Comics UK

Sara looks a lot younger there than other issues I've seen. Different artist, or did they just decide she worked better a few years older? I'm guessing the latter, since the art looks very much the same, other than this.

Fleetway did seem to raise the target age of some of their girls' comics during the early 1960s so that might account for the alteration in Sara's appearance. As far as I can tell the series looks like the work of old-style 'Bootsie & Snudge' artist Bill Mainwaring throughout its run in Sally, though I seem to remember that the style changed after it was transferred to Tammy.

- Phil R.

Here's the first episode from Tammy.




Sara seems to have gained about six years in the intervening period. I guess all that responsibility ages you.

That does still look like Mainwaring though. I think the pink colouring must have made me remember it as seeming vaguely different in Tammy.


Another later Sally strip that deserves mentioning - even though it didn't quite make the cut to Tammy - was 'The Ghost Hunters'. This series began with the issue dated 24th January 1970, though it wouldn't have looked too out of place in the pages of Misty - one more instance of Sally leading the way where other comics followed!

Here's a typical episode from early 1971:







- Phil Rushton

@Phil: I recognise the art - it's one of my favourite artists. Wish I knew the name.

@Marionette: Think you've got enough for your Sara's Kingdom blog post? And how are you getting on with Cat Girl and Maisie?

philcom55 wrote:

Another later Sally strip that deserves mentioning - even though it didn't quite make the cut to Tammy - was 'The Ghost Hunters'. This series began with the issue dated 24th January 1970, though it wouldn't have looked too out of place in the pages of Misty - one more instance of Sally leading the way where other comics followed!



- Phil Rushton

And weirdly that particular episode is drawn by Shirley Bellwood, who drew Misty herself!

Tammyfan wrote: @Marionette: Think you've got enough for your Sara's Kingdom blog post? And how are you getting on with Cat Girl and Maisie?

Yes, thanks to Phil I have the background info I need to write about all three. But I still have a couple of features to cover before I get to the Sally merger.

No reason to stop the Sally thread, though. Were there any other memorable serials in Sally before the merger?

Tammyfan wrote:No reason to stop the Sally thread, though. Were there any other memorable serials in Sally before the merger?

I completely agree. There's a story in one of the Sallys I own that is maybe a female version of Stig of the Dump, entitled My Best Friend is a Cave Girl, which looks like fun, and a humour strip that fits the superhero analogy mentioned earlier, in Twangy Pearl the Elastic Girl. I think she might eventually pop up again in Tammy at some point.

On the subject of Sally, I was wondering if it ever featured a series called Daffy and the Giddy Gang. This strip turns up in the first Tammy annual, and is even included in the advertising for it, but it's not a Tammy story, so the only reason I can imagine why they bother mentioning it is if it's from Sally.

I must admit that I don't remember seeing 'Daffy and the Giddy Gang' in Sally, but I'll check.

As a final footnote to the story of Princess Sara it's worth noting that even she had a brief encounter with the uncanny when she faced the Abominable Snowman in a text story published in the 1972 Sally Annual!



(...Believe it or not it turns out to be the real thing and not some cheap crook in a costume à la Scooby-Doo!)

- Phil Rushton

PS - Is it my imagination or is that a signature in the snow saying 'Waring'?

philcom55 wrote: Another later Sally strip that deserves mentioning - even though it didn't quite make the cut to Tammy - was 'The Ghost Hunters'. This series began with the issue dated 24th January 1970, though it wouldn't have looked too out of place in the pages of Misty - one more instance of Sally leading the way where other comics followed!

Here's a typical episode from early 1971:

An American in 1970 called Mary Jane? Drugs reference or Spider-Man?

And what a handsome ghost. You don't get many like him, these days.

I think The Ghost Hunters do turn up in Tammy, if only in the annuals. Though these might be reprints.

Scream! also had a ghost-hunting couple, who started with #7. At least they managed to finish their first adventure before Scream! was cancelled with #15 (presumably because of the same strike that felled Tammy without even giving her a chance to finish).

A ghost-hunting team or some sort of supernatural investigator would have been great in Misty. One thing she seriously lacked was regular characters. I believe this was one reason she faded so quickly once she merged with Tammy. It is regulars that survive a merger, not serials (just look at Bessie, Wee Sue, the Storyteller and Pam of Pond Hill). Misty's only regular was the cartoon witch, Miss T, and she was the one who lasted the merger. And when you look at the Tammy & Sally merger, you will see that it is the Sally regulars Maisie, Cat Girl and Twangy Pearl who lasted.

Twangy Pearl! That's another Sally refugee, though she doesn't turn up in Tammy until well after Sally's title had disappeared from the masthead. Did she get an origin, or was she just naturally elastic?

Unlike her male equivalents Twangy Pearl didn't need cosmic rays, weird chemicals or an Indian fakir to be able to s-t-r-e-t-c-h: it seems to have come naturally to her from the moment she arrived at Lansdowne School to torment Miss Beavis (yet another bully teacher with severely restrained hair).

Here's Pearl's first appearance from the issue dated 3rd January 1970.



(I can't help thinking there must be some kind of clever pun involved in the name 'Twangy Pearl'...but for the life of me I can't spot it! )

As a matter of interest, can any of the humour comics experts out there recognize the artist?

- Phil Rushton

So Twangy is actually her name, rather than a nickname? How odd.