Unhappy endings

Discuss all the girls comics that have appeared over the years. Excellent titles like Bunty, Misty, Spellbound, Tammy and June, amongst many others, can all be remembered here.

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Tammyfan
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Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 10:41

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by Tammyfan »

Phoenix wrote:Thank you. I get the impression that the slaves would have preferred the Madam Mange ne mange plus scenario rather than the Madame Mange ne mange pas one.
Tammyfan wrote:I would upload the episode, but right now there is stuff in the garage interfering with access to my collections.
That sounds just like my lounge.....and my bedroom.....and definitely my dining room. My garage, actually if we are going to be truthful it is a hut, is full of packaging, which I would be using when selling unwanted items on eBay if only I could find the time to advertise them. I don't know what the seasonal weather is like over there in New Zealand but if our shirtsleeve weather is anything to go by, I'm assuming that you will get three or four feet of snow by the 25th. Either way, do enjoy your Christmas holiday, Tammyfan, and indeed that goes for all other members too, even those who would never be seen dead accessing our Girls' Comics section. :) :D :lol:
Hope you've still got room for your Christmas tree and presents! The forecast for Christmas Day here is scheduled to be fine, and time zone differences mean we will be the first to have Christmas Day. Merry Christmas to you too.

Tammyfan
Posts: 1981
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 10:41

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by Tammyfan »

No Cheers for Cherry (Jinty) - Cherry never wises up to her scheming relatives, who cheat and exploit her. The only way she escapes (without realising) is being recalled home.

comixminx
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Re: Unhappy endings

Post by comixminx »

Tammyfan wrote:No Cheers for Cherry (Jinty) - Cherry never wises up to her scheming relatives, who cheat and exploit her. The only way she escapes (without realising) is being recalled home.
Well, I'm not sure that I would call that an unhappy ending. I suspect it would have made Cherry rather unhappier to have realised the truth! And she did escape, after all, and she did learn a lot. It's certainly not a neat 'the baddies get their comeuppance' ending, I'll give you that :D
jintycomic.wordpress.com/ Excellent and weird stories from the past - with amazing art to boot.

Tammyfan
Posts: 1981
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 10:41

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by Tammyfan »

comixminx wrote:
Tammyfan wrote:No Cheers for Cherry (Jinty) - Cherry never wises up to her scheming relatives, who cheat and exploit her. The only way she escapes (without realising) is being recalled home.
Well, I'm not sure that I would call that an unhappy ending. I suspect it would have made Cherry rather unhappier to have realised the truth! And she did escape, after all, and she did learn a lot. It's certainly not a neat 'the baddies get their comeuppance' ending, I'll give you that :D
At least they lose their unpaid servant and have to go back to doing everything themselves. But don't you wish they would meet a fate like their theatre barge going down to the bottom and they lose everything, including what they conned out of Cherry and her mum.

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marckie73
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015, 00:01

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by marckie73 »

Tammy and Misty's 'The Loneliest Girl' has an unhappy ending. The most unhappy ending ever, because everybody is dead (or will at least die soon)!

Tammyfan
Posts: 1981
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 10:41

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by Tammyfan »

"Slaves of the Nightmare Factory" (Girl series 2) was another story with a not entirely happy ending. Natalie and Amanda fall foul of a racket that abducts girls and uses them as slave labour in a dress factory. Then Amanda accidentally finds out the man running the racket is her own father, so the racket has been paying for the luxury she has lived in back home! The father, once he realises what happened to his daughter, allows Amanda and Natalie to escape while clearing out the factory and moving the slaves elsewhere. But he does not know Amanda has found him out, or that she and Natalie have sneaked a lift in his own vehicle. Back home, Amanda confronts her father and says she disowns him. Her mother and police officers are rather confused as Amanda has not explained what happened; she has only given them Natalie's diary, which has recorded everything.

Tammyfan
Posts: 1981
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 10:41

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by Tammyfan »

"Here to Stay" from M&J is another. The Walker family finally realise the people who are sponging off them are not their relatives but criminals who make a regular living of posing as people's relatives to sponge off them. Once the creeps realise they have been rumbled they just disappear. But they are still free to take advantage of someone else in the same manner and Mr Walker wonders who their next victims will be.

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philcom55
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Joined: 14 Jun 2006, 11:56

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by philcom55 »

On the other hand it does warn readers that there are still unscrupulous fraudsters out there just looking for innocent victims. It's such a shame that girls' comics like Bunty, etc. aren't still being published as modern internet fraud would provide fertile ground for this sort of cautionary tale.

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ISPYSHHHGUY
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Joined: 14 Oct 2007, 13:05
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Re: Unhappy endings

Post by ISPYSHHHGUY »

Not girls' comics clearly, but a most definite 'sad ending' is surely the concluding chapter of the first I SPY series, at the climax of the last instalment of the six-part Operation I Spy/ Operation Grab serial . [May 1970]

An especially downbeat, apocalyptic scenario in which the baddies---and our hero, apparantly-----get blown sky-high in an explosive charge, presumably all are killed [the concept of death and mortality was often addressed in this strip, which was very unusual in a humour strip at this time] ...unforgettable to many followers of this strip.

Tammyfan
Posts: 1981
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 10:41

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by Tammyfan »

philcom55 wrote:On the other hand it does warn readers that there are still unscrupulous fraudsters out there just looking for innocent victims. It's such a shame that girls' comics like Bunty, etc. aren't still being published as modern internet fraud would provide fertile ground for this sort of cautionary tale.
Actually, I did like the way "Here to Stay" ended, even if it wasn't happy. The Walkers were freed, but the crooks got away with it and are still out there to do it to someone else. And I loved the last panel where the daughter and mother reflect on the horrible experience, the father wonders who will be the next victim, and there is a flash balloon saying "Could it be YOU?".
Belatedly, the daughter remembered seeing newspaper articles warning people about these types of fraudsters. So the Walkers did have warning beforehand but evidently forgot about it or didn't make the connection. This type of fraud must be common in Britain.

Tammyfan
Posts: 1981
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 10:41

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by Tammyfan »

In Tammy’s “Fairground of Fear”, Alan Barker fails to clear his name of the false charge that sent him to prison; the man who framed him refuses to confess and destroyed the evidence that would have exonerated him. At least Alan Barker gets his daughter back after being tricked into thinking she was dead and she finds out about the frame up after it being kept secret for 14 years.

hypnojoo
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Joined: 23 Feb 2018, 09:45

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by hypnojoo »

I found lots of ambivalence in the Misty serial endings, even those that seem to end happily. Rosemary in Moonchild gets to go and live with Ann 'but at what a price, what a terrible price' (or similar). Sentinels is distinctly ambivalent as already noted. Sally Maxwell ends with 'it's as normal as I can hope to be, but it'll do', etc.
Plus a vast number of the single stories, of course, that abandon the protagonist in peril or otherwise trapped in some way.

Tammyfan
Posts: 1981
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 10:41

Re: Unhappy endings

Post by Tammyfan »

hypnojoo wrote:I found lots of ambivalence in the Misty serial endings, even those that seem to end happily. Rosemary in Moonchild gets to go and live with Ann 'but at what a price, what a terrible price' (or similar). Sentinels is distinctly ambivalent as already noted. Sally Maxwell ends with 'it's as normal as I can hope to be, but it'll do', etc.
Plus a vast number of the single stories, of course, that abandon the protagonist in peril or otherwise trapped in some way.
And in the followup to The Sentinels we see that the parallel world is still under the Nazi jackboot. So the alt-Richards family never saw liberation and could well have followed alt-Richards to a Gestapo cell. :cry: Well, at least we see an outright rebellion against the Nazis.

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