Comic nostalgia
Sep. 11th, 2007 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatI caught the second half of the first episode of Comics Britannia on BBC4 last night, and have been prompted to some nostalgia.
I don't have many memories of Beano and Dandy, though I know I read them a bit. There was a tatty box of comics that were brought out during wet play, and the Beano was always the most fought-over one. However, quite a lot of the characters from both comics seem familiar, so I suspect I read it rather more than I remember. I do remember how we girls always protested that we didn't want the girlie comics, and spurned Bunty and the like, in order to get the "proper" comics.
However, I am sad to admit that my at-home comic experience was ridiculously girlie. I was generally fairly non-girlie in my book reading, sometimes deliberately and self-consciously so. With comics, though, I'm afraid it was the opposite.
I know I subscribed to Twinkle when I was little, though I can't remember much about it. "Nurse Nancy" rings a bell, though I can't remember if Nancy was a person or an animal, and what she nursed. (Dolls, probably. *said darkly* I hated dolls when I was little. I was once given one, and I shut her in the cupboard, and said "She's crying now!" with such an evil glint in my eye that my parents were quite worried. However, I lavished endless love and attention on my menagerie of toy animals. Well, apart from the baby kangaroo that I buried in the sand pit, and then said of its mother, "She's crying now!")
But, anyway...
Before that - I think - I read a comic which a bit of Googling reveals was called Pippin in Playland, which featured various Children's BBC characters of the time. (Apparently this title was created in 1975 after the merging of two previous comics. This merged title rings bells, though, while the single titles don't, so I must have read it after 1975.) I have a vague memory of them printing a picture I sent in to them, and I think I got some prize that was related to... um... something with talking beans? A family of talking beans? (Ah. The Moonbeams, Wikipedia tells me.) I could be wrong about the picture or the prize, but not about the beans.
When I was a bit older, and for an embarrassingly long number of years, I read Mandy every week. You could never stop, because there were several serial stories running at a time, so whenever one much-loved story finished, there were always lots of others that were still half way through, teetering on cliff-hangers.
Mandy was full of long-suffering misunderstood (often Victorian) orphans who were generally held to be guilty of awful deeds because some nasty girl framed them, though of course all came good in part 12. I rather worry about what my intense fondness for those stories said about me. I fear it might have spawned my fondness for writing angst-ridden fanfic. The most oft-repeated story was the story of "Miss Angel" - a rich Victorian girl who found out that she was dying, so faked her own death in order to live out the rest of her short life helping plucky little orphans on the streets. There was also some superwoman person called Valda who did warrior princess type things, but had to recharge her strength every now and then with a magic crystal.
I have memories of Jackie, though I don't think I ever bought it. I think this was a thing my friends bought, and I sometimes read. I do remember doing the probably fairly common thing of writing fake and silly problem letters for the "Cathy and Claire" advice page. I don't think we ever sent them, though.
I don't have many memories of Beano and Dandy, though I know I read them a bit. There was a tatty box of comics that were brought out during wet play, and the Beano was always the most fought-over one. However, quite a lot of the characters from both comics seem familiar, so I suspect I read it rather more than I remember. I do remember how we girls always protested that we didn't want the girlie comics, and spurned Bunty and the like, in order to get the "proper" comics.
However, I am sad to admit that my at-home comic experience was ridiculously girlie. I was generally fairly non-girlie in my book reading, sometimes deliberately and self-consciously so. With comics, though, I'm afraid it was the opposite.
I know I subscribed to Twinkle when I was little, though I can't remember much about it. "Nurse Nancy" rings a bell, though I can't remember if Nancy was a person or an animal, and what she nursed. (Dolls, probably. *said darkly* I hated dolls when I was little. I was once given one, and I shut her in the cupboard, and said "She's crying now!" with such an evil glint in my eye that my parents were quite worried. However, I lavished endless love and attention on my menagerie of toy animals. Well, apart from the baby kangaroo that I buried in the sand pit, and then said of its mother, "She's crying now!")
But, anyway...
Before that - I think - I read a comic which a bit of Googling reveals was called Pippin in Playland, which featured various Children's BBC characters of the time. (Apparently this title was created in 1975 after the merging of two previous comics. This merged title rings bells, though, while the single titles don't, so I must have read it after 1975.) I have a vague memory of them printing a picture I sent in to them, and I think I got some prize that was related to... um... something with talking beans? A family of talking beans? (Ah. The Moonbeams, Wikipedia tells me.) I could be wrong about the picture or the prize, but not about the beans.
When I was a bit older, and for an embarrassingly long number of years, I read Mandy every week. You could never stop, because there were several serial stories running at a time, so whenever one much-loved story finished, there were always lots of others that were still half way through, teetering on cliff-hangers.
Mandy was full of long-suffering misunderstood (often Victorian) orphans who were generally held to be guilty of awful deeds because some nasty girl framed them, though of course all came good in part 12. I rather worry about what my intense fondness for those stories said about me. I fear it might have spawned my fondness for writing angst-ridden fanfic. The most oft-repeated story was the story of "Miss Angel" - a rich Victorian girl who found out that she was dying, so faked her own death in order to live out the rest of her short life helping plucky little orphans on the streets. There was also some superwoman person called Valda who did warrior princess type things, but had to recharge her strength every now and then with a magic crystal.
I have memories of Jackie, though I don't think I ever bought it. I think this was a thing my friends bought, and I sometimes read. I do remember doing the probably fairly common thing of writing fake and silly problem letters for the "Cathy and Claire" advice page. I don't think we ever sent them, though.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 07:50 pm (UTC)I should do my own comics post... I was a TV Comic reader from 1975 to 1979, through several relaunches, despite the poor quality of the title compared to its rival Look-In.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 07:57 pm (UTC)My young girl comic of choice was Judy, rather than Mandy, though I remember reading my friend's Mandy annuals. Miss Angel definitely rings bells - and was there a series about a group of boarding-school girls who went around wearing masks and solving mysteries?
When I was about twelve I went for the Look-In comic, mainly because it had a Robin of Sherwood comic strip and information about other TV shows I liked (A-Team, Scarecrow and Mrs King, Airwolf). I could never muster much enthusiasm for the teenage girl/pop music magazines - the whole pop music/getting crushes on musicians thing just passed me by. Even then I was far more interested in TV characters.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:24 pm (UTC)"Statistics show that you're most likely to get your own story in a girls' comic if you're a sporty, disabled, artistic Victorian orphan who lives with a violent aunt or uncle, having a hurt sister/brother/pet who you need to earn money for, but don't realise that your best friend secretly resents you, the snobs are plotting against you, and an evil mastermind is attempting to take over your school and you're the only one who can resist her powers. However, this will count for nothing if your name doesn't lend itself to a clever titular pun."
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 11:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:31 pm (UTC)Yes, of course, that was them. It could easily have been School Friend - I do remember reading those annuals as well.
That kind of story was obviously extremely popular for girls in those days - I'm not sure modern girls' magazines have anything remotely similar. What I see of the ones at work seem to be all about craft stuff, flow charts?, and clothes and hairstyle info, even for the pre-teens. Oh, and they're incredibly pink. Still, maybe I missing more interesting things inside.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 12:12 am (UTC)It does speak well of how well he did, that I don't remember noticing the restrictions, though I suppose I was never the most perceptive child. No bows and arrows in RoS is bizarre enough - but no guns in the A-Team?
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 06:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 11:48 am (UTC)I *think* my best friend's comic of choice might have been Mandy, but I'm not sure. Mine was Bunty - I was seduced in one day by the free charm bracelet, and the free heart and stars charms the following week; it was one of the rare occasions that all but one of the stories was new that week - presumably part of a big push to hook new readers such as myself - and then as Elaine found, couldn't stop for *years* afterwards because as one favourite serial finshed another was only part way through and when that finshed I was loving the one that took over from the first one. I think I was hanging on on the assumption that one day there would be another occasion where all or most stopped at once, like the day I first started, but that never came... Certainly I was still reading it well into secondary school, going to get my ordered copy from behind the counter at our corner-shop newsagent every Saturday morning ;-)
I also read 'Buddy', the comic my brother got from it's very first issue to it's final demise (subsumed in another comic?) Stand-out stories being the long-running Limp-along Leslie (a footballer *and* champion sheepdog trialler who had to make up for in skill what he lacked in speed, while surviving the brutal aunt, uncle and cousin who took him in as an infant after the car accident which injured and orphaned him - hmmn, that's sounding a bit familiar!) and a brilliant serial about a young Viking prince trying to lead his people to freedom with the help of Thor's hammer (brilliant to me, that is: pretty youth, plenty of h/c as weilding the hammer tended to make him faint afterwards ;-)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 09:16 pm (UTC)That Comics Britannia programme this week was going on about how market research showed that girls wanted stories that focused on emotions, in which the main characters got put through the wringer and got beaten, imprisoned, put upon, and made to suffer on every page. I am feeling more and more than the appeal of girls' comics and the appeal of fanfic - angst and h/c fanfic, anyway, which is my thing - is quite closely related. My half-formed thoughts on this issue might form an LJ post one day, once I've emerged from my current "must write fic! Can't stop to write LJ!" fic-writing frenzy.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 11:49 am (UTC)I also had the TV Comic for years because it had lots of cartoons in it, I've still got a couple of issues of that somewhere too. I couldn't bear to throw them out as they had tiny little features about Blakes 7 in them.