Tammy 11 June 1977 – Jubilee Issue

Cover artist: Audrey Fowley

Bella (artist John Armstrong)

Babe at St. Woods (José Casanovas)

What’s Wrong with Rhona? (artist Eduardo Feito)

25 Years Ago This Week – Jubilee feature

Wee Sue (artist Richard Neillands)

Bessie Bunter (artist Arthur Martin)

Molly Mills and the Comic Capers (artist John Johnston, writer Maureen Spurgeon) – final episode

The Caliph’s Jewels (artist Hugo D’Adderio) – Strange Story

Witch Hazel (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)

Time Trap! (artist Tony Higham) – first episode

For the 1977 issue in our Tammy June round, it just has to be the Jubilee issue, seeing as the Queen’s Jubilee is topical this year. For the commemorations, Tammy takes a flashback look at the Coronation, and Wee Sue and Bessie both plan Jubilee pageants but run into obstacles that threaten to derail everything. It takes a bit of quick-thinking, determination and strokes of luck before things work out happily. The Bessie Bunter episode looks like it was a reprint, with a bit of new text bodged in to give it the Jubilee context.

The Crown Jewels cover also adds the theme of jewels to the issue, which carries on in the Strange Story, “The Caliph’s Jewels”, in which the Storyteller retells the Dutch folktale of The Lady of Stavoren, a cautionary tale about treating food with respect. So it’s not about jewels, then? The arrogant Lady of Stavoren discovers too late that food becomes as precious as jewels when you face starvation. There are over 27 versions of the tale. The Tammy version appears below. It is illustrated by Hugo D’Adderio, whose artwork is always popular.

The new story this week, “Time Trap!”, is a gem too. Tammy takes on the subject of reincarnation and hypnotic regression, which is a novel thing for her to do. Another gem, now on its penultimate episode, is “Witch Hazel”, which looks like it was inspired by Catweazle. A 16^th century apprentice witch comes to the 20^th century to learn witchcraft, but she doesn’t understand that witchcraft is not exactly on the curriculum of 20^th century schools, nor can she grasp how the 20^th century works. Another jewel in Tammy’s crown is the hugely popular “Babe of St. Woods”, starring a gangster’s daughter who uses all her gangster know-how to get herself and her friends out of all sorts of scrapes at boarding school. And “What’s Wrong with Rhona?” is a sparkler. Rhona has been acting very strangely ever since she picked up a strange doll. Things hit their nadir this week when her odd behaviour makes her steal a calculator, and now the police are on her doorstep! Help, is she on her way to juvenile court? 

The Bella story takes a surprise turn this week. Bella is giving us her origin, as told to her American Indian friend Oona Tall Tree. She tells Oona (and us) how she started on gymnastics before her orphaning (which doesn’t quite fit her first story on how she discovered gymnastics while window-cleaning for Jed and Gert) and how she lost her parents. It’s a surprise to see the flashback shows Bella did not have her trademark pigtails or overalls back then.

The latest Molly story, the “Comic Capers”, is Molly’s funniest story ever. It takes the unusual twist of parodying itself through a satire of Stanton Hall and its staff, which Pickering submits to a magazine, and it is drawn by a comical artist (John Johnston), who has been doing a number of Wee Sues of late. Sadly, it ends this week, and Molly will be back to business as usual with her usual artist next week. 

There has also been a notable change in the artwork of Wee Sue. It used to be an artist doing a long stint (Mario Capaldi, John Richardson), but now there is a trend towards more variety of art work in her strip; artwork from John Johnston and Richard Neillands is now appearing. This trend in a variety of Wee Sue artwork would continue, with Hugh Thornton-Jones, Mike White, Jim Eldridge and Robert MacGillivray added to the mix. 

Tammy 9 April 1977

Cover artist: John Richardson

• Witch Hazel (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)
• Towne in the Country (artist Mario Capaldi)
• Copper’s Kid (artist Eduardo Feito)
• The Elephant and Castle Case (artist John Armstrong) – Strange Story
• Bessie Bunter
• Molly Mills and the War Games (artist Tony Thewenetti, writer Maureen Spurgeon) – final episode
• Wee Sue (artist John Richardson)
• Edie the Ed’s Niece (artist Joe Collins)
• Katie on Thin Ice (artist John Armstrong) – final episode
• The Dream House (artist Mike White)

We continue honouring the upcoming Easter season with Tammy’s Easter issue from 1977. Strangely, we have just one Cover Girl this week. Her daydream is about to send sticky goo from her Easter egg all over her head, and big sis is not around (for once) to handle the situation – or laugh at it, maybe?

Poor Bessie Bunter does not fare much better. To her mind, Easter is “Feaster”, but what she gets is far from feasting. She does not have enough money for a decent Easter egg. She tries to run away to Easter Island in the mistaken belief she would find one there. But all she gets in the end is a boiled egg because she missed her tea.

Edie goes egg-rolling, and her egg ends up going all over Farmer Grump, who really is a grump. Moreover, she forgot to hard-boil it, so he’s even grumpier. But not Edie, who still has her chocolate Easter egg.

Sue’s school is chosen to appear on a community singing TV programme at Easter. But Miss Bigger is threatening to ruin it and not only with her terrible singing voice – she’s also over-dressed herself in an Easter outfit.

There is no Bella Barlow. Instead, John Armstrong has been drawing a period story, “Katie on Thin Ice”, probably because ice-skating is such a feature in the story. Katie Williams has fallen foul of a Fagin-style racket run by Mrs Winter, who also forces her to use her ice-skating skills to commit crimes. And now Mrs Winter is out for murder by sending the whole ice fair under the ice with salt. Katie has to stop Mrs Winter and save her imperilled friends while keeping ahead of the authorities who are out to arrest her. Katie is replaced by a ballet story next week, “The Dance Dream”, so still no Bella.

John Armstrong is also drawing this week’s Strange Story, which has some reference to Easter, but even more to Sherlock Holmes. Joan Watson is sent to take her mother’s necklace to Baker Street for re-stringing, but she loses it. Then she gets knocked down by a car, and goes into a garbled dream (or something) where Sherlock Holmes himself offers his services to help locate the necklace. When Joan wakes up, the dream has given her enough clues to track down the necklace.

“Witch Hazel” is a Catweazle-type story where a 16^th century witch named Hazel comes to the 20^th century to learn witchcraft, and does not understand that she’s in the wrong century for witchcraft. Hazel’s first day in a 20^th school is taking the science teacher by surprise: she demonstrates alchemy! Then Hazel reacts with horror at the sight of the school gym. Does she think it’s a torture chamber or something?

“Towne in the Country”, which had started out as Tammy’s answer to “All Creatures Great and Small”, took a jarring change of tack when Val Towne sets out to find her father, who had failed to return from an African expedition. This would have been better as two different serials. At any rate, Val and her companions have now been captured by a hostile African tribe. And from the looks of the idol they have been brought to, they are to be sacrificed to the tribe’s god.

Gill Warden has been having a hard time being accepted in the village her policeman father has been transferred to. They call her “copper’s kid”, but now there’s another reason for their hostility: they are hiding a secret from her, and they will only show it to her if she agrees to be blindfolded while they escort her.

Stanton Hall has been taken over by soldiers – but then Molly finds out they are criminals planning to spring their buddies out of jail. It’s Molly’s quick wits and resourcefulness to find a way to outwit them.

“The Dream House” was reprinted in Princess II. It is far from dreamy, though – it’s an evil doll house that is progressively taking away all the older members of the household, and the two youngest children are helping it for some reason.

Katy

Katy. This is a title that is so obscure that I cannot find any piece on it or jpegs on the Internet (save at a recent eBay auction, which are reproduced here). The only source on Katy so far is this thread from Comics UK forum http://comicsuk.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=6484

Katy lasted ten issues. She appeared fortnightly, from #1, 31 October 1986 to #10, 6 March 1987. She then merged with Barbie.

What gives Katy her place on this blog is that she reprinted some stories from Jinty. Other reprints came from Tammy, Misty, Whizzer & Chips, Sandie, and other sources that have not yet been identified. The beauty is that Katy reprinted the stories in full colour!

If anyone can supply further information on Katy it would be most appreciated.

Stories in Katy

Creepy Crawley – Jinty

Combing Her Golden Hair – Jinty. Retitled “Comb of Mystery”

Alone in London – originally appeared in its own title

The Upper Crust – Tammy

Witch Hazel – Tammy

Guitar Girl – Tammy

Claws (cat cartoon) – Whoopee!

The Cats of Carey St – Misty

Sister to a Star – Sandie

Minnie’s Mixer (cartoon) – Whizzer & Chips

The Petticoat Pirate – original comic unknown

Dora Dogsbody – Jinty

Update: Further scans are now available. They have established that most of the Katy covers were reproduced from Princess Tina, such as this one. All the covers were also used for the Dutch Tina.

And the following scans of the contents have been added. “Comb of Mystery” is “Combing her Golden Hair” under a new title.