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.
helsbels wrote:On reading the blog and seeing "Angela's Angels" from Jinty credited to him, I was very surprised. I'm currently re - reading all my Jintys at the moment and strangely enough, I was wondering who could possibly have drawn "Angela's Angels". Looking at it again, I can see something of Cuyas' style about it but I'd never have guessed it's actually his work.
Angela's Angels was reprinted in 1981. Reprint dates are 11/1/81-12/9/81. Angela's Angels was reprinted in response to a readers' survey Jinty conducted a year earlier. Many readers wanted a nursing story so Jinty reprinted Angela's Angels (rather than print a whole new story). Come to think of it, nursing stories were something Jinty was extremely scanty on. Throughout her seven year run I only saw two: Willa on Wheels and Angela's Angels. The same went for Tammy; I haven't seen the whole run of Tammy but I saw only two stories with nursing themes: Our Janie - Little Mum and Nurse Grudge. Yet her predecessor June had a regular nurse - Nursing Is My Life.
What happened to all the nurses in the IPC titles?
I think the editors of Tammy, Jinty and Misty tried quite hard to avoid the traditional stories about ballet, ponies, nurses, etc. that had become synonymous with previous girls comics. Such tales did, however, linger into the 1970s in titles like Princess Tina. Here's the way in which readers were introduced to 'Ross - Student Nurse', with art by the excellent (and underappreciated) Colin Merritt:
Horses and medical dramas seem to be as popular today as ever (notwithstanding the chauvinistic assumption that girls grow up to be nurses and only boys grow up to be doctors). However, I must admit that I could never understand why there were so many ballet stories in girls' comics during the 1960s: none of the girls I knew ever had the slightest interest in them; yet they turned up everywhere and the Princess Ballet Book was an annual institution for years!
I've just noticed another British series not mentioned on the Desk Artes site that looks like the work of Cuyas. This one begins in Bunty no.1292 (October 16th, 1982).
Actually it's slightly more complicated in that, after the boy-doll is cursed to bring trouble and pain to the family, the good maid puts a counter-charm on the girl-doll to protect them.
It's interesting how potent dolls can be as storytelling devices - from the sweet and lovable Tina in 'Lucky's Living Doll' to the horrific Chucky in the 'Child's Play' movies. One can't help wondering whether the idea that all female dolls are inherently good while all male dolls are bad has some deep psychological basis. I'm sure Freud would have loved to get his teeth into that one!
- Phil Rushton
Last edited by philcom55 on 18 Jan 2013, 12:50, edited 1 time in total.
Oh I'm sure none of your dolls fall into the 'evil' category Ruth.
I don't know who it's drawn by but here's another supernatural doll story from the June Book of Strange Stories 1974 (though it was probably reprinted from an earlier issue of the weekly comic).
...And, while I'm at it, here's a nice Robert MacGillivray illustration from the same book which shows a girl with a rather more ordinary doll - though there's nothing ordinary about the horrible fate that befalls her when she tries to steal it...!
A friend of mine gave it to me last summer. It was in a big cardboard box with some others in her old grandmother's house that have been abandoned for the last ten years. So off we went to pick up the box, and out this doll comes. You move her left arm up and down (pretty much like in a money machine) and the expression in her face changes significantly... as you can appreciate in the pics.
At the begginning I was horrified that such a doll could have been made in the late sixties/early seventies and being dirty and all from years confined in the box I was not thinking in taking it at all. But then I thought it was somethong out of the ordinary so I gave it a good clean and after a while I was completely taken by this... peculiar doll. And so was my sister later on. She recoil in horror when I moved the arm the first time, but later on she could not stop changing its expressons!!
Evil dolls, haunted dolls, friendly dolls, or ordinary dolls with tales to tell and lessons to teach were all part and par for the course in girls' comics. Hannah in the House of Dolls (Bunty), The Many Faces of Moppet (Mandy), The Dream House (Tammy), The Evil Eyes of Tearful Tina and The Curse of Carmina (Suzy), Paula's Puppets (Jinty), Little Dolly Demon (Judy Picture Library #220) and Dolwyn's Dolls (Bunty) are some I have come across.
Last edited by Tammyfan on 22 May 2013, 10:50, edited 1 time in total.
Actually it's slightly more complicated in that, after the boy-doll is cursed to bring trouble and pain to the family, the good maid puts a counter-charm on the girl-doll to protect them.
It's interesting how potent dolls can be as storytelling devices - from the sweet and lovable Tina in 'Lucky's Living Doll' to the horrific Chucky in the 'Child's Play' movies. One can't help wondering whether the idea that all female dolls are inherently good while all male dolls are bad has some deep psychological basis. I'm sure Freud would have loved to get his teeth into that one!
- Phil Rushton
How did I guess? I've seen a similar story in Tammy - The Cat's Eye on Kathy, except that it is a cat that is cursed, not a doll. The curse is broken when Kathy saves the life of the cat. Love conquers all.
Stories about haunted dolls have always captured the imagination. The most famous is Robert, upon whom Chucky is based. Just google Robert the doll and you will find him. There are Robert clips on Youtube as well.
By the way... how many of those June Book of Strange Stories were there? I got the one from 1972. I'm looking now for this 1974... was it there many others? a 1973?
Oh, and story of the doll you post it iearly on is from Stanley Houghton, I just asked David Roach.
RuthB wrote:By the way... how many of those June Book of Strange Stories were there? I got the one from 1972. I'm looking now for this 1974... was it there many others? a 1973?
I think there were only two June Book of Strange Stories - I have both the 1972 and 1974 copies. I have never seen adverts in the weekly IPC comics of the time for a 1973 strange stories compilation, so for whatever reason there doesn't appear to have been one.
