Anyone interested in a geeky discussion about 70s girls' comics, particularly Misty?

[Wreath21]

I managed to find a website which has the ENTIRE print run of Misty comic available to read for free. Have been being enthralled by it (even though a lot of it was just after my comic-loving years - as so many of the artists and writers were the ones who had contributed to Tammy and Jinty comics...)
I'm clearly one of the older MNers but I just wondered if anyone else wants a 70s-girls-comics chatter?

@Deathraystare

I only remember Jackie and Bunty. My friend over the road got Bunty and would give me them later so I could cut out the paper dolls! I then got was it 208 magazine? something to do with Radio Luxembourg I think.

Fab 208! Yes, it was linked with Radio Luxembourg so very pop-orientated. I remember feeling a slight illicit thrill at reading it, because there was something a little illicit about Radio Luxembourg to my adolescent understanding: I think it might have been not entirely legal to listen to it (there were a lot of pirate radio stations in the late 70s and early 80s that played regular pop).

I was a Jinty fan. Fran of the Floods and Stefa's Heart of Stone are the stories I remember the most.

God, I loved Radio Luxembourg - that fading in and out at night in the dark on your transistor radio. Felt so exciting. The Powerplay after the news on the hour. Tony Prince - remember listening to him announcing Elvis Presley's death.

Misty and Jinty were great! Jinty had some interesting apocalyptic themed stories - the wonderfully titled "Golden Dolly Death Dust" and one about the seas rising.

Loved reading this thread and lots of memories came flooding back.
I used to have twinkle delivered, then bunty, then misty i think.
I loved all spooky mysterious stories, remember the 4 Mary's and the Angel stories. Thank you!
Are there any comics like this still being published?

I managed to find some pages of Bella on the High Bar from 1978 (when she was a trapeze artist swinging through fire to earn enough money to buy a kidney machine for her friend…don’t ask) plus a decent chunk of ‘A mask for Melissa’ (also in Tammy) online. It’s been a genuinely joyful experience.

I’ve been reading Misty online using the link posted in the OP and am up to issue 15, desperate to find out what happens at the end of ‘Paint it Black’, thanks OP! Just the thing to take the edge of the hideous first week at work!

I managed to find some pages of Bella on the High Bar from 1978 (when she was a trapeze artist swinging through fire to earn enough money to buy a kidney machine for her friend…don’t ask)

This just sums up the misery-lit of Tammy for me, my mum couldn't see the attraction but still bought it for me

I absolutely loved Bunty, and then moved on to Jackie for my formative years.

My dad did not take reading materials out of my pocket money - bonus.

I am 57.

I was really disappointed that just a year or two after being in the target audience of these publications, they all moved over to graphic content. Even in those days, slightly longer reading was not favoured.

Awww, I used to collect these from jumble sales. Still do. I love them. Thanks Op I’m reading all the Misty too, they are fabulous! The drawings! Amazing, especially as they were all done with tracing paper and pen and ink. No photoshop!

Yes, those guys (and gals) could DRAW. The expressions on the faces of the characters and, with my beloved Bella Barlow, the depictions of gymnastics. Just brilliant.

Thanks so much for this link! I bought a Misty album when I was about 10 from a jumble sale and absolutely loved it, but it was a few years after the magazine had ceased publication so I never got to actually read it. I’ve started reading them on the website and am up to issue 17 now - like a pp I too am desperate to find out the ending of Paint it Black!! Also enjoy the one where the girl who goes to work for the school where the headmistress seems strangely invested in her - calling her Fair Jennifer. Anything centred around anyone a bit foreign and ‘exotic’ are very... of its time. The Salamander Girl who is a bit Spanishy Arabic and talks about herself in 3rd person (Salah must go to the desert, etc) or the story about the girl who sees a Chinese girl in her mirror, except she doesn’t look at all Chinese but looks like a European woman with heavy eyeliner...

Fab seeing the weird of words ‘groo’ and ‘lumme’, which I haven’t read since the early 90s. Can anyone from the 70s confirm if either of these were words that were ever actually used??

Has Judy been mentioned?

I used to dream that when I was grown up I would get everyone to call me Judy instead of my own name!

Among the fare offered by Judy was stories of girls confronting adversity and overcoming it — for instance, Nobody Loves Dixie (1964) tells of a shunned wheelchair-bound girl who wins a trophy and rises from her wheelchair to collect it — or succumbing to it — for instance, in the harrowing Nothing Ever Goes Right (1981), the heroine, beset with poverty, orphanhood, and health problems, dies of heart failure while rescuing children from an abandoned house.

I've been reading my way through Misty (on the website mentioned earlier) since this thread started. It's going to take forever ... thanks, Mumsnet!

Does anyone remember Sugar Jones, from Pink comic? A bitchy, cruel but beautiful TV star, who was hiding the fact she was about 50? I used to love her!

I once went to Frome on the train, and found boxes and boxes full of Tammy comic in a comic shop - they were really cheap, too. I couldn't carry them all ... I did consider ringing DP and asking him to come and get me with the car, but I didn't like to put him to the trouble, so I just bought a couple of carrier-bags full .... oh, how I have regretted not asking DP for the favour!

I vaguely remember 'lummee' at least being used in the playground (south London kid here). I have also been rolling my eyes at the wonderful (!) phonetic renderings of 'working class' accents.
And, as PP said, some of the depictions of non-white people are very 'of their time'.

Another of that generation! I had Twinkle (were Bunny Cuddles who loved jam and his pal Tiny the mole in Twinkle?) and then Mandy and Debbie and occasional issues of Bunty and Judy. I remember The Four Marys, Valda who reappeared in several stories (in retrospect, she was a nasty piece of work, cheating at sport with her magic fire/crystals), Hattie Taylor whom all the other girls in the orphanage hated but who put on a cloak at night and crept around doing good deeds), Lisa the Lonely Ballerina who was coached by a disembodied voice that turned out to be her own mother, and a My Fair Lady rip-off story.

I had one Mandy annual which included an alphabetical list of jobs a girl might aspire to. I remember Quizmaster's Assistant. A quizmaster I'd like to be, but as I am a girl you see ... Anne Robinson clearly didn't get that memo.

And I briefly got Jackie when I was 12, but my mother decided to cancel it because it was "full of nonsense". I don't know if it was the periods or the kissing that she objected to.

Does anyone remember Sugar Jones, from Pink comic? A bitchy, cruel but beautiful TV star, who was hiding the fact she was about 50? I used to love her!

I remember the Pink comic but not that character. There was a column in Pink written by a man and I saw exactly the same column a few years later in another magazine.

@TansySorrel

I absolutely loved Tracy comic. I remember a story called Heather's Hateful Hands about a girl who visited a castle on a school trip and put her hands in the handprints of a witch who'd been imprisoned there and her hands then became possessed by the witch who made her do nasty things like cut someone's hair horribly. I'm 50. I also liked Judy annual. I remember Misty, Twinkle, Jinty, Judy, Twinkle, Bunty. I moved onto Jackie later. My sister got Patches. Also Just 17

I remember that story!

I was born in ‘78, but had a Misty annual from a secondhand sale. I started off on Twinkle, then Bunty, Mandy and Judy.

Which one had The Four Marys? And Before The Light Goes?

I loved my comics so much. Such a pity that kind of thing doesn’t exist now.

Kookie magazine is lovely for tween girls now though.

There was one story about a girl too poor to go to the residential ballet school so the wicked ballet Yolanda taught her ballet in the woods - BUT TAUGHT IT WRONG! Because she was jealous & knew Poor Girl would outshine her. “Make sure your legs are well bent!” Etc. I pronounced arabesque as arabesique in my head when I read it in that story. 🙂

Mandy girl,but remember Misty

There were some weird stories like a girl who had a space alien sister - Zara

The willing hands of Meg Smith

I remember a spooky story in Jackie about a witch in a village and it was something to do with the Prentice family and Vicky - a 3 parter

I used to like My Guy and Blue Jeans

Yes remember the Four Mary's

A story called Sad Sally in Mandy about an orphan girl

A really weird story about a girl going to a party and leaving an elderly relative at home and not being able to escape the party. Is her boyfriend a ghost. He had a motor bike

I was in a few photo stories, but it would have been around 1983/1984. I was in a Judy annual but my longest running series was in Suzy, which no-one seems to have mentioned. It must have had a really low circulation! I played a robot girl dressed in a red tracksuit called Metal Milly. Terrible hair, terrible tracksuit.

I was so jealous of my sister who was older than me. She got to be in Blue Jeans and Jackie, and even had a fashion shoot feature in one of them .