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ladyofastolat) wrote2007-09-11 08:10 pm
ladyofastolat) wrote2007-09-11 08:10 pm
Entry tags:
Comic nostalgia
I 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.