Comics UK

You may already have seen the Halloween Special post over at Great News For All Readers - on Misty, very appropriately! It includes some lovely artwork and memories of reading the title at the time.

http://www.greatnewsforallreaders.com/b ... 0/30/misty

There is some discussion in the comments about the importance of short self-contained stories versus ongoing serial stories - GNFAR has found that people's memories of the short stories is the really salient thing about Misty, more so than the serial stories really, which is interesting, especially as I would generally tend to attribute the failure of the title to having run too many one-off stories. What do you think?

Personally, I like girls comics that have a mix of complete story and serial. There were a number of Misty serials that are still remembered, such as The Sentinels, The Cult of the Cat, and Winner Loses All! I think a more serious problem was a lack of regular characters, and it showed when Misty merged with Tammy. Miss T was the only Misty character to endure because she was the only regular - besides Misty herself.

The DCT equivalent of Misty, Spellbound, had The Supercats and The Man in Black as her main regulars, and they carried on in Debbie after that merger. I think The Shop at Shudder Corner also carried on - in the Debbie Picture Libraries at least.

comixminx wrote:GNFAR has found that people's memories of the short stories is the really salient thing about Misty, more so than the serial stories really, which is interesting, especially as I would generally tend to attribute the failure of the title to having run too many one-off stories. What do you think?

Serials, whether in story papers or elsewhere, are effectively novels with a built-in seven-day wait between chapters. I have always loved novels. Over the years I have also enjoyed a fair number of short stories, or completes as I call them, but for the most part they were in annuals. I cannot comment on the effect that Misty had on its readers as I never read it, but a story paper full of completes would not have provided me with anything like the reading pleasure that I got week in week out from the serials in The Hotspur, The Rover, Adventure, and The Wizard over the eight/nine years that I read them as a schoolboy. Yes, I was still reading some of them in the Sixth Form. I'm still reading them now!

Tammyfan wrote:I think The Shop at Shudder Corner also carried on - in the Debbie Picture Libraries at least.

As far as I am aware, Tammyfan, there were only three further issues of Debbie that contained The Shop At Shudder Corner, and they appeared a good while after the amalgamation with Spellbound in issue 258 (Jan. 21 1978). There was a two-parter in issues 372 (Mar. 29 1980) and 373 (Apr. 5 1980), and a complete in 374 (Apr. 12 1980). I don't have absolutely all of the later issues of Debbie, and I am still to research those in the British Library, but as the Spellbound logo disappeared from the masthead with issue 349 (Oct. 20 1979), I think it is very unlikely that I will come across any more stories about The Shop At Shudder Corner.

I always felt it was a shame IPC didn't make Misty the star of her own ongoing series in the same way Warren did with Vampirella.

I have always preferred serials. And when a story is good: the longer the better. The plot of short stories is usually very thin, and often you can more or less guess the end from page one.

About regulars: I never cared for them. With me it's more like: Oh, no. Not again a Bella or Molly Mills story...

marckie73 wrote:About regulars: I never cared for them. With me it's more like: Oh, no. Not again a Bella or Molly Mills story...

I always loved the regulars. They were like old friends coming back to meet me again.

It's always the regulars that carry on in the merger, sometimes years after the original comic has merged and disappeared. The Comp, Penny's Place, the budgie from Tracy, Pam of Pond Hill, Wee Sue, The Storyteller and Bessie Bunter are ones that spring to my mind, and there would be others.

Regulars are what gives a comic its identity. The most successful comics have all had multiple regular character serials. It's always perplexed me why Misty had little beyond a cover girl.

Marionette wrote:Regulars are what gives a comic its identity. The most successful comics have all had multiple regular character serials. It's always perplexed me why Misty had little beyond a cover girl.

Yes, any old girls' comic can run serials - it's the regulars like The Four Marys or Bella Barlow that give the comic its particular identity and separate it from the pack.

On his blog, Pat Mills also reckons there were too many short stories and not enough serials in Misty. But what really annoyed him was editors pulling some of the punches he wanted to make (such as toning down Roots and Red Knee, White Terror!) so as not to get too scary. Other short stories he felt were a bit weak (Two Left Feet is one I think could have been executed better). He reckons the old school crept back into Misty. It certainly did with Tammy - by the late 1970s the darkness and cruelty of her early years was gone. Even the resident villains in Molly Mills were toned down. Only Bella from former times remained.