Comics UK

klakadak-ploobadoof wrote:... Misty No. 1 is currently on available on ebay. It is complete with free gift but the condition doesn't look great on the picture. Besides, the asking price is rather high at £60. The seller says he has a full run with only 2 issues missing, and he would agree to sell them as a joblot for a non-negotiable amount of £250. Is this a reasonable price for the title?

That is about the fifth or sixth time that issue of Misty has gone onto Ebay! As to the price, it's not brilliant, but it's not bad. When you consider that most comics these days are around the £2 mark, a price of just over £2.50 per issue isn't too painful. I must admit that when we got our lot of Misty, it was £150 for the same amount of comics and as I was buying it for Mrs colcool's birthday, I was happy to pay that price. But we didn't get any of the free gifts!

klakadak-ploobadoof wrote:Thanks for your suggestions. Is there any particular reason for you recommending this particular period? What about later on in the seventies?

Partly because you say your favourite period is late sixties and seventies and partly because, in my opinion, Bunty and Judy had become very assured by this period. Mandy, of course, didn't actually debut until January 1967 but she was quickly into her stride. I suspect that this was due to Mandy's editorial staff being advised by the editors of Bunty and Judy, and being influenced in particular by reader feedback to all three papers. It should not be forgotten that Bunty in 1958 and Judy in 1960 were effectively pioneers of the genre. In direct response to your second question, there is nothing wrong with these papers in the later seventies, indeed Judy actually improved. I just felt that my suggested period would be a good one for you to experiment with.

Although I'm a Judy fan and agree that the 70s was when the comic really hit its stride, I feel compelled to warn you, before you go out and spend any money, that not ALL the stories were great in terms of art and/or storytelling. There was still a fair bit of chaff in with the wheat! The good ones were really good, but there were also the ubiquitious ballerina and boarding school stories.

I'll try to scan some samples for you sometimes next week.

Audiate wrote:I feel compelled to warn you, before you go out and spend any money, that not ALL the stories were great in terms of art and/or storytelling. There was still a fair bit of chaff in with the wheat! The good ones were really good, but there were also the ubiquitious ballerina and boarding school stories.

I would be very surprised, Audiate, if KP didn't already know that, even though he knows nothing about girls' papers, because it is true about every single comic and story paper ever published. Furthermore, you place ballerina and boarding school stories among the chaff. Do you not think that this might just offend supporters of Moira Kent, Lorna Drake, Sandra, The Four Marys, Skinflint School, Bobby Dazzler and The Randell Road Girls? Also, is it not possible that your chaff may well be KP's wheat? Perhaps if you had extended your thinking to what all children did and thought when they read their copies of Judy or Tammy or Sally each week, you would have realised that while there would be many who held your views, there would be at least as many who disagreed with you, having discovered instead that they absolutely detested those stories whose next instalment you were so desperate to read that you thought Thursday would never come around again. The top and bottom of it is that most children would read the serials that attracted them and would ignore the rest once they had reached the conclusion that they didn't like them. I loved serials in Thomsons' boys' papers about sport, school, cowboys, science fiction and historical themes. The Big Five were exactly what I needed, despite the fact that I hated their war stories, and this is why the range of stories in Judy and Mandy et al appeals to me now, where the much narrower range in Spellbound really does not. That was the measured view that I was trying to get across to KP, that's all.

phoenix4ever wrote:

Audiate wrote:I feel compelled to warn you, before you go out and spend any money, that not ALL the stories were great in terms of art and/or storytelling. There was still a fair bit of chaff in with the wheat! The good ones were really good, but there were also the ubiquitious ballerina and boarding school stories.

I would be very surprised, Audiate, if KP didn't already know that, even though he knows nothing about girls' papers, because it is true about every single comic and story paper ever published. Furthermore, you place ballerina and boarding school stories among the chaff. Do you not think that this might just offend supporters of Moira Kent, Lorna Drake, Sandra, The Four Marys, Skinflint School, Bobby Dazzler and The Randell Road Girls? Also, is it not possible that your chaff may well be KP's wheat? Perhaps if you had extended your thinking to what all children did and thought when they read their copies of Judy or Tammy or Sally each week, you would have realised that while there would be many who held your views, there would be at least as many who disagreed with you, having discovered instead that they absolutely detested those stories whose next instalment you were so desperate to read that you thought Thursday would never come around again. The top and bottom of it is that most children would read the serials that attracted them and would ignore the rest once they had reached the conclusion that they didn't like them. I loved serials in Thomsons' boys' papers about sport, school, cowboys, science fiction and historical themes. The Big Five were exactly what I needed, despite the fact that I hated their war stories, and this is why the range of stories in Judy and Mandy et al appeals to me now, where the much narrower range in Spellbound really does not. That was the measured view that I was trying to get across to KP, that's all.

Well, to be fair to Audiate I don't think she's discounting the merits of those topics, just saying that a lot of the stories that featured them weren't very inspired. There were gems amongst those tales of blind ballerinas with lame ponies, but they also seemed to sometimes be a kind of default setting if they were short on ideas.

Young Wendy Redreid-Robbin was orphaned when both her parents died from acute poverty after drinking water from their hovel's well. But Wendy had always dreamt of dancing at the Melchester Royal Ballet. By dint of working hard, selling rat turds to a grateful clientelle, Wendy was able to pay for an audition before Madame Dominatrix, a former Prima Ballerina, now reduced to appearing as a bitter and twisted old cow in childrens' serial stories. But the night before her audition, Wendy discovers that the pointe shoes she had made from old tractor tyres have perished. Now read on...

tony ingram wrote:Well, to be fair to Audiate I don't think she's discounting the merits of those topics, just saying that a lot of the stories that featured them weren't very inspired.

Audiate wrote:The good ones were really good, but there were also the ubiquitious ballerina and boarding school stories.

I don't agree, Tony. Audiate is distinguishing between good stories (wheat) and poor stories (chaff). She then goes on to say that the good stories were really good but there were also ballerina and boarding school stories all over the place (ubiquitous). She is expressing a prejudice, she apparently doesn't like them and they are therefore not good stories. The point I'm trying to make is that just because we don't like a particular kind of story, or in fact any story at all, that does not necessarily make the story a poor one. It merely establishes an individual's likes and dislikes, and nowhere have I been dismissive of any kind of story. I have stated that I don't like war stories and therefore I choose not to read them, but I do acknowledge that the good ones may well be very good. Where I do agree with you is your point about fillers, what you refer to as 'a default setting'. I agree too with the view that you ascribe to Audiate that there are poor ballerina and boarding school stories, just as there are obviously poor stories of mystery, time-travel and sport etc. But you are assuming that that is what Audiate is thinking. She certainly doesn't say that.

Brendan McGuire wrote:Young Wendy Redreid-Robbin was orphaned when both her parents died from acute poverty after drinking water from their hovel's well. But Wendy had always dreamt of dancing at the Melchester Royal Ballet. By dint of working hard, selling rat turds to a grateful clientelle, Wendy was able to pay for an audition before Madame Dominatrix, a former Prima Ballerina, now reduced to appearing as a bitter and twisted old cow in childrens' serial stories. But the night before her audition, Wendy discovers that the pointe shoes she had made from old tractor tyres have perished. Now read on...

Bah, I'm not bothering with this one. Wendy isn't blind or deaf and doesn't even have a lame racehorse hidden in the woods! What a thin script!

phoenix4ever wrote:

tony ingram wrote:Well, to be fair to Audiate I don't think she's discounting the merits of those topics, just saying that a lot of the stories that featured them weren't very inspired.

Audiate wrote:The good ones were really good, but there were also the ubiquitious ballerina and boarding school stories.

I don't agree, Tony. Audiate is distinguishing between good stories (wheat) and poor stories (chaff). She then goes on to say that the good stories were really good but there were also ballerina and boarding school stories all over the place (ubiquitous). She is expressing a prejudice, she apparently doesn't like them and they are therefore not good stories. The point I'm trying to make is that just because we don't like a particular kind of story, or in fact any story at all, that does not necessarily make the story a poor one. It merely establishes an individual's likes and dislikes, and nowhere have I been dismissive of any kind of story. I have stated that I don't like war stories and therefore I choose not to read them, but I do acknowledge that the good ones may well be very good. Where I do agree with you is your point about fillers, what you refer to as 'a default setting'. I agree too with the view that you ascribe to Audiate that there are poor ballerina and boarding school stories, just as there are obviously poor stories of mystery, time-travel and sport etc. But you are assuming that that is what Audiate is thinking. She certainly doesn't say that.

Hmm. Audiate? You want to answer this, if you're out there?

Tony, give it a chance. If I remember correctly Wendy has yet to discover Madame Dominatrix's used racehorse scam. She uses them as mules to smuggle machinery parts from Mother Russia, just as Wendy discovers that she has congenital cataracts.

Hello there!
No, I wasn't trying to diss the boarding school stories (or their creators); in fact there were some excellent ones. As with many serial comics, there was a range in quality, creativity, and originality of the stories -- and of course everyone will have different opinioins on that; art is always subjective.
I guess I was trying to think of it from the point of view of a male adult reader who's never read girls' comics: after being told how good the stories are, their first impression might be that that the majority of the stories are about ballerinas and boarding schools. (And let's face it, whether those were excellent, average, or poor, there certainly were a lot!) And yes, you then have to read through the stereotype to judge the story on its own merit.
I just didn't want someone to shell out a lot of money on comics under the impression that everything in the comic would be great. But as I said, I'll post some scans so that anyone new to the comic can get an idea.

Brendan McGuire wrote:Young Wendy Redreid-Robbin was orphaned when both her parents died from acute poverty after drinking water from their hovel's well. But Wendy had always dreamt of dancing at the Melchester Royal Ballet. By dint of working hard, selling rat turds to a grateful clientelle, Wendy was able to pay for an audition before Madame Dominatrix, a former Prima Ballerina, now reduced to appearing as a bitter and twisted old cow in childrens' serial stories. But the night before her audition, Wendy discovers that the pointe shoes she had made from old tractor tyres have perished. Now read on...

Oh, I remember that one! Didn't she have a younger sister to look after, too, and they were always trying to dodge the evil social services lady who wanted to take her away? And the sisters were also, between ballet auditions, trying to search for their lost lame dog, who wore a collar with a locket that contained the secret to the fortune they were supposed to inherit? And their evil uncle was trying to find it before them...
Oh, and the younger sister was allergic to chalk, so she couldn't go to school.

Audiate wrote:

Brendan McGuire wrote:Young Wendy Redreid-Robbin was orphaned when both her parents died from acute poverty after drinking water from their hovel's well. But Wendy had always dreamt of dancing at the Melchester Royal Ballet. By dint of working hard, selling rat turds to a grateful clientelle, Wendy was able to pay for an audition before Madame Dominatrix, a former Prima Ballerina, now reduced to appearing as a bitter and twisted old cow in childrens' serial stories. But the night before her audition, Wendy discovers that the pointe shoes she had made from old tractor tyres have perished. Now read on...

Oh, I remember that one! Didn't she have a younger sister to look after, too, and they were always trying to dodge the evil social services lady who wanted to take her away? And the sisters were also, between ballet auditions, trying to search for their lost lame dog, who wore a collar with a locket that contained the secret to the fortune they were supposed to inherit? And their evil uncle was trying to find it before them...
Oh, and the younger sister was allergic to chalk, so she couldn't go to school.

Yes. So they sent her twin brother in her place. In a dress. (and the first person who can identify which story that last idea was a reversal of wins the DC Thomson Prize for Extreme Cleverness).

Trying to do those scans, but am having a hard time getting the incredibly detailed b&w drawings to look as they should -- what resolution and colour settings does everyone else use when scanning bw comics for this forum?

tony ingram wrote: Yes. So they sent her twin brother in her place. In a dress. (and the first person who can identify which story that last idea was a reversal of wins the DC Thomson Prize for Extreme Cleverness).

About 70% of manga stories, isn't it?! (Slight exaggeration.)

I'd like to read some Slaves of War Orphan Farm strips sometime ... from Tammy, I think, that one. I've long thought that'd be a great name for a band - and just discovered that there actually is one.