We have all noticed certain things in girls’ serials. Things about plot, character and setting that always seem to crop up and we comment on them a lot. Then again, there are other things about plot, character and setting that always crop up as well, but we hardly even notice them. At least, not until someone else points them out. To give you the idea of what we mean, we present:
25 Things You May (or May Not) Have Noticed in Girls’ Comics
1: The protagonist is always an only child, except when the plot requires her to have siblings.
Image credit: “Pam of Pond Hill”, Tammy 1984
2: The protagonist endures even the worst abuse imaginable rather than upset dear old mummy and daddy by telling them what’s going on.
Image credit: “Witch!”, Bunty 1991.
3: Problem parents always make the wrong assumptions about their daughter until the end of the story.
Image credit: “Hard Times for Helen”, Judy 1984-85
4: If the daughter speaks out against it, it’s not until the climax.
Image credit: “Hard Times for Helen”, Judy 1984-85.
5: Parents sense they have a problem with their daughter – but don’t do anything about it except shout the house down.
Image credit: “Waves of Fear”, Jinty 1979.
6: And then they discover they handled it all wrong – but not before it’s led to something totally preventable.
Image credit: “Waves of Fear”, Jinty 1979.
7: The protagonist doesn’t write to a problem page for help although there are plenty of them in girls’ comics.
Image credit: Problem page, Girl (second series), 1981.
8: The order and favourite story coupons they always tell you to fill out ruin the comic for future collectors because they leave holes in it.
Favourite story coupon, Tammy 1981.
9: (Except when the plot allows it), child welfare’s never around when you really need ’em…
Image credit: “Bella at the Bar”, Tammy 1974.
10: …but alway stick their noses in when you least want ’em.
Image credit: “Bella at the Bar”, Tammy 1974.
11: No boys in girls’ adventures, though men are allowed…
Image credit: “The Human Zoo”, Jinty 1978-79.
12: …except very young boys, mostly kid brothers.
Image credit: “Somewhere over the Rainbow”, Jinty 1978-79.
13: A lot of exonerations are contrived because we simply must have happy endings.
Image credit: “The Black and White World of Shirley Grey”, Tammy 1981
14: Advanced aliens never developed the know-how that could have saved them – but less advanced humans have.
Image credit: “The Human Zoo”, Jinty, 1978-79.
15: Serials about girls sent to reform / special school are either sent unjustly or only need a little toning down…
Image credit: “Merry at Misery House”, Jinty 1974-75.
16: …never because they’re utter toerags who really deserve it!
Image credit: “Be Nice to Nancy!”, Judy 1989-1990
17: The weather’s always fine, except when the plot demands otherwise.
Image credit: “The Human Zoo”, Jinty 1978-79.
18: Historical accuracy is not a strong point in girls’ comics.
Image credit: “Sit It Out, Sheri”, Tammy 1976.
19: Protagonists / antagonists don’t do their homework before they embark on an evil campaign – which would have told them it was a complete waste of time.
Image credit: “Witch!”, Bunty 1991.
20: No boys in sight, no matter what world you land in.
Image credit: “Worlds Apart”, Jinty, 1981.
21: Ye Editor does not pick up all the goofs – but we do.
“The Sentinels”, Misty 1978.
22: We groan at how so many villains get off too lightly at the end of the story!
Image credit: “The Four Friends at Spartan School”, Tammy 1971-1972.
23: In serials about difficult mother-daughter relationships, there’s never a father who could intervene.
Image credit: “No Haven for Hayley”, Tammy 1981.
24: In serials about a shrinking parent, it’s always the mother.
Image credit: “Mary’s Mini Mum”, M&J, 1991.
25: Protagonists don’t realise the obvious until it’s pointed out to them.
In this post I will discuss two opposing points of view in regard to how the endings of episodes in serials were structured. I will also discuss the effects these had on story structure and resolutions.
Pat Mills advises that each episode of a serial should end on a cliffhanger or dramatic high point (personal email). So his stories, such as “Land of No Tears”, have episodes that end on cliffhangers or dramatic high points. For example, in part two of “Land of No Tears”, Perfecta hauls Cassy off for punishment at the end of the episode. The cliffhanger leaves readers particularly anxious because the episode had built up to Cassy expecting a cruel and merciless punishment. But they do not see what it is until part three. A multitude of stories at IPC were structured this way, with each episode ending either on a cliffhanger or being a self-contained episode that ends on a high dramatic point.
There were some IPC stories, such as Jinty’s “Bound for Botany Bay” and Tammy’s “No Haven for Hayley”, that had a blend of cliffhanger and non-cliffhanger episodes. For example, in Botany Bay, Betsy’s story has episodes that end mostly on cliffhangers, but some, such as the ones that depict her transportation voyage, are self-contained ones.
However, the Mandy editors took a completely different view to Mills in this respect. In an interview with former DCT writer Maureen Hartley, she reveals that their rule was “no cliffhangers”:
“I learned that in every instalment the heroine must take some form of executive action. That may seem highly obvious, but it is easy to be distracted from the heroine by other facets of the plot or more interesting characters. Also there must be no cliffhangers. The editors felt strongly that the readers should get value for the money they had paid for the comic and should be given a full self-contained story in each instalment, interesting enough to make them want to read more but not blackmailing them with a cliffhanging ending into buying the next issue”.
So in Mandy stories, each episode is a self-contained one, containing action that advances the story in some way. But with some exceptions, such as Mandy’s “The Posy Princess”, there are no cliffhanger endings for the episodes in the development of the story. The only real exception to this rule would be the penultimate episode, which often ended on a cliffhanger. This would be a signal to the readers that it is the penultimate episode, because its cliffhanger ending breaks the pattern of how the episodes are structured. The cliffhanger would be part of resolving the story in the final episode.
A good example is “The Truth About Wendy” from Mandy. In each episode we have a protagonist who tells us, in flashback, how they found out the hard way that Wendy Ware is a scheming girl who plays dirty to get whatever she wants and destroys anyone who stands in her way. They all think at the end of the episode that only they know the truth about Wendy; everyone else thinks she is a sweet girl. But in the penultimate episode, Wendy’s latest victim does not think this way. Instead, she resolves to expose Wendy and get back the friend that Wendy stole off her. This tells us that this is the penultimate episode and not a regular one. So we are all extra eager to buy next week’s Mandy to find out how the truth about Wendy will be revealed at last.
Non-cliffhanger ending to penultimate episode of “Bad Luck Barbara”, Mandy #985, 30 November 1985.
Not all penultimate episodes in Mandy serials were structured this way. One example is “Bad Luck Barbara”. The penultimate episode is a regular one, with no cliffhanger ending at all. The next episode could also have been a regular one. But instead it is the final episode, and it is entirely self-contained instead of resolving a cliffhanger from the penultimate episode.
And this type of story structuring can be seen in plenty of serials in other DCT titles as well. For example, Bunty’s “Witch!” has self-contained episodes until the penultimate episode while the similarly-themed “Mark of the Witch!” in Jinty has a lot of episodes ending on cliffhangers. And some Bunty stories, such as “Captain Carol”, have self-contained episodes all the way through.
This non-cliffhanger episode structure at DCT meant that their serials tended to be episodic. This did have the advantage of spinning the story out for as long as needed – or cutting it short if necessary. When the editor gave the word, the writer could just end the story in an episode or two because the episodic structure made it easy to end without tying up a lot of plot threads that had been spun along the way. There were some exceptions, where DCT serials were tied up in several episodes that were structured as a story arc. One example is Bunty’s “The Guilt of Glendora”, which is tied up in a span of three episodes.
One disadvantage of stories with non-cliffhanger episodes is that the structure could get boring, annoying and tedious. Sometimes the ending of each episode would end up pretty much the same, such as episodes that invariably end up with the protagonist being disgraced through no fault of her own. Using some variety with episodes ending on cliffhangers would make it more interesting. In this respect “The Posy Princess” was less boring because it often had cliffhangers.
The cliffhanger episodes favoured by Mills enabled the development of story arcs; for example, a conclusion that needed several episodes for it to develop properly. If the story was popular, more threads could be developed to spin it out more rather than just putting in more episodes for padding. But in some cases there could also be more tying-off that would have to be done before the story could end. And if the editor gave a sudden order to end the story, this could result in an unsatisfactory ending. One example is Jinty’s “Worlds Apart”. One gets the impression that towards the end, the story was meant to run for more episodes to really develop the final dream world and the lessons its protagonist learns from it. But instead the ending gives the impression that the story was cut short because of Jinty’s upcoming merger into Tammy. So the conclusion came too soon and left the final dream world nowhere near as developed as it should have been. It all cries out to be reworked.
Cliffhanger ending to penultimate episode of “Witch!”, Bunty #1754, 24 August 1991.
Mandy’s rule non-cliffhanger endings for episodes apparently did not stop readers from buying the next issue. The editors counted on making the self-contained episodes interesting enough to encourage readers to keep buying. And it did work – readers kept buying Mandy and she became one of the longest-running titles at DCT. But the cliffhanger structure at IPC also worked well. And stories that combined cliffhangers and non-cliffhangers certainly added variety to the storytelling structure. They must also have been easier on the writers, who must have found it difficult at times to keep episodes self-contained or end them on cliffhangers.
Following on from my earlierposts, more about what makes a story work. The discussion points in this post are more focused on the work of the artist, whereas the ones in the previous post were more around what the writer does.
Art quality. Is the art convincing and solid, with movement and vigour where required? Can the artist actually follow-through on technical requirements such as drawing ballet steps, gymnastics, and horses? Or is it inaccurate, stiff, or lifeless?
Of course this is primarily the artist’s responsibility, but there is some input from editorial departments. They may ensure, for instance, that art drawn by Spanish artists matches the British location that most stories are supposed to take place in by adding in pillar boxes and the like. Few artists in Jinty and other comics of this era are anything other than good to extremely good, so overall art quality is normally not a factor in the story not working. However, the artist may have specific gaps in what they can and can’t draw convincingly.
Stronger: There are so many strong artists that it is difficult to pick out one over the other except on the basis of personal preference. Mario Capaldi can draw faces, action sequences, and solidly convincing backgrounds, and is almost universally loved, but you could also say the same of my personal favourites Trini Tinturé, Phil Gascoine, and Phil Townsend. I think perhaps my favourite art on all the stories might however be Terry Aspin’s work on “Alice In A Strange Land”, in which he brings a strange jungle-wrapped lost city to life, alongside the British schoolgirls who have strayed into it.
Weaker: I find the Ken Houghton art on “Tansy of Jubilee Street” to be adequate but unexciting. It can be stiff at times when the artist has intended an action sequence, which is bad news. But even excellent artists can have off-days, too: Jim Baikie’s art is normally top-notch, but in parts of “Miss No-Name” some faces and sequences are very patchy, and possibly even filled-in by another hand. Finally, even if the artist is generally good, a specific failure to draw ballet well will condemn the story in the eyes of those who can spot that, as Mistyfan commented on a previous post.
Art style. The style of the artist needs to be matched to the story requirements. A light-hearted comedy story typically uses a more exaggerated style, and a sentimental or sad story might need something more restrained.
This might be an editorial decision in commissioning the right artist for the job, but it might also involve the artist deciding to use a variation on their usual style. Mario Capaldi and Jim Baikie are examples of artists who had humorous and serious styles that can be readily distinguished not because they look radically different but by the exaggeration of the character’s actions and expressions.
Stronger: This was generally a close match in any case. In other titles you could cite the use of John Armstrong to illustrate gymnastics in the Bella stories; in Jinty a close parallel would be the usage of Mario Capaldi for any sports story – for instance his superb depiction of the dramatic moments and of the swimming action in “Cursed To Be A Coward!“
Weaker: I think I would choose the selection of Trini Tinturé in “Prisoners of Paradise Island”. Trini is an excellent artist for showing scheming and plotting elegant ‘bad girls’ rather than hockey-playing schoolgirls. Similarly, José Casanovas in “The Darkening Journey” is always a slight mis-match for me as his animal characters are beautifully drawn but a tad too intrinsically cheeky-looking for such a sad and dramatic story. Finally, although I like Keith Robson’s art on “The Goose Girl” a lot, the Dutch publishers of Tina clearly felt that they wanted an art style that matched the continental expectations (such as a clear, clean line) as the same fundamental story was re-drawn in a Tina Topstrip.
Consistency of art. If the artist or the quality of the art changes visibly during the run of the storyline then this will be noticed by readers and is likely to have a negative impact on how well the story works overall.
If the artist is unwell or over-committed there might be a requirement for the editorial team to get another artist to fill in some or all of the remaining episodes of a story. Alternatively, another artist might perhaps collaborate to help finish the work in time (for instance by inking the original artist’s pencilled drawings). Presumably this might be an informal arrangement between artists if they were able to do this (for instance if they shared the same studio), but as there will have been people’s salaries at stake too I am assuming this was more likely to be an editorial decision to ensure that the story could be completed rather than abandoned.
Stronger: I am not aware of any examples where an inconsistency in the artwork actually benefitted the story (for instance if a mediocre artist was replaced by a better one). Even if the art changed for the better, the change itself would be jarring and intrusive. Ongoing humorous strips such as “The Jinx from St Jonah’s” did tend to have a few different artists working on it over the years and this was workable as there tended not to be a single story that would be badly affected by this change.
Weaker: This didn’t actually happen very often in Jinty‘s run. The obvious example is “Champion in Hiding” which started off with Mario Capaldi’s beautiful work and moved on to being drawn by Hugh Thornton-Jones, better known for his art on humour stories such as “Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag!”.
Character design. Making the characters in a story look and behave distinctively on the page is partly visual and partly about their dialogue and actions. Is the result a solid, convincing character or can you hardly tell them apart from other characters in girls’ comics? Worse, can you hardly even tell who’s who in the same story?
There is a lot of responsibility on the artist to bring a clear and distinctive visual identity to the character; at a minimum the inhabitants of the story should have different hairstyles, shapes, clothes that separate everyone out and make sure the reader is not confused. Ideally they should also have distinctive body shapes, body language and so forth too. The writer will have an impact too, in giving the protagonists an individual drive that will make them separate from others via distinctive dialogue and so forth.
Stronger: Jim Baikie was a very long-running Jinty artist, illustrating many continued stories and one-off Gypsy Roses. He certainly reused hairstyles (Fran of “Fran’ll Fix It!” shared a hairstyle with the protagonist of this Gypsy Rose story) but nevertheless each of his characters is visually distinctive in multiple ways – body shape, body language, freckles, and so on. No danger of mistaking his characters even when they do have some features in common.
Weaker: Comos’ schoolgirls across various stories illustrated by him have a bit too much similarity, I feel: I’d pick out the characters in “Destiny Brown” and the protagonists of “The Haunting of Form 2B” as being particularly visually similar.
Layout. There is a lot of thought that goes into getting an effective layout at the level of the individual panel and at the level of the whole page. Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work gives an idea of the sort of panel layouts that a US mainstream comics artist might use to vary the visual interest on a page; the conventions and standards for British weekly comics may differ a bit but will share a lot of requirements for varying the focus in each panel. Page layouts likewise can be pedestrian or innovative, with varying sizes of panel within and artwork that breaks out of the constraints of the panel border.
Again much of the responsibility of this lies with the artist, but the editorial team may also have input – for instance there may be a general instruction that pages should use a layout based on a nine-panel grid or on a six-panel grid to allow for larger panels. Pat Mills talks interestingly about working with the artist to create a dymanic page layout and strong panel layouts too. I don’t think that writers in this kind of comic usually would script down to this level (though in US mainstream comics they often will) but of course Pat was also an editor.
Stronger: There are a lot of really good and interesting layouts in Jinty, Misty, and Tammy, perhaps more so than in other titles from the time. “Concrete Surfer” has some very dynamic and interesting layouts depicting the protagonist’s skateboarding tricks; “Land of No Tears” is slightly more conventional but often breaks the borders or uses irregular panels for a dramatic effect.
Weaker: no immediate examples come to mind.
Incidentals. I am using this to refer to little background details in the artwork or the story.
This could be down to ideas from artist or from writer. Perhaps the artist will particularly need to fill the background somehow and may therefore put in extra detail either humorous or nostalgic.
Stronger: For instance Jim Baikie includes little jokes in the background of “Fran’ll Fix It”: they may be joky signs or funny things happening behind the protagonist’s back. There may also be little touches of colour that the writer may also include; I have always remembered a bit of dialogue in “Merry at Misery House” where Merry says she’s “not as green as [she’s] cabbage-looking!’ This is not in fact anything invented by writer Terry Magee but it’s a nice touch of appropriate vernacular and always lived on in my memory.
Weaker: It would be possible for the background detail to be over-egged and too intrusive. I can’t think of an immediate example that comes to mind however.
Design / font / lettering. The lettering of the dialogue in Jinty and similar comics are all typed in a standardised font, without any big distinction between strong emotion and ordinary ones (there can be a slightly bolder effect used but with the low print quality on newsprint this is not very easy to distinguish). However, the logo for the story title itself is more distinctively rendered to match the story it heads up. There are also lettering elements in the artwork that can be done well or less well – shop-fronts, newspapers within the story, and so on. Unlike in other comics genres, sound effects (another possible element to be done well or less well) are not greatly used.
I assume the story logo would have been done in-house editorially but this would need confirmation; I could also imagine it as supplied by the artist. The lettering would certainly be done by someone other than the artist as we can see by the consistency of the font used.
Stronger: A number of the story logos have a fairly simple design just using a natty font, so anything more than this can be quite striking. I like the design of the “Fran of the Floods” logo, with plain lettering but the addition of rain and a pool of water.
Weaker: Sometimes the logo font has no obvious sympathy with the title and just seems to have been chosen because it hadn’t been used particularly recently. “The Four-Footed Friends” is an example; nothing wrong with the story logo, but it doesn’t add anything extra.
Format / edition / pagination. The Jinty stories were only reprinted by British publishers in annuals rather than in albums collecting the whole story together, but of course translated editions did exist that brought the whole of a story under the same covers. This could potentially mean that a story either feels stronger in reading it as a cohesive whole, or perhaps that weaknesses of pacing are more clearly felt and so the whole story works less well when read as a single edition. Alternatively, a story may even be entirely too long for some formats. Finally, the format also includes the page size and other publishing decisions – how many pages will be in that week’s issue? Which pages will be printed on the double-page spread at the centre, or on the front or back where you can only see a single page at a time? These decisions are all very specific to the individual printing of a story and don’t necessarily impact how a story reads over its lifetime over more than one printing.
These format decisions are all editorial and would be unlikely to be down to anything decided by artist or writer (though a popular artist or writer could be ‘rewarded’ by being given a plum location in the weekly edition of a title, of course). I would assume that in these cases, the writer and artist will not typically have known in advance whether their story was to be printed on a double-page spread or on the right-hand page (meaning that the reader needed to turn over to reveal the next page) and would not have specifically tailored the story as a result. (In other kinds of comics publications this kind of fine-tuning is possible and even normal.)
Stronger/ weaker: I have not got good examples of stories that could make a stronger or weaker impact depending on the editorial choices of edition and pagination, but perhaps a reader of one of the translated albums may have views based on that experience.
Following on from my earlier post on how we can sensibly say that a story works (or doesn’t), I want to look at the elements that can add to, or detract from, how well a story works. These are elements that are mostly down to decisions made by the writer or the artist (or both), though editorial decisions can also be relevant. For each of the elements, therefore, I will consider what the balance of responsibilities tends to be, as well as discussing the nature of each of them.
Plot. What actually happens? How well tied-together are the events of the story, and how naturally or consistently do they flow from earlier ones? Is it a very run-of-the-mill plot or does it have innovative elements? Is the plot simple or convoluted, full of sidelines or straightforward? In particular, does the ending follow well from the main part of the action or does it undercut the earlier events, for instance through by use of a deus ex machina to wrap everything up neatly and too-quickly?
This lies mostly in the writer’s corner, though the editorial department may make suggestions.
Stronger: “Concrete Surfer” is a tightly-plotted story where everything that happens drives the action forwards to the skate-off between rivals and the subsequent denouement. Not a moment of action is wasted and it all hangs together.
Weaker: in “Fran of the Floods” lots of things happen, but in a quite meandering structure with sub-plots that you can get lost in. The later happenings are not very tightly tied into the earlier events, though there is a wrap-up at the end of the story. This is a danger for road-trip sort of stories.
Title. Is the title overly-explanatory or does it promise without revealing too much? Is it ho-hum or unusual?
As far as we know, coming up with the story’s title seems to have been part of the writer’s tasks. Sometimes it might have been changed by the editorial department either before publication or on reprint / translation.
Stronger: There are lots of really evocative story titles in Jinty. Examples like “Girl The World Forgot” or “Golden Dolly, Death Dust!” are suggestive without giving the whole game away.
Weaker: the formula girl’s name + descriptive reference was over-used in girls’ comics generally and feels hackneyed as a result. “Badgered Belinda”, “Angela Angel-Face”, “Diving Belle” are examples in Jinty, but looking at a single issue of Lindy the ratio of such titles seemed considerably higher so things could have been much worse!
Theme. Is the theme a well-trodden one such as the Slave or Cinderella themes? Is it an intrinsically unlikely one such as the Exploited Amnesiac? In either case it probably needs something extra to make it stand out.
Again as far as we know the story theme was mostly under the control of the writer, though the editorial office would, according to Pat Mills, aim to have specific themes represented such as the two mentioned above. Some writers would focus preferentially on certain themes, so we know that Alison Christie wrote a number of heart-tugging stories with Runaways or Guilt Complexes. The art style (discussed in the next post) was probably chosen to match the theme as far as possible, though of course it is entirely possible that the availability of an artist was used to inspire a writer on occasion.
Stronger: I wouldn’t say it is that clear that one theme is stronger than another but there is a lot of personal preference that will govern whether a story works for an individual reader or not.
Weaker: as mentioned above, some themes such as the Exploited Amnesiac are so intrinsically unlikely and indeed rather melodramatic and silly that it means that the story is battling against something of a headwind.
Pacing. Girls (and boys) comics of this era typically feature fast-paced stories, with cliff-hangers at the end of each episode. The conventions of this sort of story are rather different from Japanese manga, where the action tends to take place over a far greater number of pages. If a story is compressed more than usual for this genre it would feel confusing, or if it was too slow-paced likewise it could throw readers off.
This lies solidly in the remit of the writer, though the page layout and composition could have some effect too.
Stronger: “Concrete Surfer” has some of the best pacing I can immediately think of: it builds evenly and the momentum never stops. Every panel and page builds on the last.
Weaker: the pacing on “Freda’s Fortune” makes it an odd read, with much of the plot line of a normal horse & rival story compressed into two 6-page episodes.
Tone. Is the story light and frothy, silly, adventurous, realistic, tear-jerking, hard, gritty, subversive, or even sadistic? The dialogue is a big part of what sets the tone so I am including it in this element, though others might prefer to separate it out.
The style set by the comic overall is very linked to the tone of the individual stories inside; whether this is mostly to do with editorial choices as to which stories to publish or writers to commission, clearly the editorial focus has a part to play. Pat Mills reckons that there is a big divide between working class comics (Tammy, Misty, Jinty, Pink, and most of Bunty) and middle-class, ‘safe’ comics, and that this divide was purposeful, to try to move past the ‘old hat’ style of the past. The individual writer is the prime mover of the tone of the story but the artist also has an important role to play as the writing and art must of course match. Additionally, the artist is in a position to add a lot of background detail in their art, to really bring things to life (John Armstrong draws graffiti in the background of “Moonchild”, and Jim Baikie draws details from the London Underground of the 70s or earlier in his recreation of the futuristic world of “The Forbidden Garden”.)
Stronger: Of course one tone is not in itself ‘better’ than another, but some are more unusual or more consistently applied throughout. “Knight and Day” is the epitome of a gritty and realistic story of physical and emotional abuse within a family, played seriously and with enough emotional effect to convince the reader.
Weaker: In the link above, Pat Mills says that light and frothy stories are ‘safe’ and boring to the reader. This is arguable, but certainly a light and frothy story such as “The Perfect Princess” is by its nature one that is easier to dismiss the more emotional or tear-jerking tales. Perhaps more fatal to a story is a sudden shift in tone, such as Lorrbot mentions having happened in “Balloon of Doom” in her comment on the last post.
Resonance. I’m stretching a bit things here in using this term in this way. What I mean is whether the story has a certain mythic resonance, a re-use (in a purposeful way) of cultural material. Mermaids, spinning wheels, magic mirrors, wicked and cruel women: these all have resonance as they have been used in countless stories to tell us how to behave or what to be careful of. Re-use of a current successful story from a different medium also gives the comics narrative a chance to grab some resonance from elsewhere.
I am assuming this is mostly in the care of the writer, though of course the artist will be able to add in many visual elements that will strengthen the references.
Stronger: “Who’s That In My Mirror?” combines ideas of vanity, moral peril, and the idea that a mirror can hold a reflection of a kind of truth. It has echoes of “The Picture of Dorian Grey” and of the Andersen tale “The Shadow” – and its denouement is as spooky as anything in comics.
Weaker: There are so damned many stories of haunted mirrors that it’s very easy for the shine to wear off! For me, “The Venetian Looking-Glass” was just another one of many: the element of resonance had become repetition.
Audacity. This is sort of the flip side of Resonance, and again I am stretching things a bit in using this term in this way. By this I mean the ‘WTF’ element where you can’t quite believe that anyone dared to put that on the page! It is the element of surprise and of novelty, but it is quite a delicate balancing act.
The written story bears a lot of the responsibility for this element but the art is key in making sure that the reader’s suspension of disbelief doesn’t flag. The editorial and publishing teams are the ones who would be on the bosses’ carpet if it all goes horribly wrong (as it did for boys’ comic Action after questions were asked in parliament), so they are part of the mix too.
Stronger: “Worlds Apart” is one of the most audacious stories in girls’ comics, with each protagonist having to die in grotesque and excessive ways in order for them to progress to the next scenario. “Children of Edenford” is also outrageous but a bit more quietly so as it criticises the shibboleth of social mobility ahead of the tide of Thatcherism and yuppiedom to come.
Weaker: When audacity tips the scales of suspension of disbelief, the wheels come off. For me, the cruelties at the end of “Slave of the Swan” and “The Slave of Form 3B” push it a step too far.
I wanted to write a post looking at what makes a story work, but first it seems sensible to consider how we can tell that a story has worked at all – or not, of course. It seems to me that there are some general principles we can reasonably consider when thinking about stories in the titles under discussion – Jinty/Misty/Tammy in particular. (I should add a caveat that here I am particularly considering stories which have a beginning, middle, and end, rather than gag strips or humour stories that tend to consist of indivudal self-contained episodes.)
What evidence do we have that it worked at the time?
Looking at evidence from the past, we can clearly say that people at the time judged some stories to have worked better than others.
Some stories are known to have been particularly popular; we may have information from editors (we know that “Stefa’s Heart of Stone” was very popular). The publishers certainly canvassed readers for indicators of the most and the least popular stories, either through the invitation to specify your faves when writing a letter to the editor, or more rarely through initiatives such as “Pam’s Poll“.
Reprinting of stories is likely to indicate a positive judgement on how well they worked – why waste space on a story you didn’t think was worth it? At the same time, some reprints are hard to see as being particularly strong – “Angela Angel-Face” being a case in point. Sometimes, therefore, the fact that a story has been reprinted might just be a recognition of its ready availability as a cheap space-filler.
Translation of stories is surely a stronger indication of success; a third party has selected the story (in some way – it would be good to know more about how this happened), paid for it, and put work into producing a translated edition, possibly with new cover artwork or more colouring.
And then sometimes we have seen the translation go on to further usage – collection in an album format (the DutchTina Topstrips), and then perhaps further translations derived from those earlier selections (the IndonesianNina reprints that drew heavily on the Tina Topstrip editions). “The Spell of the Spinning Wheel” is an example of a story that scores particularly highly, having been translated into Dutch and Indonesian in just this way.
Story length may be another indicator. “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” ran for 36 episodes and “Fran of the Floods” ran for 35 episodes, where a story was more usually some 15 episodes long. The obvious reason for this extraordinary length is that as the story was popular, the writer will have been asked to make it carry on for longer, or at any rate not stopped from continuing. (This may have turned out as a double-edged sword: we understand that for instance Dutch Tina didn’t reprint stories past a certain length because of format constraints, so a very long story of this sort was actually less likely to be translated and reprinted elsewhere.)
(edited to add) Promotional and editorial decisions may also give some pointers. The editorial office decides about which story to feature on the cover, and to what extent – for instance when dramatically using a panel from the interior art to create a striking cover. They also decide which stories to feature in prime positions in the publication: the first and last stories are key positions, but the centre pages can also be an important focus for the reader. Some pages are in colour and again this will reflect a specific editorial decision to add something extra (requiring more work) to that story compared to others. Finally, some titles will be highlighted in adverts published in other titles.
As you can see, though, none of these indicators are foolproof. The most reliable indicator would be evidence direct from the editorial office to confirm that a story was popular, and even then of course you can quibble about whether popularity necessarily relies on the story being strong… though what you could certainly say in that case is that the most important critics, the readers, had voted in favour to say that it had worked for them.
What can we say about whether it works now?
And coming to stories that we read now, what tools can we use to think about whether a story works? (For instance we may come across a new story that we didn’t read at the time, or re-read a story in a new light.)
It is entirely legitimate to consider our own uncritical reaction as readers: “I love this sort of thing”, or “it’s not my cup of tea”, or “I know it’s very generic but I have a soft spot for this story”. Perhaps when you read the story initially, you hadn’t ever come across that particular cliché, and even though you recognize how hackneyed it is you still like it. Or perhaps there is some detail of script or art that just gives it something extra in your eyes. We can say “this story works for me”, acknowledging that others may read it and judge it more harshly; we may need to be aware of the limitations of our judgment, while at the same time still seeing those judgments as valid in themselves.
Likewise if we re-read a fondly remembered story now as adult readers, we may find that it is just as exciting as those memories had it as; or we may find that since then we have brought a lot more experience (and perhaps cynicism) to bear as readers, and the story just doesn’t work any more. Maybe events have overtaken it entirely (a story featuring casual racism or a now-known sex predator would be seen quite differently now than at the time). So the story might not work for us as individuals, or more generally, and we can make judgements accordingly.
Finally, there are a whole range of elements we can analyse to see what can make a story work, coming from the contribution of the artist and of the writer and even of the editorial office. Looking through these elements, as I want to do in my next post, we may find that we see more in the story than at first glance, and that it works more effectively than we’d given it credit for initially. I am finding this can happen for me when reading Mistyfan’s posts on stories, as we (naturally) have some differences in reading taste – for instance, reading her post on “Go On, Hate Me!” gave me a different view on how and why the story worked, although this is a story I might otherwise have dismissed as only moderately interesting. Using more analytical tools we are therefore able to say that a story works well or less well as a narrative of its kind, on its own merits, regardless of its reception at the time or by us as individuals.
Continuing from the previous WTFometer post, here are some worked-through examples.
“Song of the Fir Tree” is not a fantastical story, but it is one that takes the reader quite far away from their usual context. There’s not just one girl protagonist but two, of mixed gender (the major focus is on Solveig, but her brother Per gets a lot of lines, action, and attention too). The story is set in Continental Europe, not very long beforehand but in a definite historical period compared to the readers of the time; and the children are more than poverty-stricken: they are in serious danger of starvation and of death by murder or by accident. In the absence of family, they have to make their own decisions and way all across many countries; this is all without special abilities like that used by “The Robot Who Cried” or Xenia in “Almost Human” when they also trek far distances.
I am experimenting with giving the stories scores on the WTFometer – a small score on a measure means that the difference (positive or negative) compared to the default is likewise small – a boy rather than a girl, but not an animal or an alien. A score in this column counts as 1 point. A big score on the measure means that the difference (whichever way it goes) is larger – their basic physical security is not just compromised to the extent of a broken leg or a hospital stay, but seriously enough to endanger their lives. I am scoring these as 5 points, to give extra weighting accordingly. And an ‘Extreme’ score? That scores 10 points, and represents a protagonist death, or a school structure so different from the default to seem unrecognizable, or physical laws so warped to allow for just about anything.
“Children of Edenford” is surprisingly tamer than I might have expected. Well, no, not tamer, but… more concentrated in its focus?
Much of the set-up in “Children” is going to be very familiar to the readers. Patti is a girl much like the expected average reader: white, English, with parents who both work either to earn a living or to keep the house. The school, however, is very definitely out of the ordinary, and the contrast is the sharper for it; the same goes for the coercion and mind-control, so strong that it borders onto magic. (Perhaps I should have scored ‘agency in small things’ in the Extreme column to show this?) This is a case where I would really like to do a comparison of the early episodes with the later ones, to show how the departures from the average become more marked as the story develops.
There is no lack of Extreme columns for the last story: if you’ve read Mistyfan’s summary of “Worlds Apart” you will know it is going to be possibly the highest-scoring story in all of girls’ comics. The protagonists are no big deviation from the standard, apart from the fact that in each story they seem to gain considerable status and power; but boy are the schools that they go to in each world not half odd! Their agency is taken away, their mental capacity affected as they each take turn to lose their memories and, most striking of all, they die painful deaths – not just one death happening in front of the reader, but over and over again.
Physical laws and real-life historical facts are overturned without compunction, the girls are given physical attributes both greater and lesser than the norm, their emotional and mental security is played with almost as much as their physical security; but still it all happens within a brief timespan in our own present time, and in a reasonably circumscribed location. Yes, it’s bonkers – but it’s not all bonkers.
I doubt I will be working through all the Jinty stories giving them WTFometer scores, but I’m sure I will come back to this another time. I would be very glad if others wanted to try it themselves; I have the grids available as spreadsheets that I will happily send out on request.
I wanted to come up with a good way of looking at some of the stories we’ve been describing, in a more structured fashion – something that would help me compare one story with another, or the early part of a story with the later part, or even the stories in one comic with those in another. Specifically, I wanted to be able to pinpoint the ‘WTF’ feeling that is so prevalent in reading these stories nowadays as an adult – is there a way I could sensibly talk about one story being more bonkers than another, and about the way that it is sublimely ridiculous?
(It’s not just about analysing the feeling of the adult reader – I’m sure that the WTF reaction in 2014 does map onto something that the writers and editors of Jinty wanted to foster in their original readers – an agog desire to read on and find out what will happen next, what will the writers dare give us. Jinty (and other girls’ comics) is a literature of excess not of minimalism, and from what we hear from editors of the time, that was always part of their strategy.)
To do this, I settled on looking at how far both the protagonist and the situation that she finds herself in during the story differ from a sort of assumed default average, or ‘platonic ideal’. I made up a structure of what that average reader of the time might look like: age, gender, family situation, social situation, and so on. This then gives a baseline that the comparison can be made from – we can ask, how far does the individual story (or story episode) take us from that baseline? And we can then compare the story that is set in something very like an average situation, with one or two key differences (the cruel stepmother, the emotional abuse) to the one that pushes the same themes further (torture and near-death), or to the one that pushes into weirder territory (mind-control, time-travel, alternate universes).
Of course, this ‘average’ is an artificial construction – there will have been many readers that were different from this default. Neither is it intended to elevate one option above others – certainly not to say that the white English average girl is more ideal than the non-white non-English counter-example. I also can’t say that I’ve got that assumed average correct, at this inital stage; I’d love to hear people suggest changes and fixes to my first structure. I am however already finding it an interesting way to look at some specific stories, and to compare them on a much more like-with-like fashion than would otherwise be the case.
Finally, a word of warning – this analysis has nothing to do with psychological realism, or with quality of writing. Literary fiction shows us that writing about people like ourselves, living in situations like our own, can be written well or badly, making for exciting or for dull reading. I am definitely not saying that a story in which characters are more like the default average reader is necessarily going to be a boring story.
What, therefore, are the details of the structure? I have divided it up into 6 parts.
What is the background of the protagonist?
The default / average protagonist in Jinty (not necessarily in all UK girls’ comics) is:
a girl (a young human female – so a move away from this default could be to have a boy protagonist, or a grown woman, or a non-human such as Seulah the Seal)
white (so a move away from this default could be to have a Chinese, Indian, or Black British character)
English born and bred (in Jinty, even a Welsh or Scottish protagonist has a hint of the ‘other’, it seems to me)
Working or lower middle class (family needs to earn a living, but is able to do so; that is, the protagonist is neither rich nor poverty-stricken)
Modern in time (protagonist is a 1960s/1970s girl)
What is the underlying social/family/friends situation of the protagonist?
In the story, what is the setup of the main character’s friends and family, and of the society she lives in? The defaults I am using are that she:
lives in England (so a story set in Continental Europe, as per “Song of the Fir Tree”, is a move away from this default; a story set on another planet is a much bigger one)
two-parent household (a small difference would be a story featuring quarelling/divorcing parents, such as in “Ping-Pong Paula”; a larger one would be one with an orphan)
standard family structure (say one or two siblings, some extended family like aunts / uncles / cousins; counterexamples might be where the protagonist is alone in the whole world, or where she has lots and lots of siblings)
standard friends structure (say a small group of close friends, vs no friends or lots of friends)
standard pets (a single cat/dog/hamster, vs exotic animals or lots of ordinary animals)
standard school structure (comprehensive or day school vs boarding school; one with ordinary school policies)
What sort of free will or agency does the protagonist have?
Realistically, a girl in 70s Britain is going to have various constraints; no one has an entirely free will to do exactly as they like. At the same time, those girls will still have some normal, expected freedoms. In some stories in Jinty, these basic freedoms may be either massively reduced (in a slave story) or increased (perhaps if the girl is a loner or an orphan).
Laws and norms apply (she obeys the law of the land and the usual norms like wearing clothes and being polite to your elders)
Has agency in small things (she can decide how to spend her pocket money, probably can decide about things like clothes and hairstyles)
Lack of agency for large things (her parents or guardians make big decisions for her, so a story where she has to make all her decisions in the absence of such figures would be a difference from the default)
Is the protagonist reasonably safe and secure, or endangered?
Most girls in our default 1970s Britain will have an expectation of being normally fairly safe; they do not live in war zones or go about in danger of their lives. Individuals may suffer bullying or have mental health issues such as depression, but this is not part of the expected ‘default’.
Basic emotional security (love and friendship are normal and expected)
Basic physical security (may have the odd bump and bruise via sports or play)
Basic mental security (anxiety or claustrophobia would be counterexamples)
What abilities or talents does the protagonist have?
The ordinary reader isn’t a top cyclist, concert piano player, or even consistently head of her class.
Standard real-life talents (not a top class cyclist and so on)
Standard physical abilities (no special abilities like being super-strong or being able to fly; but likewise no disabilities either)
Standard mental abilities (no special mental powers like telepathy, second sight)
Standard intellectual abilities (no super-intelligence, but likewise no amnesia or learning disabilities either)
Other story factors
Now we’re really entering the realm of the fantastical. Of course no real readers could be from the future or the past, or travelling outside their own time.
Current time period applies (story takes place in the ‘present time’ of the 1970s/80s, just like real life for the reader)
Current physical laws apply (magic doesn’t work in reality)
Action is within circumscribed locality (this is not actually fantastical, it just really reflects the fact that a 1970s girl was unlikely to be travelling much further than a British seaside on anything like a regular basis)
The above will be of little real use without examples, and it’s only the examples that will show whether this whole analysis is pointless or not. This post is already pretty long though, so the examples will follow next.
A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 