother has dragged her to. Paula’s dad can support her table-tennis playing better, but of course her mother is bound to find out and to use it as more ammunition in the parental war.
Katie the Jinx had a break last week, but as the cover shows, she’s back now. This week she’s trying to sweep down a cobweb that’s in a difficult position to reach. She succeeds in the end, but leaves the place in a worse state than when she first started cleaning it. Typical Katie!
It’s not every day in girls’ comics we see an unsavoury girl being straightened out with a good spanking on the bottie. Yet that is the case here in “Hetty High-and-Mighty” here, and you’ve got to love it. Next, Hettie has got to help the school win the match or she will hear it from her stepmother again. Trouble is, can Hettie pull it off after a dog bite makes her go lame?
Lyndy and Lucy have broken out of the House of Candles, but things aren’t going smoothly. Mrs Tallow sets the Peelers on them, claiming they are thieves, and Lucy’s been injured! Moreover, Mrs Tallow is off on another robbery with her accomplice in the mystery coach. Fortunately Lyndy gets on the trail, but can she stop the robbery?
Una gets help for the sick Finleg. She soon realises he’s been poisoned by despicable Dora and swears vengeance. However, Una’s attitude changes when she realises Dora’s unknowingly put herself in danger when she finds the stolen money.
In “Golden Dolly, Death Dust!”, Miss Marvell’s bid to split up the girls has failed, but leaves Lucy’s mother a nervous wreck and she has to take a break in Cornwall. Mum’s lucky – soon everyone’s a nervous wreck when they see the latest damage the death dust has caused.
Mum’s pride gets worse for Ping-Pong Paula. They have to find new accommodation but silly old Mum would rather sleep in a field or – as it turns out – the night refuge shelter, than swallow her pride and go back to Dad. Even relatives are fed up with Mum’s stupidity. But worse is to follow – Paula gets news that Dad’s garage is failing!
Nell finds she’s being virtually blackmailed into staying at the academy and being turned into a refined young lady. She doesn’t make a good start either – she gets herself dreadfully dirty by cleaning filthy pots, not realising that they had only been put out to be disposed of and were not meant for cleaning. What an embarrassing start, but then things look up when she finds a friend.
More weird things happen on Black Crag, but Hazel is convinced explosives, not the curse of the mountain, are responsible. Whatever the cause, it’s not making things easy for her mountaineering group.
In “Song of the Fir Tree”, Dad’s a bit caught up with getting help for the injured Strang and getting information from him about his children to look for them at the moment. Meanwhile the children take refuge in a railway station, but Grendelsen isn’t far away, and now thieves are attacking the goods trains.
Katie the Jinx and Penny Crayon take a break this week. Jinty is thinking ahead to Christmas with this week’s feature on how to make Christmas gifts for the family. Dot is trying to make a gift for her mother too, although it’s a birthday gift.
Lyndy finds a safe way through Mrs Tallow’s punishment of forcing her to brave angry bees to get beeswax. Even Mrs Tallow is impressed with Lyndy for pulling it off without a single sting. Upon her return to the House of Candles, Lyndy commences with her breakout plan through the chimney. But this story is only four episodes in, which sounds too early for a fully successful breakout. Moreover, Mrs Tallow is snooping around, and if she discovers the dummies that have been left in place of her “Slaves of the Candle”, it’s all over…
In this week’s episode of “Song of the Fir Tree”, the children are not only up against their relentless adversary Grendelsen again but also their previous adversary, Sergeant Strang from their old concentration camp. Ironically, the battlefield is an abandoned concentration camp. It ends with comeuppance, injury and capture for Strang. Sadly, the children miss the boat with their father once again by jumping a train to elude Grendelsen.
Dora is laying poison for Finleg, and unfortunately she succeeds in poisoning him. Friend Una finds the poisoned Finleg, but has she found him in time to get help?
In “Golden Dolly, Death Dust!”, Miss Marvell is trying a different sort of poison this week – poisoning the girls’ parents against them by claiming they are behind all the strange goings-on with witchcraft. What a cheek!
Ping Pong Paula’s hoping a joint celebration for her victory will patch things up with her parents. But Mum’s snobbery, which started all the trouble, ruins everything again when she sees Dad still wearing garage boots (an oversight) with his dinner suit. Instead of seeing the funny side or turning a blind eye, she makes a huge exhibition in front of everyone over how he has shown her up in front of her high society friends.
In “Too Old To Cry!”, Mrs Arbuthnot, the evil matron of Nell’s old orphanage, catches up with the runaway. Surprisingly, instead of dragging Nell back to the orphanage she leaves Nell where she is – after telling the headmistress she is a “no-good thief and a troublemaker”.
Hettie High-and-Mighty finds out why Janie tolerated her in the hockey team – to win the trophy the school needs in order to stay open. So now she spites Janie by resigning and leaving them in the lurch.
People are losing confidence in Hazel because of her “haunting”, so she is determined to restore some by leading a mountaineering team on Black Crag. But on the mountain comes a big test – saving a girl whose rope is caught.
Katie Jinks finds that a simple game of football kicks off some gender wars between her girls school and the local boys school, with the girls ending up trying to beat the boys at stereotypically ‘boys’ activities and the reverse. Luckily, they’re all amusingly hopeless at everything! It continues in the subsequent week’s issue too.
The Blind Ballerina escapes from near-death and is rushed straight to the theatre for her debut as a prima ballerina! But a further turn of fate awaits her on stage – Barbie hesitates visibly in front of the audience, who don’t know that she is blind and therefore do not realise the joyous feeling she has as she can suddenly see again! Will it be only temporary, or will she get to see her little sister with her newly-regained sight?
Despite some protective rowan berries, the evil Miss Marvell has managed to get a patsy to do the dirty work of pinching the corn dolly from Lucy’s bag at school – leaving the girls defenseless against her dark works, unless they manage to steal her back.
In “Dora Dogsbody”, a mix-up of hairdressers sees Ma Siddons getting the latest hair-cut – for a poodle! Heh heh, she does look a fright.
Debbie Lane has tasted success for the first time in “Valley of the Shining Mist” – thanks to the mysterious Mrs Maynard she has won a talent competition, but forgotten the challenge that she was set by the same lady. It turns out (after she has spent most of the prize money) that the challenge is to bring the whole lot – £100 – to the Valley to hand over! As her nasty cousin Elaine says, surely Debbie’s being taken for a ride!
Sister and brother Solveig and Per are literally taken for a ride in “Song of the Fir Tree”: they are making their way across Germany to return to Norway, hiding in the back of a lorry. When it stops at a checkpoint, the kids are locked up by Russian soldiers, but not for long – their lovely singing voices see them fed, clothed, and helped on their way to the next stage. Not that they are safe for long, of course…
The saga of “The Green People” is nearing its end. Evil aunt Zella has sent the true rulers of the peaceful underground world to meet the giant monster Krakengerd, expecting them to be slain. That may yet happen, along with their friend, surface dweller Julie!
In “Ping-Pong Paula”, table tennis champ Paula continues to be torn between her Mum and her Dad. Mum has left the house in disgust and taken Paula with her – but where can they stay? Family can’t help, and the friend they end up staying with is not really a good friend to Paula, even if she is to her mother…
This is the last episode of “Golden Dolly, Death Dust”, so it is fitting that it should have a final appearance on the cover too. Next issue Phil Gascoine starts his new story, and the longest he ever drew for Jinty – “Fran of the Floods”. And although Nell’s story says she’s “Too Old to Cry”, the cover definitely shows her crying in this episode. I have always felt the title of this story was a bad one. Couldn’t they have chosen something more descriptive?
Elsewhere, Ping-Pong Paula has achieved her latest victory. But Mum spoils it with her pride and turns away because she was obliged to share Paula’s victory photograph for the paper with her estranged husband. We are told that it’s the climax for this story next week. Oh good – it’s about time those quarrelling parents were sorted out.
“Slaves of the Candle” is also approaching its climax, with Mrs Tallow threatening to burn down the House of Candles – with all Lyndy’s friends in it – if Lyndy tries to stop her stealing the Crown Jewels. At this, the long-fighting Lyndy finally gives in. But the blurb for next week tells us fate has a surprise in store. The artist has also changed for this story; Roy Newby has been replaced by a filler artist, whose name is not known. But Newby will be back to draw the story that replaces this one – “Bound for Botany Bay“.
In “Friends of the Forest” a new friend, Maya, emerges to help Sally against the nasty Walkers who treat her like a slave and want to sell her beloved deer to a circus. But it turns out that Maya is on the run, which is sure to cause even more problems.
Wanda, the biggest tattletale in the school, makes herself even more unpopular, and poor Sue cops some of the blame as well. And now Wanda’s been appointed a prefect, which means it’s bound to get worse. And it starts with Wanda accusing Sue of stealing!
Hazel’s beginning to understand why she’s being haunted, and she is defying orders to go home so she can investigate some more. And it looks like she’s going to get some help from Marnie, the old woman of the mountain.
And in “Song of the Fir Tree”, Solveig and Per have escaped Grendelsen’s latest attempt to kill them. Unfortunately their father thinks Grendelsen succeeded and is giving up the search for his children and heading home.
A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 