Favourite Stories from Girls Comics

[bookmum08]

Inspired by the favourite children's books thread I was interested in people's fave stories from the old weekly girls comics - Bunty, Mandy, Tammy etc.
My favourite was definitely Angel in Mandy Comic. The story of a rich Victorian girl who discovers she only has a year to live so she fakes her death, runs away from home so she can devote her time to caring for homeless waifs and strays in the poor part of London.

I remember Tracy - it was merged into Judy eventually. I didn't get it every week (we were only allowed one comic each at home with the papers and mine was Mandy for years until I switched to Nikki because I thought it was a bit more grown-up) but sometimes bought it with pocket money.

There was also an annual called Diana, which was aimed at slightly older girls who'd grown out of Mandy/Bunty but weren't yet ready for Jackie. Does anyone remember that? I had one with a centrefold (not that kind) of David Essex!

TheMemoryLingers to this day, my sister is extremely bitter about her favourite comic merging with another, and she still mentions the lettering of the mergee (??!) getting smaller and smaller with each edition

We had bunty in a Monday, Mandy on a Wednesday. We only got bunty as my mum was still getting it from when she was young and couldn't give it up!

We eventually moved on from the comics when the girls next door, who were slightly older than me started passing on My Guy, Oh Boy and Jackie 😀

@JoyceTempleSavage oh God, I remember the girl ice skater who was kidnapped and held hostage in a castle. She was held captive with several other girls who all looked spookily similar and who could all ice skate really well. Turns out that also in the castle was an invalid girl who stood to inherit millions if she could only win the world ice skating championships (as you do). And her evil guardian hoped to use one of the kidnapped doppelgangers to win the championship so she could get her hands on the millions.

Also gamma and alpha girls

Now I do remember them but literally nothing other than the alpha girls wore white outfits and the gamma black. What was it about?

I eventually moved onto My Guy! I remember expecting it to be very adult and sophisticated and being mildly disappointed by how tame it was. I also bought the occasional Blue Jeans and Patches (the two eventually merged) if there was a pop pin up I wanted.

After My Guy I had Jackie for a while. I wrote twice to 'Cathy and Claire' and got a reply each time, of course spotting on the second letter that the signature was completely different from the first! I think Jackie was the last girls mag I had, because I was never interested enough in fashion to want Just 17 or Mizz, so when I was about 14 I moved on to reading my parents' newspapers & associated 'colour supplements'.

My younger sister had the infamous 'More' magazine for a while!

Thanks to this thread I have spent a happy couple of hours revisiting my childhood favourite Jinty on this marvellous website

The Alpha and Gamma girls were from Jinty. The story was about a girl who had one leg shorter than the other (and rather milked it for sympathy) who found herself transported to a Brave New World alternative reality where she was classed as a Gamma girl - an imperfect physical specimen subservient to the perfect (and very snooty) Alpha girls.

My favourite story was Stefa's Heart of Stone about a girl who decided she would shut down all her emotions after the death of her best friend. Rather mawkish now I think back but it was very good at tugging a 10-year-old's heartstrings.

A lot that I remember was science fiction or fantasy inspired. A girl who was a reincarnation of a Celtic horse goddess, a girl who had to live in a plastic bubble because her immune system had failed, another girl who got a mad scientist to clone her so she could go to gymnastics classes - this was in the heyday of Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci.

I used to so look forward to it. I wish my mother hadn't persuaded me to bin my pile of copies when I outgrew it.

I had the odd copy of Bunty (I remember The Four Marys) and Mandy, and I remember getting the first issue of Misty - it came with a free cat ring. But I was only allowed one comic a week usually so it had to be Jinty.

I remember recognising a lot of the artists from Jinty in my boyfriend's copies of 2000AD a few years later. I don't think I've ever met anyone else who remembers Jinty in real life.

I used to get Pink. My favourite strip was Patty’s World. My best mate got My Guy and another friend something else. In the school holidays we used to bring all our magazines to the grass at the end of the street and sit in the sun with the radio on and swap them all and have a lovely read. We would have been about 12/13. Really happy times.

Remembered another favourite story. It was about a girl who had a collection of masks and wigs, and she’d put them on to ‘become’ another person. I think there was an evil aunt type character who would tell her who she was to be that day. I think she might have been a model - great figure but not great face, or something, so the aunt made her the wax masks and she made loads of money as these alter egos. Or something. I think it ended with a fire, and the masks melting, and the girl finally being free to be herself. Or something.

Patty’s World! That was in Girl Magazine not Pink. Patty wore amazing 80s fashion, I seem to remember.

Just looked it up - it was in Pink and Girl. They must have merged.

@TheaDecker I wonder if you might remember an absolutely terrifying comic library about a girl who got locked into a jigsaw. The jigsaw was a picture of a house. If you put the last piece into this jigsaw, you got locked into the world of the jigsaw. She had a twin sister, I think, who made the same mistake shortly afterwards.

There was a scene where she walked out of the house into a blank void, which haunted me for ages afterwards. There were three other girls in the jigsaw who'd been there for years. Eventually they were all released - it turned out the jigsaw was keeping them prisoner until the house was restored, and the twins' parents had restored it. The other jigsaw occupants suddenly aged at this point, and two of them elected to return to the jigsaw afterwards because all their families would now be dead.

Fran of the Floods from Jinty. Also Stefa's heart of Stone. I used to read Misty and Bunty too, but can't remember any of the stories from either.

What a shame these comics are gone, and there are no modern equivalents for our daughters. I buy The Week Junior for dd, but after the nostalgia fest of this thread it seems terribly worthy and dry!

I like Mary Cotter’s long plaits from the Four Marys.

Misty had some fab but scary stories! There was one where the girl wanted to move house, so she pretended that a woman ghost was haunting her room at night. She described the ghost in detail to her parents, who eventually relented and sold up. The first night in the new house the ghost turned up in her bedroom and said “you didn’t think you could get rid of me so easily, did you?!” I have goosebumps now thinking about it!

😱 @notanotherjigsawpiece

skippy67 you can get a book edition of Fran of the Floods. I got it for Xmas.
Venus oh I so wish some of these comics would come back. Graphic novels are hugely popular among girls at the moment so I really think they would love these.

Venus Just had a google and Patty’s World ran from 1971 to 1988. I definitely remember the seventies fashions; (I was too old for comics in the eighties), but I remember really liking the way it was drawn.

Oh and I absolutely adored Stefa's Heart of Stone.

I got Bunty and Tracy. Would've been around 1979.

My favourite was Don't Cry for Me (I think) about a girl called Nancy, set during the war, it went on for months then ended really abruptly. My sisters and I were so disappointed. Maybe the illustrator moved on?

I remember the one about the sister who was dying as being Hard-hearted Harriet not Hateful Harriet.

@vampirethriller was the one about the actress who was in an accident and wore a mask The Double Life of Debra?

Some of those stories were amazing!

Oohh just remembered "Moonchild" in Misty. Blatant rip off of "Carrie" but good all the same. Loved that one.

comicsalliance.com/2000-ad-misty-reprint-moonchild-preview/

This thread is ace. I wish I still had all my Bunty’s (and older sisters misty’s which mum used to tell me not to read as they were too scary) I do have one Misty annual I must’ve filched!

I also have one of the a Mandy specials called “the cuckoos in the nest” about a mother and daughter who supposedly run over a girl one day and she and her mum basically end up moving in with them and being absolute CF’s - I seem to remember the mum even ends up sending the girl she ran over to private school! It turns out in the end they’re pulling a huge scam and the girl just pretended to be run over. I gave it to dd13 to read and she was laughing her head off (but did ask if I had any more!)

I remember that’s not my gran as well!!!

Another one I remember was a story about a little old lady who had a paperweight but if you played with it after being warned not to, you ended up inside it.