Comics UK

Wonder if anyone will reprint The Happy Days in a volume or something?

philcom55 wrote:That was the nice thing about The Happy Days: although Sue narrated the stories (and had an annual named after her!) every single member of the family was equally important, and took turns in the spotlight.

I reckon that is one reason why The Happy Days is one of the best strips ever in girls' comics.

There's so much material out there that it could fill a whole series of Asterix-style albums; the only problem is that some of the social attitudes expressed might seem a little old-fashioned to a modern audience - particularly when it comes to gender roles.

Funnily enough I was looking at a lot of the original art just last week and Phil Clarke still has a pile several feet high! I know Andrew Wilson isn't everybody's cup of tea but the blending of art and story is so perfectly judged that imho anyone interested in British girls' comics really owes it to herself (or himself) to own at least one episode!

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a bookshop co-owner:

She commented how there were no women writing girls' comics until Tammy and Jinty eras in 1970s.

I pointed out Jenny Butterworth being one of the first with The Happy Days from 1960. We later both agreed that the 1960s is a very overlooked decade when things are written on girls' comics - with Sue Day - that decade's probably most iconic - getting the odd token mention.

I agree Ms Butterworth is most underrated.

I wonder how far girls comics launched some female writers, such as Anne Digby or Alison Christie?

Tammyfan wrote:I wonder how far girls comics launched some female writers, such as Anne Digby or Alison Christie?

It clearly provided a great grounding - Jenny McDade in particular will have benefited a lot from writing comics when she later went into screenwriting, as they have a lot of similarities.

Of course Jacqueline Wilson famously started out at DC Thomson writing for women's story papers like Red Star and then moving onto the brand new girls' weekly Jackie when it was launched (though the story that it was actually named after her appears to be apocryphal). I'm not sure if she scripted any comic strips however.

Of all the 'Happy Days' George Day is, in normal circumstances, the most level-headed member of the family: the calm, mild-mannered father that everyone else relies on and Sue fondly praises as being "so leanable-on". However this doesn't always apply to his part-time hobby as an enthusiastic amateur artist - an activity that more than once brings him into contact with the turbulent controversies of the contemporary Art World. From this typical story one could be forgiven for assuming that writer Jenny Butterworth is something of a philistine with a decidedly jaded view of Modern Art, but I think the truth is that her target is really pretentiousness in all its forms - in the same way that she made fun of the arrogant self-importance of 'Mr. Knowall' (even though his cleverness seemed quite genuine).





...While the series is very much a reflection of the time in which it was produced it could be argued that this is also part of its charm - besides which such concerns don't seem to prevent modern readers from appreciating books like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye. The more I look back on these wonderful stories the more I agree with Tammyfan that they really deserve to be collected in some form so they could be enjoyed by a present-day audience.

I used that very same plot in one of my strips! Perhaps it was lurking in the back of my mind along with all the other fragments of old comics I've read.

I noticed the plot similarity too, but simply put it down to 'great minds thinking alike' rather than any unconscious plagiarism!

philcom55 wrote:Of all the 'Happy Days' George Day is, in normal circumstances, the most level-headed member of the family: the calm, mild-mannered father that everyone else relies on and Sue fondly praises as being "so leanable-on". However this doesn't always apply to his part-time hobby as an enthusiastic amateur artist - an activity that more than once brings him into contact with the turbulent controversies of the contemporary Art World. From this typical story one could be forgiven for assuming that writer Jenny Butterworth is something of a philistine with a decidedly jaded view of Modern Art, but I think the truth is that her target is really pretentiousness in all its forms - in the same way that she made fun of the arrogant self-importance of 'Mr. Knowall' (even though his cleverness seemed quite genuine).





...While the series is very much a reflection of the time in which it was produced it could be argued that this is also part of its charm - besides which such concerns don't seem to prevent modern readers from appreciating books like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye. The more I look back on these wonderful stories the more I agree with Tammyfan that they really deserve to be collected in some form so they could be enjoyed by a present-day audience.

There was another Happy Day story where Mr Day's artwork gets him into bad company with Mr Strickland, a self-claimed artistic genius who is anything but. He causes so much trouble that he and Mr Day end up in court!

There was another Happy Day story where a lousy artist who thinks he is a genius gets his painting mixed up with that of the Day twins for art competitions. His painting ends up third place at a children's art show and I think the twins' gets a prize at the adults'.

Jenny certainly wasn't above recycling plots.There was one story where Sue helped her dad to build a boat in the cellar - only to realize they hadn't considered how they were going to get it out. Then a few years later he built a plane in the same way, with the same result!

philcom55 wrote:Jenny certainly wasn't above recycling plots.There was one story where Sue helped her dad to build a boat in the cellar - only to realize they hadn't considered how they were going to get it out. Then a few years later he built a plane in the same way, with the same result!

What happened in the end? Did they end up dismantling the boat/plane and reassembling it elsewhere?

I think Mr Day gave up on the boat, and the bits were used to make something else. That'd be a typical plot, anyway.