Mister Kitty looks at some very unfortunate English Christmas comics for girls:
As a special Christmas treat for you, Mister Kitty takes a look at annuals from a vanished industry that many people outside England never knew existed – British girls comics. For almost fifty years publishers like IPC and DC Thompson were cranking out weekly titles with names like Tammy, Judy, Mandy, and of course Bunty, the first British girl’s comic. As literature for young ladies, these comics naturally featured lots of stories about plucky ballerinas, airline stewardesses, and horses. But just like their more masculine counterparts Starlord and 2000 AD, British girls comics seem to have a flair for the goofy, the bizarre, the surreal.
[Link via Boing Boing]
I spent almost ten years drawing British girls comics before breaking into American mainstream comics. The weirdest story I had to draw involved a Victorian circus girl who had to pretend to be her grandfather’s ventriloquist doll so he didn’t get thrown out of the circus. Pages from this and some other girls comics have been up on my blog in the past few weeks…
http://surebeatsworking.blogspot.com/
Sean
Thanks for the link, Heidi!
Hey! I grew up reading those comics, thanks to a year in Scotland and aunties in Ireland, and I loved them! I read superheroes as well, back in the day, but I really appreciated comics that were, you know, for girls, with stories about the stuff I cared about–secret agent schoolgirls, Victorian orphans, robot schoolteachers–and characters that were girls like me (well, sort of).
Also, I think J.K. Rowling must have read a lot of those comics, because Harry Potter (the first one in particular) is straight outta Thompson–plot, setting, characters, everything.
These were very popular in Norway in my childhood. They were released under the titles Tuppen and Lillemor. My sister bought loads of them, and my ex-gf had hundreds of them piled up in plastic bags.
One of my favorites as a child was about the black cat who fought nazis in Germany. And there were several sci-fi-stories, so don’t give 2000 A.D all the credit.