Favourite photo stories

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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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Tammyfan »

Thank you Phoenix. I have some of the subsequent episodes. The Sweet Dreams get withdrawn so Sandie has to make the packet she has last, but she gets greedy and selfish about the sweets and their messages. Where that leads to in the end I don't know, but it must be a comeuppance of some sort.

Phoenix
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Phoenix »

Tammyfan wrote:Thank you Phoenix. I have some of the subsequent episodes. The Sweet Dreams get withdrawn so Sandie has to make the packet she has last, but she gets greedy and selfish about the sweets and their messages. Where that leads to in the end I don't know, but it must be a comeuppance of some sort.
I'll get the issues out again tomorrow, Briony. I'm currently watching the World Snooker Championship Final from the Crucible in Sheffield, which is now on its mid-evening break, or I wouldn't be in my study writing to you. Patience is a virtue, as my mother was in the habit of reminding me.

Phoenix
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Phoenix »

I did get the issues out, Briony, but I have not so far been able to proceed to a summary. I have been very upset today as my best friend, Billy Nichols, died yesterday of heart failure in Arrowe Park Hospital in Birkenhead. Comics and the stories therein seem so very unimportant at this time.

comixminx
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by comixminx »

Phoenix wrote:I did get the issues out, Briony, but I have not so far been able to proceed to a summary. I have been very upset today as my best friend, Billy Nichols, died yesterday of heart failure in Arrowe Park Hospital in Birkenhead. Comics and the stories therein seem so very unimportant at this time.
Oh dear, very sorry to hear of your loss. Indeed, at such times whatever mundanities of life seem very unimportant I know.
jintycomic.wordpress.com/ Excellent and weird stories from the past - with amazing art to boot.

Tammyfan
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Tammyfan »

Poor Phoenix. :cry:

big bad bri
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by big bad bri »

Sorry for your loss Derek :(

Phoenix
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Phoenix »

Thank you to all for the concern you have expressed. It has been greatly appreciated.

Phoenix
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Phoenix »

Right, Briony. I've extracted again the issues of BUNTY containing Sandie's Sweets. I'll just summarize the last three instalments for you. In 2156 Sandie sneaks into the shop the back way, and when she hears Mrs Broome saying "Hubble Bubble" she automatically thinks that confirms that the owner of the corner shop is a witch, but only until she then says to the young lad in the shop who has enquired, that she doesn't "sell that brand of bubble gum". After a telling off Sandie asks for another packet of the sweets, only for Mrs Broome to remind her that she has already told her that she doesn't sell that brand of sweets any more, and points out to her that she won't be able to get them anywhere else either. Sandie thinks that is because Mrs Broome made them herself, but Mrs Broome tells her it is because they have been withdrawn by the factory that produced them.

The next motto is 'Watch Out!'. However, Sandie is convinced that earlier it had said 'Teacher's Pet', so somehow Mrs Broome has changed it, or so she thinks. Sandie is now scared, but feels that she will be alright so long as she doesn't eat the sweet. She decides to throw them all in a roadside bin, but misses, a dog eats one of them, and nearly gets killed walking into the road. She can't then throw them in the bin because her friend Allie is walking towards her and will wonder why. As they decide to go to a disco, Sandie will have to dispose of the sweets later to avoid having to explain her action. Sandie's mother finds the sweets in one of Sandie's pockets, and eats one with the motto 'Danger'. She then starts to clean out the kitchen cupboards, but loses her balance, falls off the chair, and breaks one of her legs. Before Sandie sees the empty sweet wrapper with the 'Danger' motto, she rings for an ambulance. She takes all the sweets away with her in the ambulance, and she again throws the sweets away when she sees the rubbish being collected.

While Sandie is waiting, she makes a friend of a girl whose brother is being treated there as he had fallen off his bike and broken his arm. She offers Sandie a Sweet Dreams sweet. Sandie asks her if the mottoes come true. The girl says they don't as it's all just a bit of fun. When Sandie's dad gets to the hospital with her little brother, he pours water on the whole idea of the lady in the shop being a witch, and Sandie realizes that she must have an overactive imagination. The next time Sandie goes into Mrs Broome's shop, the shopkeeper says she has something that might interest her - Chinese Fortune Cookies as she will be able to see what the future holds. Sandie thanks her but tells her that she''ll give the cookies a miss, and thinks "I reckon it's safer that way!"

Tammyfan
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Tammyfan »

Thank you, Phoenix, for the information. :D

Phoenix
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Phoenix »

Phoenix wrote:...my best friend, Billy Nicholls, died yesterday of heart failure in Arrowe Park Hospital in Birkenhead.
I went to the funeral today at Landican Crematorium near Arrowe Park Hospital in Birkenhead. Initially, what struck me most was the sheer extent of the land, and the immense number of gravestones. The service was non-religious, and consisted mainly of a eulogy, silent reflection, thanksgiving and committal. Burial was out of the question because Billy had told David that he didn't want to be under ground. Loads of people turned up to honour him, including several who had worked under him on the railway track between Birkenhead and Chester in his younger days when he was a ganger. I was surprised at just how many knew me from some point or other in the past, mainly from when I used to watch Bolton in their away matches with Tranmere Rovers, always Billy's team. After the service we went to the appropriately-named pub The Railway in Port Sunlight (where Sunlight Soap used to be produced). In fact, as his daughter Lisa was driving me back to Kirkdale to catch my train home, we did a detour to Tranmere's Prenton Park ground to leave some of the flowers, which were in the form of the words MY DAD, about a foot and a half high, and obviously in the team's blue and white colours. It was of course just a gesture because it wouldn't have been too long before some jobsworth removed them.
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peace355
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by peace355 »

Pat Mills recently wrote some pieces on girls comics on his blog, worth a read for those interested. The second part discusses options for pitching a girls comics today https://www.millsverse.com/girlscomics2/

An interesting section on photo strips came up and I don't think I'd seen a positive defense of such stories before. While it is easy to dismiss photo stories, its true that they were popular, and quality depended on several factors.

I post the relevant part from Pat Mills post here:

"PHOTOSTRIP
It’s had a poor reputation over the years because so many people have done it badly. Correction: terribly! And it also has a bad image from those tacky photo problem pages they used to have in The Sun. But photostrip did once work in girls’ comics. Notably in Girl magazine. I wrote 9 to 4, a Grange Hill-style serial for them, which went down well. That was photostrip – although my script editor didn’t understand why it was so successful. He said, quote, ‘It’s just a bunch of school girls standing around bitching and doing spiteful things to each other.’ Well, that’s the nature of the genre and, because my dialogue and story material was 100% authentic, based on my real-life sources, the readers loved it.

I also had female readers saying to me they liked photostrip better than comic art because it was ‘clearer and more real. You can really see what is going on. It’s not muddy like most comics.’ Ha! ‘Muddy’ indeed! But they’re the audience and we have to listen to them if we want to sell. Of course such words will be heresy to those male readers who have always hated photostrip, often with considerable venom! But it’s not necessarily true for a young female audience that may not have quite the same passion for artwork and where the story matters more to them.

That said, photo strip is NOT a short cut. It requires a good photographer with a director’s ability to put his photo models at ease and get strong emotional expressions out of them (which is at the heart of girls’ comics). I know from being on photo shoots this usually means a female director or chaperone should be present to encourage them and get them in the right space. Otherwise the model is going to stiffen up or be shy if a male director asks them to suddenly scream their heads off or sneer or look angry or burst into tears. There’s nothing worse than wooden photostrip.

However, if a writer can’t afford an artist and has a relatively straightforward story it could be an answer. Provided the photographer and the photo models are talented."

Tammyfan
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Tammyfan »

No matter how good the photography is, a photo story is far more limited in what it can do than a picture story - spooky or sf stories, for example.

However, there are cases where photos do bring off a story better. Take Slaves of The Nightmare Factory from Girl II for example. Doing the story in photos somehow makes it grimmer and more effective than if it had been drawn. Maybe it’s seeing the slavery being done to actual flesh and blood girls. For more see https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2017/0 ... y-1983-84/

Phoenix
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Phoenix »

Tammyfan wrote:No matter how good the photography is, a photo story is far more limited in what it can do than a picture story
It is well known that I don't like photo stories. A year or so back I did make an exception of Luv, Lisa, but I certainly wouldn't now. My basic reasons are the same as they were then. I need to be in control of determining what the fictional characters look like, and this is why I prefer, and always have preferred, the text story papers such as ADVENTURE, THE HOTSPUR, THE ROVER etc. because although they sometimes do describe the physical characteristics of the main characters, my perception of them is capable of a kind of override. Novels are even better, especially if there are no illustrations within them. Where the picture story papers for boys or girls are concerned, I simply have to live with the matter, but my reading pleasure is definitely diminished. This diminishing process can perhaps be more clearly understood when we watch a film of a novel we know well. Most, if not all, of Jane Austen's novels have been filmed, and in these cases many of us I suspect had already got a reasonably clear idea of what the main characters looked like, but we have all had to adjust to the reality on the screen in front of us. Jennifer Ehle did not match the picture in my head, nor did Colin Firth, and yet some of the more minor characters were persuasive, possibly because I didn't have any preconceptions about them. Where more than one film has been produced of the same novel, the difficulty of 'seeing' a particular character is a very real challenge.

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stevezodiac
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by stevezodiac »

The only Ebeneezer Scrooge for me is Alastair Sim. One of my favourite films. I like to think Dickens would have approved. A superbly cast film all round. But my mate Steve is horrified that I prefer the colourised version.

Goof
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Goof »

Tammyfan wrote:No matter how good the photography is, a photo story is far more limited in what it can do than a picture story - spooky or sf stories, for example.
I agree, and I think this goes well beyond the photo story’s inability to do the unreal, such as supernatural or fantasy stories. Pat Mills is quite right that they got much better results when they used good models who could project strong emotion convincingly, but he doesn’t mention another problem that was never solved – photo stories simply can’t do action sequences. The action in some of the early stories was ludicrous – in one I’ve seen, the heroine wins a tennis championship by standing stock-still in the middle of the court and sticking her racket out like a traffic signal. Although later examples seemed to get a little better, the only real way round the problem was to limit action to the bare minimum, but that meant that they also had to limit the type of story they could use.

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