Diane Gabbott: List of her artwork

[Tammyfan]

I could be wrong, but I have a suspicion "Jake Adams" might be Malcolm Shaw. One reason pseudonyms were used was not to give the impression the same writer was writing so much in the comic at one time. Malcolm Shaw was strong on science fiction; he wrote "The Robot That Cried" and "The Human Zoo" for Jinty, so there is a good chance he wrote "ET Estate" under the name Jake Adams. He also proved he could write emotional stories when he wrote one of the most intensely emotional Bella Barlow stories, one where Bella loses her memory and then goes through a mental breakdown where she loses her confidence for gymnastics completely. (That one was one of my favourite Bella stories.) So it is possible he wrote Shirley Grey and maybe "Waves of Fear". Alison Christie is also possible for Shirley Grey, but she hasn't claimed authorship. She has already informed me she did not write "Waves of Fear".

Maybe someone will do a reprint volume with Diane Gabbot stories. You never know.

[Goof]

Yes, I noticed the use of the past tense “I blamed”, but didn’t read this as necessarily meaning “I blamed myself but don’t now” as this would imply a pretty abrupt change of heart at this point. It could be so, however. The problem is that, having brought the consequences of the accident to a resolution through Trisha’s recovery, the writer gives little more attention to Shirley’s sense of responsibility for it. I think the most we can say is that her feelings of guilt are just allowed to fade away.

These stories certainly did produce some prize examples of horrendous parenting! Regarding the Greys, though, I think it shows the strength of the writing that although their behaviour to Shirley is awful, their reasons for it are plausible. The sense of degradation they feel about where they live, and their longing for more money to escape it, absorb them so much that this blinds them to the seriousness of Shirley’s state of mind, and causes them to overreact to anything which threatens the escape. Mr Grey’s attitude is also sharpened by what was clearly a very difficult and humiliating interview with his boss - Mrs Wilks’ indiarubber husband having dished out her retribution according to instructions.

The problem I have with what I’ve read of “Waves of Fear” is that I simply can’t relate to their thinking in the same way. It would be quite possible to rewrite this story so that Clare would be on the receiving end of any amount of anger and contempt, but on more or less rational grounds, and with some genuine curiosity as to why she should be acting so out of character. However the writer has chosen instead to base the general response on the supposition that Clare is a “coward”. As applied here, this goes well beyond blaming her for the failure to help Rachel. It makes her an untouchable, a moral outcast. You can see at once that the other girls’ response is not a routine sending to Coventry – “we’re going to act… as if you died out there yesterday”. As a branded “coward” she is treated as a moral degenerate capable of any disgraceful act. The girl who was a credit to the school only a few days before is now an “animal”, “delinquent”, “chicken”, “wicked”. After being nearly drowned by her classmates, she gets a lot of the blame for being too slow in letting people know she’s not dead. Naturally, this could have nothing to do with the trauma of a near-death experience – it is her desire for “revenge”. After the ruckus in the school assembly, her father goes the whole hog, regresses about 150 years and comes out with the Victorian gem “we don’t have a daughter any more”! Just as well perhaps that there wasn’t a snowstorm handy to push Clare out into. Possibly this kind of thing would have seemed plausible in a story written at the beginning of the 20th century, when many people believed that “cowards” should be treated this way. Reading it today, in a story written in 1979, it seems to me to be simply crazy, and undermines an otherwise thought-provoking story.

It’s a very interesting idea that Jake Adams might be Malcolm Shaw. I don’t know the credited stories well enough to comment, but I would certainly say that “Shirley Grey “ has the quality and imaginative power to be his work. I don’t know that Bella story, but it sounds as if there may be some similarities with “Shirley”. I understand that his wife has already given the Jinty website what information she has about his stories, so I suppose we’ll never know now, unless there’s a reprint.

[Tammyfan]

These stories certainly did produce some prize examples of horrendous parenting! Regarding the Greys, though, I think it shows the strength of the writing that although their behaviour to Shirley is awful, their reasons for it are plausible. The sense of degradation they feel about where they live, and their longing for more money to escape it, absorb them so much that this blinds them to the seriousness of Shirley’s state of mind, and causes them to overreact to anything which threatens the escape. Mr Grey’s attitude is also sharpened by what was clearly a very difficult and humiliating interview with his boss - Mrs Wilks’ indiarubber husband having dished out her retribution according to instructions.

It is hard to say he was indiarubber and acting on instructions as we don't know exactly what passed between the couple. It could be he was so angry at what happened that he overreacted too and got really angry. Mr Grey did say his boss "told him off good and proper". Mind you, Shirley was the first to come out and tell Mrs Wilks that her wardrobe was hideous. Mr Wilks must have known it too but clearly never said so. It doesn't sound like he responded to his wife with, "So, someone has finally said it, then?"

We have a lot of stories where parents overreacted so badly they were fit for the loony bin. One is the squire in Bunty's "The Courage of Crippled Clare". When he discovers Mary Jordan is giving his crippled daughter Clare rides on her pony, he turns into a raving lunatic and his reactions are one of the most extreme ever in girls' comics. He deliberately turns the whole community against Mary and makes her a target of bullying, harassment and violence; he forces Mary's father to sell her pony and later evicts the Jordan family; he turns the police on Mary, making her a target of a manhunt; he and his wife accuse Mary of bewitching Clare; and he even tries to shoot Mary's pony with his own hands!

[Tammyfan]

The problem I have with what I’ve read of “Waves of Fear” is that I simply can’t relate to their thinking in the same way. It would be quite possible to rewrite this story so that Clare would be on the receiving end of any amount of anger and contempt, but on more or less rational grounds, and with some genuine curiosity as to why she should be acting so out of character ... Reading it today, in a story written in 1979, it seems to me to be simply crazy, and undermines an otherwise thought-provoking story.

The only one thinking this way was Miss Heath, who tells Clare there must have been a reason for acting so out of character, and she is the only one who can see Clare needs help. Perhaps the story was making a statement that attitudes like the Harvey parents have no place in enlightened times and we should approach things more like Miss Heath. Maybe you would like scans of the full story so you can see how Miss Heath's approach contrasts with everyone else's?

[Tammyfan]

These stories certainly did produce some prize examples of horrendous parenting! Regarding the Greys, though, I think it shows the strength of the writing that although their behaviour to Shirley is awful, their reasons for it are plausible. The sense of degradation they feel about where they live, and their longing for more money to escape it, absorb them so much that this blinds them to the seriousness of Shirley’s state of mind, and causes them to overreact to anything which threatens the escape. Mr Grey’s attitude is also sharpened by what was clearly a very difficult and humiliating interview with his boss - Mrs Wilks’ indiarubber husband having dished out her retribution according to instructions.

Yes, there was a hint in part 2 that the Greys had come down in the world at some point and were reduced to living on the estate. Not so bad, but now this gang of troublemakers has moved in, causing nothing but trouble, but nothing appears to have been done about them. It's clearly made the parents desperate to escape the estate and are counting on the promotion, but it's clouded their judgement in how they handle Shirley.

Incidentally, Shirley is still wearing the outgrown blazer in the final episode after Evie ruined her other one. You'd think with Dad's promotion they would be able to afford a replacement. And Mum's reaction to hearing vicious girls burned Shirley's blazer for telling on them is another example of her outrageous conduct: moaning about no end to all this and no money to replace the blazer. Not an ounce of horror about what those girls did.

[Goof]

Thank you for offering to send me scans of “Waves of Fear”. To be honest though, I’m very reluctant to put you to all that trouble for a story that I don’t think I could ever relate to. We know that girls’ comic stories feed off extremes of injustice inflicted on heroines - this was what readers wanted. However there is a limit to the lengths to which a writer can go without losing all credibility. The perception of this limit is subjective, but for me this story goes too far in the way it uses the stigma of cowardice to persecute the heroine, and all the more so because there is no exceptional psychological justification for it. Clare’s persecution seems to me particularly demented because it comes from ordinary schoolkids, responsible teachers, supposedly loving parents.

This is a shame when the story is otherwise interesting, and no doubt it reads a little better when the Miss Heath episode is there to introduce a balancing bit of sanity, but I don’t know that I could ever like it - except for Phil Gascoine’s brilliant artwork.

Yes, this story isn’t the only one of its kind by any means, and “The Courage of Crippled Clare” certainly sounds like another example. What is the point of taking the squire’s reaction to such ridiculous extremes that nobody can sensibly believe that anyone could actually behave that way? Nobody expects total realism from these stories, but there has to be enough connection with what could conceivably happen for the reader to be able to suspend disbelief.

After all, it’s perfectly possible to produce stories of extreme behaviour without losing this basic credibility. To mention only a couple of the Diane Gabbott stories, some of Yablonsky’s antics in “Circus of the Damned” would seem utterly bizarre, if they were not made plausible by his psychology - a monumental ego unbearably humiliated by failure and determined to take revenge on the whole circus profession. Similarly, in “Fairground of Fear”, when Sir Edgar’s obsession with the family name leads him to abandon his granddaughter to be killed, we can understand it because we know the mental and emotional background. When his daughter died, his adoption of Julie was a product of his outrage at his daughter’s marriage (he wanted to keep her away from Barker) and his obsessive family pride (she was “part Whitland”). He valued her as a part of the family assets and had little or no love for her personally, and when it came to the crunch, the family reputation was worth more to him than her life.

[Tammyfan]

A new Diane Gabbot entry is up at the Jinty site. https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2021/1 ... 1976-1977/

[Goof]

Thanks for the link, Tammyfan. However, wasn't "Only Time Will Tell" her first piece for Tammy? Or have I got that wrong on the list? I don't have that issue of Tammy to check.

[Tammyfan]

Oh, thanks for the correction, Goof. Time Will Tell appeared Tammy 8 November 1975.

[Goof]

I've updated the list to include a story from Mates that features in David Roach's book on the British romance comics "A Very British Affair". There are no further details about her work for the romance/teen titles, so I have no idea how far work for this genre might add to the list. The timing of this story doesn't fill any gaps - in fact, it falls during her busiest period working for Tammy.

[Tammyfan]

Yes, I agree that the story could have given more emphasis to Shirley’s realisation that she was wrong to make a fetish out of truth-telling, but I think I can perhaps guess why this didn’t happen. Shirley’s problems arise from her decision never to tell a lie, but what caused that decision? The crux of the story seems to me to be Mrs Morris’ hysterical overreaction to Trisha’s accident. The moment where she physically attacks Shirley, then point-blank accuses her of being solely responsible for Trisha’s injury, leads to everything that follows. It’s this, coming on top of her own guilt trauma about the accident, which decides Shirley to swear the truth-telling oath, and to interpret everything that goes wrong afterwards as a punishment for what she believes she has done. It’s only when she fully realises that her truth-telling is damaging other people as well as herself that she understands that her reaction has been excessive (the decisive moment seems to come immediately after she’s admitted to hospital, where a close-up panel shows her wondering what to do). However the main thrust of the story is that Shirley’s troubles don’t come about primarily through her own wrong decision, but through pressures imposed on her by the faults of others – not just Mrs Morris, but Mrs Wilks, Evie Moore and even Trisha, whose headstrong disregard of risk (and Shirley’s advice) starts the whole thing.

I also agree that Shirley’s parents’ reaction to the shoplifting charge is horrible. It’s part of a quite relentless succession of adult blindness, weakness and incompetence. Even the smallest bit-parts display it, like Mrs Morris’ banana-spined husband, who must know that her behaviour is outrageous but will do no more than bleat ineffectually from the side-lines. Still more perhaps Mr Wilks, who doesn’t even appear but adds his bit to the accelerating injustices by allowing his wife’s wounded vanity to determine whom he should promote in his business. The only active adult intelligence in the story comes from Nurse Jones, whose defiance of Mrs Morris leads to Trisha’s awakening; and the swimming teacher, who redeems her mishandling of the team’s boycott of Shirley by triggering the final reconciliation, when she offers Shirley the chance to tell a lie to protect the other girls.

I would love to know for certain who wrote this story. The repetition of the lift incident in “E T Estate” does look potentially significant – it’s not the most obvious thing to pick on if you’re simply looking for something to suggest the violent character of a housing estate. I see that Jake Adams was also credited with “Spell of Fog”. He certainly seemed to do a strong line in the darker side of human nature.

Of late, I have wondered if Shirley Grey and Waves of Fear were written by the same person. The reason is the "banana-spined" husband in both stories (Mr Morris in Shirley Grey and Mr Mitchell in Waves of Fear). The wives in both stories act outrageously and crazily towards the protagonist in an excessive, ill-informed overreaction, while the husbands sit on the sidelines doing little but watch. In the scene in "Waves of Fear" where Mrs Mitchell arrives at school demanding that the protagonist be expelled, just because she doesn't want her daughter at the same school, it's her who does all the demanding, and she speaks in an "I" sense - not a "we" sense although her husband is with her. Mr Mitchell just sits there, not doing or saying anything, not even to support his wife's demands. And he says nothing at all about his wife angrily keeping their daughter at home when the headmistress refuses to agree to the expulsion.

[Tammyfan]

Thank you for offering to send me scans of “Waves of Fear”. To be honest though, I’m very reluctant to put you to all that trouble for a story that I don’t think I could ever relate to. We know that girls’ comic stories feed off extremes of injustice inflicted on heroines - this was what readers wanted. However there is a limit to the lengths to which a writer can go without losing all credibility. The perception of this limit is subjective, but for me this story goes too far in the way it uses the stigma of cowardice to persecute the heroine, and all the more so because there is no exceptional psychological justification for it. Clare’s persecution seems to me particularly demented because it comes from ordinary schoolkids, responsible teachers, supposedly loving parents.

This is a shame when the story is otherwise interesting, and no doubt it reads a little better when the Miss Heath episode is there to introduce a balancing bit of sanity, but I don’t know that I could ever like it - except for Phil Gascoine’s brilliant artwork.

Yes, this story isn’t the only one of its kind by any means, and “The Courage of Crippled Clare” certainly sounds like another example. What is the point of taking the squire’s reaction to such ridiculous extremes that nobody can sensibly believe that anyone could actually behave that way? Nobody expects total realism from these stories, but there has to be enough connection with what could conceivably happen for the reader to be able to suspend disbelief.

After all, it’s perfectly possible to produce stories of extreme behaviour without losing this basic credibility. To mention only a couple of the Diane Gabbott stories, some of Yablonsky’s antics in “Circus of the Damned” would seem utterly bizarre, if they were not made plausible by his psychology - a monumental ego unbearably humiliated by failure and determined to take revenge on the whole circus profession. Similarly, in “Fairground of Fear”, when Sir Edgar’s obsession with the family name leads him to abandon his granddaughter to be killed, we can understand it because we know the mental and emotional background. When his daughter died, his adoption of Julie was a product of his outrage at his daughter’s marriage (he wanted to keep her away from Barker) and his obsessive family pride (she was “part Whitland”). He valued her as a part of the family assets and had little or no love for her personally, and when it came to the crunch, the family reputation was worth more to him than her life.

You raise thought-provoking comments. Often enough we have seen stories where people over-react and/or go to extremes with their behaviour, with serious consequences for everyone. But if the psychology behind it is established, it doesn't stretch credibility. If the psychology isn't developed, or the conduct isn't something we can readily understand, it comes across as bizarre and implausible. We're left scratching our heads, and it detracts from the story. Here's another example:

In a Judy story, "Hard Times for Helen", Helen Shaw is constantly picked on by her headmistress, Miss Pringle, and then the other teachers follow suit, after Mrs Shaw wins the Superworker Award for charity work and becomes a big local celebrity. Following this, Miss Pringle constantly bullies Helen, seizing upon any excuse to compare her unfairly and unfavourably with her mother and constantly say, "you're not at all like your mother!" She also accuses Helen of jealousy towards her mother, bad behaviour (when Helen was clearly a model pupil before), and not giving her a chance to put her side of things (if Helen had a chance to do so, Miss Pringle would have known much of it stemmed from the fallout on Helen's home life after her mother won the award). Using criticism as a tool for bullying is a common thing, so we can understand that trick. But what we never understand is why Miss Pringle is behaving like that. It's never established and the psychology isn't developed. Much of it has to do with the story being wrapped up in a crammed final episode, with little scope for development (and several panels wasted on belated aspects of the story that should have been developed in earlier episodes). All we're told is that Mrs Shaw finally opened her eyes to Miss Pringle's conduct, but we're not told what happens in the wake of that. However, the story does a better job of developing the psychology of Mrs Shaw after she wins the award and why this causes so many problems for Helen.

[Goof]

Your comparison of the writers of Shirley Grey and Waves of Fear strikes a chord with me. Although my response to the two stories was totally different, I too can see a resemblance. As well as the crazy wife/ineffectual husband combination that you describe, I can see a correspondence in the way the stories seek to develop and sharpen a well-used genre that had become clichéd. However, for me, one case was a complete success and the other a failure.

The compulsive truth-telling story made regular appearances in girls’ comics, but mainly as comedies of farcical misunderstandings. It’s interesting though that even the most apparently light-hearted examples have a way of turning serious despite themselves because eventually the predicament of the heroine becomes too awful to be funny. “The Happy Days” has a striking instance, where Sue takes a bet to tell the truth and causes so much damage that even her father gets angry with her – something pretty much unique in the series. I think this shows that there was clear potential to adapt the genre to a powerful tragic drama for a writer who could make the truth-telling compulsion psychologically convincing - as I believe the “Shirley Grey” writer certainly does.

The “ostracised coward” genre has a very long history stemming from a period when a widely observed code of honour branded acts of cowardice as the worst kind of disgrace. In trying to update the genre into a more modern setting, the “Waves of Fear” writer had the task of making the consequent persecution of the “coward” convincing in a society which no longer reacted in this way to anyone who flinched from severe physical danger. This effort seems to me to have been doomed to failure.

As you say regarding “Hard Times for Helen”, effective psychology is the crux. In this type of story, we can stretch credulity a surprisingly long way if the writer is able to think through a plausible motivation for the character’s actions. Your description of the effect of the rushed ending also has a dismally familiar ring. There were far too many instances of good stories which frittered away their impact in a mad scramble to wind up a complicated story in a last three page episode. I think it’s one of the great strengths of Shirley Grey that the writer found a better way to end the serial.

[Tammyfan]

The “ostracised coward” genre has a very long history stemming from a period when a widely observed code of honour branded acts of cowardice as the worst kind of disgrace. In trying to update the genre into a more modern setting, the “Waves of Fear” writer had the task of making the consequent persecution of the “coward” convincing in a society which no longer reacted in this way to anyone who flinched from severe physical danger. This effort seems to me to have been doomed to failure.

In that sense, "They Call Me a Coward!" from June 1971 was more successful. After failing to save a girl from falling off a cliff because she's scared of heights, Cathy Price is bullied as a coward at school. The bullying reaches the point where the bullies start a protest demonstration to get her expelled and she runs off. But the bullies are the only ones who call her a coward. Cathy isn't ostracised by the whole community for it, and the school seriously tries to clamp down on the bullying. The headmistress even handles Cathy compassionately: "Why do you blame yourself, Cathy? Because you discovered you weren't a storybook heroine? In real life - in a moment of crisis - how many of us are?" If you are interested, here is a link to an entry on the story https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2016/1 ... ward-1971/

[Tammyfan]

The compulsive truth-telling story made regular appearances in girls’ comics, but mainly as comedies of farcical misunderstandings. It’s interesting though that even the most apparently light-hearted examples have a way of turning serious despite themselves because eventually the predicament of the heroine becomes too awful to be funny. “The Happy Days” has a striking instance, where Sue takes a bet to tell the truth and causes so much damage that even her father gets angry with her – something pretty much unique in the series. I think this shows that there was clear potential to adapt the genre to a powerful tragic drama for a writer who could make the truth-telling compulsion psychologically convincing - as I believe the “Shirley Grey” writer certainly does.

Jinty's "Wanda Whiter than White" is another story about compulsive truth telling that is used as serious drama. Wanda White is an irritating, self-righteous tattle tale who is despised by everyone. Even the school staff suffer because of her excessive tattling. But when it's revealed why Wanda carries on that way, it's a real surprise twist and definitely psychologically convincing. No spoilers, but you can read details at https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2014/0 ... hite-1975/