Tag Archives: John Armstrong

Tammy 6 January 1979 – Christmas issue

1979, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cover artist: John Richardson

Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming) – final episode

Bessie Bunter (artist Cecil Orr)

Dancer Entranced (artist Angeles Felices) – final episode

The Upper Crust (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)

Bella – Winning Letters

Edie (artist Joe Collins)

Giftorama – final part

Molly Mills and the TV Pioneer (artist Douglas Perry, writer Maureen Spurgeon) – final episode

The Christmas Fairy (artist Bob Harvey) – Strange Story

Wee Sue (artist Robert MacGillivray)

TEAM in Action (artist Carmona)

Greetings to All of Our Readers (artist Robert MacGillivray) – Christmas feature

Comparing Tammy to Jinty during the IPC strike in December 1978, it’s really weird to see how the titles were affected. This is Tammy’s full-on Christmas issue, but it’s dated 6 January 1979, and her previous issue was dated 23 December. What happened to the 30 December 1978 issue? We can only assume Tammy lost it because of the strike. Yet Jinty had her 30 December issue, with a cover caption celebrating the end of the strike. “Yippee! Your favourite paper is back!” But during the three previous weeks, there were no Jintys while the Tammys continued, although not in full size (not that you’d notice as the essentials were there). A note from the editor in this issue says Tammy is back to full size after three weeks of thinner Tammys. 

Christmas does not normally feature in Bella as her stories usually finish before the festive season starts. But this time, she goes right up to the Christmas issue and finishes her story with a Christmas feast in Australia. She sure is surprised to have Christmas in the heat of summer. Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere, Bella.  

Bella also gets a spread of letters on “We all love Bella because…” It’s reproduced here for insights on why Bella was so popular. No mention of what really sold Bella for me, though – how John Armstrong made those gymnastics moves so realistically anatomical it was mouthwatering. To this day, it remains unmatched. 

Molly Mills incorporates Christmas into the final episode of her story by having the TV pioneer help her make a special Christmas film for her family. In the days before home movies and Skype this must have been incredible for them.

Bessie and Mary Moldsworth go carol singing and fall foul of forgers, but they escape – thanks to Bessie’s hefty weight – and raise the alarm. The capture of the criminals is a relief for the police, as they were dreading having to sacrifice their Christmas hunting them. Bessie and Mary get a Christmas reward and Bessie gets the best present she could possibly have – food. 

Wee Sue also falls foul of criminals in her Christmas story. It’s a racket where crooks set themselves up as Store Santas to rob stores by hiding the loot in their Santa sacks. But the worst of it is how they give Santa a bad name by bullying the kids and giving them broken toys. 

In “The Upper Crust”, giving the kids at the orphanage broken toys thrown out of their homes is how the super-snobs of High Hills “do their best to brighten up the festive time for others”. Seeing this, Clarinda shows up with better presents for the kids. All of a sudden, the snobs are off to buy equally nice presents – they’re not going to be upstaged by her. 

The Storyteller brings us “The Christmas Fairy”, a fairy ornament of gypsy origin said to bring good luck and happiness each festive season. It must be said the family have had fantastic Christmases since they got the fairy, but this year the fairy is really put to the test when sister Kathy is in hospital in a coma just days before Christmas. Come Christmas Eve, her condition remains unchanged. Someone – or something – really needs to wave a magic wand, or the family will have an Unmerry Christmas.

Finally, on the back cover we have the Tammy gang all together for a Christmas feature (below), brought to us by the ever-popular Robert MacGillivray. 

It’s the final episode of “Dancer Entranced”, where Mesmeri’s metronome gives Trina Carr, a hopeless ballerina, the power to dance brilliantly via hypnotism, but being dependent on the metronome to dance has caused problems. She has to lose that dependency, something the final episode must resolve. Mesmeri himself provides the answer, and it’s one that takes Trina by surprise.

It looks like “TEAM in Action” is approaching its final episode as well. The girls finally have the school paper ready for binding and publication, but disaster strikes – cleaners sprucing up the school for inspection have chucked all their work in the trash!

Characters: Wee Sue, older Cover Girl (Tammy), Miss Bigger, younger Cover Girl (June), Edie, Bessie, Bella, Mary Moldsworth, Court House pupil.

Tammy 23 December 1978

1978, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)
The Upper Crust (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)
Dancer Entranced (artist Angeles Felices)
Molly Mills and the TV Pioneer (artist Douglas Perry, writer Maureen Spurgeon)
Giftorama – part 3
Bessie Bunter (Arthur Martin)
Power of the Stones (artist Tony Coleman) – Strange Story
Wee Sue (artist Robert MacGillivray)
TEAM in Action (Carmona)
Tuck-in with Tammy

Tammy’s countdown to Christmas is really kicking in now with the covers. The Tammy annual made for a frequent Christmas gag during the Cover Girls run, which must have added to its advertising. Don’t be too worried that the Cover Girls don’t have enough money left for the annual – previous covers have suggested they get more Tammy annuals than they can shake a stick at on Christmas morning.

Christmas themes are now appearing in the regular strips. Wee Sue is getting ready for a Christmas party at the youth club, but Miss Bigger causes problems. An unexpected turn of events has everything work out happily, and Miss Bigger even plays Santa at the party with presents for everybody. This week’s Bessie Bunter story adds to the Christmas ambience with a panto flavour where Bessie gets knocked out and dreams she’s Cinderella. The Bessie regulars have such hilarious alternate roles in this one that the episode is included below.

Another feature over the Christmas/New Year period was clearing out old stories to make way for new ones in the New Year. One is “Dancer Entranced”, which reaches its penultimate episode this week. Bella sounds like she is also on her penultimate episode, with the final one set to be a banger with medals or nothing at a gymnastics event to beat a dirty business rival. Next year we will find out if she’s still stuck in Australia or has made her way back to Britain, but we won’t know until she returns in the second quarter. Molly and the TV Pioneer must be ending pretty soon too. “The Upper Crust” and “TEAM in Action” don’t look like they’ll be ending just yet, so we will see them in the New Year.

Luck comes in all shapes and sizes, as three girls discover in this week’s Strange Story. They uncover three stones that seem to have powers that cause bad luck. They hastily get rid of them, only to discover the stones had the power to bring good luck and the strokes of bad luck were blessings in disguise.

Tammy 16 December 1978

1978, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cover artist: John Richardson
Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)
The Upper Crust (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)
Dancer Entranced (artist Angeles Felices)
Molly Mills and the TV Pioneer (artist Douglas Perry, writer Maureen Spurgeon)
Giftorama – part 2
Bessie Bunter (artist Arthur Martin)
Terror in the Garden – Strange Story
Wee Sue (artist Robert MacGillivray)
TEAM in Action (artist Carmona)

Among the really fun Cover Girl Tammy covers are the ones where Tammy makes in-jokes about herself. This is one such cover. The list of Tammy-based ingredients, from left to right: Molly Mills, Bella, One Girl and Her Dog (currently on hiatus), Dancer Entranced, Bessie Bunter and The Upper Crust. To make things even more interesting, there’s an appearance from the Cover Girls’ mum. Sometimes their parents do appear on the cover, apparently enjoying Tammy as much as their daughters do. Perhaps it’s Tammy’s way of paying homage to her adult readers, who are often mentioned in the letters she prints. Mum baking something from Tammy might be a reference Tammy’s recipe feature, “Tuck-in with Tammy”. And what is Mum making? I always thought it was Christmas pudding, a bow to Tammy’s countdown to Christmas.

In Molly Mills, the Stanton Hall staff are auditioning for parts in the TV pioneer’s show. Lord Stanton isn’t impressed with what they’re doing when they’re supposed to be working. We have to say we aren’t impressed with their hammy performances either, though we get a lot of laughs out of them. But things get less funny for Molly when an unfortunate mishap gets her threatened with the sack.

Bella’s flying high in a hot air balloon to help advertise the outfit she works for. But things go a bit wrong when the balloon loses its moorings, causing them to drift away when they have a vital gymnastics event to enter.

In this week’s Strange Story, a governess freaks out after reading that her high-spirited charge is headed for a swing with a sinister history. Apparently, it was converted from a gallows used to execute condemned witches. But what’s really strange about this one is that it’s not brought to us by our regular Storyteller. It’s a completely different person (below), and he only appears this once. A guest artist, currently unidentified, was used for the story; perhaps they didn’t know what the Storyteller was supposed to look like. Or maybe someone forgot instructions on how to draw the Storyteller in the script.

In Tammy’s current ballet story, “Dancer Entranced”, things take a violent turn. Jealous Dora sets a gang of toughs on Trina to fix her once and for all. But it backfires on Dora, with her getting duffed up instead until Trina and her friends come to the rescue. Following this, Dora stops being Trina’s enemy, but the hypnotist’s metronome, without which Trina cannot dance, got broken in the fight. Has Dora fixed Trina after all?

Ballet is also the theme in this week’s Bessie Bunter story. Stackers has decided to add ballet to the school curriculum. We really have to question her judgement on this, especially with Bessie in the ballet class. Sure enough, there are soon more than enough scrapes for Stackers to cancel the ballet class.

Sue wants an autograph from a celebrity, but autograph hunters are banned from the theatre where he is performing, and the doorman enforcing the rule is a gorilla. Sue’s big brain has to come up with something to get that autograph. Breaking her arm is not exactly what she had in mind, but guess who signs her cast?

Talk about paint bombs. In “The Upper Crust”, Mavis, determined to bring down Clarinda Carrington-Crust, rigs a tin of paint over a door at school to fall down on her. However, Clarinda, with a little help from her father, turns the tables – and the paint – right on Mavis and her gang. But the paint ruins a girl’s watch. Who’s going to put things right? Certainly not Mavis, who is too snobby to take responsibility or have any sympathy for the girl.

Teachers skiving off? That’s a new one in “Team in Action”. Toni and Anthea sneak out of school to cover a fashion show when the head denies permission to attend. In town, they spot their teacher, Miss Gravel, who is supposed to be off sick. Either she’s made a miraculous recovery or … but they’re not thinking about that – they’re ducking for cover before they’re spotted.

Tammy 9 December 1978

1978, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cover artist: John Richardson

Bella (John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)
The Upper Crust (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)
Dancer Entranced (artist Angeles Felices)
Molly Mills and the TV Pioneer (artist Douglas Perry, writer Maureen Spurgeon)
Giftorama – part one
The Trysting Tree (artist Bob Harvey) – Strange Story
Bessie Bunter (artist Arthur Martin)
Wee Sue
Team in Action (artist Carmona)
Tuck-In with Tammy – feature

One of the most interesting aspects of the strikes that bedevilled IPC was how they affected the titles. Apparently, the effects were not always the same. Take the December 1978 strike, for example. It caused Jinty to lose three issues that month, from 9 to 23 December. Tammy retained her issues, starting with this one, but she did not go entirely unaffected. The 30 December issue informs us that due to the strike, those issues were smaller than usual. Well, at least she had them and Tammy readers were not deprived over that period. This issue also begins Tammy’s countdown to Christmas 1978 with part one of Giftorama, a four-part feature on making Christmas gifts and decorations, plus a New Year calendar.

Bella’s new job in Australia is more friendly than the one that brought her to Australia, but it’s not without its difficulties. This week, she has to deal with an Indigenous tribe who have taken a superstitious view of the gym apparatus she’s required to demonstrate for a company. They’ve stolen it – and they’re going to sacrifice it!

A lesson on ancient Rome gives Bessie dreams of that place, but they turn into horrible nightmares of being thrown to the lions. A misunderstanding gets Sue into awesome trouble with Miss Bigger, but it is eventually sorted out, and everything ends happily for them both. Molly is into TV pioneering with Lord Stanton’s cousin Iggy, but his production keeps hitting problems. However, there’s a hilarious moment in this episode (below) when the staff catch bully butler Pickering on candid camera.

The trouble with miracle objects that seem to give protagonists the power to perform brilliantly when they were hopeless before is that they grow too dependent on them, and without them, they’re screwed. Such is the case of the hypnotist’s metronome that gives Trine Carr, “Dancer Entranced”, the power to dance brilliantly, but only when it’s ticking. She herself says as much by the end of the episode that she has realised the dependency problem. And she has the added problem of a jealous rival. What if she discovers Trine’s dependency on the metronome?

If you’ve got interfering parents who keep pushing you into what they want and not listening to what you want, this week’s Strange Story (below) is for you. It’s one of my favourites, and it has an extra mystery: the Storyteller, who has no given name, leaves us with his initials and us wondering what they stand for (does Man of Mystery spring to mind?).

Anthea, the “A” in “TEAM in Action”, has a track record of sticking her foot in it with bright ideas. It’s already got her expelled from one school, and she’s in trouble again when she arranges for a band to play at the school festival without checking them out first. She just assumed they were an old-style band, ideal for the school staff and governors, but she discovers too late that they are a punk rock band! Never assume, Anthea.

Clarinda Carrington-Crust has ruffled a lot of feathers and left a lot of people scratching their heads ever since she and her parents moved into super-snobby High Hills. Nobody really knows what to make of her. She seems to be a snob like everyone else in school. But we’re progressively getting hints of Clarinda being the secret helper of ordinary people against the snobs. This week, she secretly helps elderly people avoid the grotty snobs who have been roped by the school into an old people’s help programme. But Clarinda’s arch-enemy, Mavis Blunt, is getting increasingly suspicious of her, and by the end of this week’s episode, she’s really out to bring her down.

Tammy 2 December 1978

1978, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cover artist: John Richardson

Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)

The Upper Crust (artist Giorgio Giorgetti)

Dancer Entranced (artist Angeles Felices)

One Girl and Her Dog… (artist Mario Capaldi)

The Moon Stallion (artist Mario Capaldi) – adaptation

Molly Mills and the TV Pioneer (artist Douglas Perry, writer Maureen Spurgeon)

Face at the Window (artist Hugo D’Adderio) – Strange Story

Wee Sue (artist Mike White)

TEAM in Action (artist Carmona)

A Horse for Your Hobby – Feature 

It’s December, so we are having a countdown to Christmas with Tammy issues from December 1978. There is no hint of Christmas yet in Tammy, either on the cover or inside with Christmas how-to-make features. Everything is pretty much business as usual, except that there is no Bessie Bunter this week.

Mario Capaldi does double duty with “One Girl and Her Dog” and “The Moon Stallion”. But the former goes on hiatus with the next issue, which must have made things easier for Capaldi.

Bella battles a venomous snake in the Australian Outback, but it’s already bitten one of her friends, and they are miles from the nearest hospital. Luckily, they have an Aborigine friend on hand who soon proves Aborigine know-how can do the job just as well.

In “The Upper Crust”, Clarinda Carrington-Crust, a newcomer to snobby High Hills, is disliked by even the snobs at her school for her super-snobby ways. But there have been more and more and more hints that Clarinda is really a secret helper for people who get picked on by the snobs for not being posh. This week, she seems to be secretly helping a girl on the road to stage stardom.

An unusually excessive number of rejects from the clothes factory is pushing up fashion prices in Milltown. By the time Wee Sue discovers why, she’s become the fall guy for a clothes racket and has an angry mob and the police chasing after her. She needs to prove who the real racketeers are, and fast!

The TV Pioneer is almost sent packing from Stanton Hall, but Molly finds a way for him to stay. However, she soon finds that pioneering has its difficulties for even a relative of Lord Stanton – and the latest is him in danger of falling off the roof. 

In this week’s Strange Story, Mary finds the manor she inherited from her uncle is not exactly welcoming. It’s rotting and rundown, the staff warn her of a curse that could threaten her life and urge her to leave, and then it looks like the curse is coming true when she refuses to do so. In the end, it turns out the curse was just a ruse – but there is a final twist that indicates there was something spooky going on after all.

Jealous Dora tries to put Trina Carr, “Dancer Entranced”, out of an upcoming dance show by trying to get her hurt. Good thing she hasn’t discovered Trina’s dependency on the metronome to dance. But now, well-meaning meddling from Trina’s aunt could succeed where Dora’s trickery has failed.

The entertainment abilities of “TEAM in Action” get them out of trouble when they unwittingly crash Sir Reginald’s party. But fresh trouble is never far away for TEAM, and this time it starts with one of Anthea’s bright ideas – ideas that have gotten her expelled in the past.

Tammy 14 October 1978

1978, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cover artist: John Richardson

Bella (artist John Armstrong, Primrose Cumming)

Maggie’s Menagerie (artist Tony Coleman)

Dancer Entranced (Angeles Felices)

Crawl, Carrie, Crawl (artist Escandell Torres) – final episode

Bessie Bunter (artist Cecil Orr)

Molly Mills and the Tender Trap (artist Douglas Perry, writer Maureen Spurgeon)

Wreck on Stormy Point (artist Veronica Weir) – Strange Story

Edie the Ed’s Niece (artist Joe Collins)

Wee Sue (artist Jim Eldridge)

Team in Action (artist Carmona)

Thanks to two spiteful rivals, Bella loses a competition she so badly needed to win in order to keep the coaching job that brought her to Australia. That means it’s the end of that job, “so what next?” As it turns out, as one door closes, another opens, for she gets a new job offer from that competition.

“Crawl, Carrie, Crawl” reaches its final episode, where Carrie risks her life swimming in stormy seas to save lives, which resolves all the plot threads for us to get our happy ending. Replacing it next week is a more lightweight story, “One Girl and Her Dog…”. It stars a dog who’s “the size of a donkey” and, from the looks of things, has the brains of Dopey.

“Maggie’s Menagerie” is clearly on its penultimate episode, for the inevitable has finally happened: Gran discovers the secret animal hoard Maggie hid on her houseboat. She’s not pleased, and she’s not the sort to allow them to stay, so what will happen to the animals?

“Dancer Entranced” and “Team in Action”, which started in the previous issue, begin to take the shape they will follow for the rest of their runs. In the former, Trina Carr, who seems hopeless at ballet, suddenly becomes brilliant at the ticking of a mesmerist’s metronome when he selects her as the subject of his hypnotist act. So, is hypnotism the answer to Trina’s problem? Although the mesmerist is then arrested as a charlatan, Trina certainly thinks so, but she needs to find out fast, as she’s being selected for a ballet school, and the only way to do that is to get hold of the metronome. In the latter, four disparate girls put in charge of a school newspaper begin to find their feet as journalists, and they’ve stumbled across a mystery that could be their first scoop. 

The district nurse falls for bully butler Pickering, believe it or not. Pickering kicks Molly out in drenching rain to set the nurse straight, but the silly nurse ends up thinking Molly is acting out of jealousy because she’s in love with Pickering herself. Holy love entanglement!

This week’s Strange Story is set at the seaside, where an old salt lends birdwatcher Lynn Hughes his telescope to get good views from Stormy Point. But what Lynn sees through the telescope is not quite what she expects.

Bessie is banned from sweets as a punishment, but – surprise, surprise – her tale ends with her being totally off sweets. 

This week’s Wee Sue story is about the demanding amounts of homework Miss Bigger is always dishing out. Sue strikes problems in getting it done, including falling foul of two homework dodgers. She also has a new artist, one who may be Barrie Mitchell, Jim Eldridge or someone using a similar style. A sample is included below for anyone who may be able to help identify the artist. Update: we now believe the artist is Jim Eldridge.

Tammy 7 October 1978

1978, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cover artist: John Richardson

  • Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)
  • Maggie’s Menagerie (artist Tony Coleman)
  • Dancer Entranced (artist Angeles Felices) – first episode
  • Crawl, Carrie, Crawl (artist Escandell Torres)
  • Edie the Ed’s Niece (artist Joe Collins)
  • Bessie Bunter (artist Cecil Orr)
  • Molly Mills and the Tender Trap (artist Douglas Perry, writer Maureen Spurgeon) – first episode
  • Family Tree (artist Diane Gabbot(t)) – Strange Story
  • Wee Sue (artist Robert MacGillivray)
  • Team in Action (artist Carmona) – first episode
  • Learn to Like Lacrosse! – Edie’s Hobbyhorse

At this stage in Tammy’s run she had the “reader’s cover idea”, where readers were invited to provide ideas for the Tammy Cover Girl covers, with money as prizes. This week’s “reader’s cover idea” was one of the most brilliant of them all. The cover rates as one of Tammy’s best, being so quirky, hilarious and a standout you can never forget. Pity they didn’t use the other cover idea on the cover, of the Cover Girls riding in a UFO, for an actual cover. It would have been really something.

Inside, three new stories start. The first is one of Tammy’s most popular and enduring ballet stories, “Dancer Entranced”. Some of its imminent plot elements (hypnotism, dancing to a ticking instrument) may have influenced Tammy’s “Slave of the Clock” some years later. Trina Carr is pushed by her father into ballet and follow in her famous mother’s footsteps. We see so much of this kind of thing in girls’ comics, but at least Dad’s doing it in a well-meaning, overenthusiastic way rather than the more usual single-minded, forceful way. Trine can’t bring herself to tell him she’s not even making progress in her class, and it looks like she has the proverbial two left feet. Now Dad’s entered her in his boss’s talent contest to show off her ballet talent. Is his bright idea going to have Trina make an utter fool of herself?

The second is a new Molly Mills story, and it’s one of the most unorthodox but popular ones in her run: The Tender Trap. District nurse Miss Key, not realising how horrible bully butler Pickering is, falls in love with him (yes!). A misunderstanding gives Miss Key the impression that Pickering is reciprocating her love, so there’ll be no stopping the lovelorn fool pestering him now.

The third is “Team in Action”. Four disparate girls, Toni, Ellie, Anthea and Maggie, start at boarding school together. Discovering their initials spell “T.E.A.M.”, it becomes their moniker when the headmistress puts them in charge of the school newspaper, “Action”, which they are to save from its current doldrums. Their form teacher, Miss Gravell, is understandably upset at them taking over the editorship of the school journal that was her brainchild, so she is not particularly friendly towards them. Two problems already before the girls have even started on the journal.

Just when it’s a contest Bella badly needs to win in order to retain her coaching job, everything causes her to lose. Normally, Bella’s determination can get her through a competition if the odds stack up against her, but this time there are just too many guns: spiteful rivals stirring up trouble for her in the press, everyone staring at her and whispering behind her back, newshounds dogging her at every turn and a well-meaning audience who cheer for her, but their applause keeps disrupting her concentration during her performances, which causes her marks to fall well short of medals. But she’s such a favourite with the audience that they go berserk at her poor marks, and a riot seems imminent. Elements of this were recycled in another gymnastics contest Bella enters some years later.

Miss Bigger’s got her eye on a job with a tutor’s job with a sheikh. Sue’s out to make sure she gets it – anything to get rid of the old tartar. Will she succeed, or will it be back to the old status quo again?

“Crawl, Carrie, Crawl” is nearing its end. Well, it’s the end of the crawling Carrie’s had to do at school to help keep her family afloat with her swim coaching job with a demanding employer while Dad’s out of work. Now Dad’s landed a job, but with none other than Carrie’s former employer – and she antagonised him by giving him a piece of her mind when she quit her own job with him. Now this could cost Dad his new job – unless something happens, and quick!

Doggone it! Bessie lodges a food contamination complaint in the hope of a free sample as compensation – only to find her free sample is dog food.

The old maxim “look after me and I’ll look after you” gets put to the test in this week’s Strange Story, “Family Tree”. Another lesson in this story might be to not to focus on looking after one thing all the time – other things need attention too. The protagonist is understandably angry at having to go without all the time because her cash-strapped mother puts all her financial priorities into maintaining a heritage tree.

“Maggie’s Menagerie” is a secret animal hoarding story. Maggie Crown is staying on her Gran’s barge while her parents are away, but Gran is not an animal person and would freak at the animals Maggie is secretly hiding. So far, she’s managed to keep the secret from Gran, but how long can it last? It looks like someone else has caught her now.







	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Tammy 17 January 1981
		

		
		

			1981, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 					

	


		

		






Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)





Wee Sue (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)





Push-along, Patti (artist Juliana Buch)





Two Leads for Luther (artist Mario Capaldi) – final episode





Tune-In – feature 





Belinda Bookworm (artist Giorgio Giorgetti) – first episode





Molly Mills and the Winter of Discontent (artist Douglas Perry, writer Maureen Spurgeon)





Behind the Locked Door! (artist Peter Wilkes) – Strange Story from the Mists





Edie and Miss T (artist Joe Collins)





Bessie Bunter (artist Arthur Martin)





Rita, My Robot Friend (artist Tony Coleman)





Four stories – Bessie, Wee Sue, Molly Mills and the Winter of Discontent, and Edie and Miss T – remind us that it’s still the freezing winter season. For Molly & Co, it’s an outright fight for survival when the snow cuts Stanton Hall off from the outside world. They’re on their own, but how long can they keep it up, and how can they get help? To add to Molly’s problems, the crisis doesn’t stop Pickering picking on her. Wee Sue & Co have a winter battle on their hands as well. They are up against meanie Miss Bigger’s economy drive, which entails cutting off the school heating in winter cold, leaving them to freeze in class while she keeps herself warm with secret thermals. While Bigger’s back is turned, the girls turn to disco dancing and loud music-making to keep warm, but the noise soon leads to discovery. Things are about to get hot for the girls, but it’s the winter snow to the rescue. It also puts the freeze on Miss Bigger’s economy drive and gives the girls the rest of the day off school. Hooray!





A disastrous talent contest for Bella has an unexpected result – a gymnastics coach named Mrs Carne spots her and offers to train her. But from the start, there is definitely something strange about this woman. It’s unsettling, and it has us worried about what Bella might be getting herself into. 





This week’s Strange Story is a “curiosity killed the cat” tale, featuring maidservant Poppy Higgs at a Victorian lodging house. Poppy won’t stop snooping into the lodgers’ belongings despite the warnings, clips around the ear and now threats of dismissal from her angry mistress. One guest in particular rouses her curiosity – but she is soon cured of her curiosity when it leads to a bad fright at “some horror from the grave!”, a fall downstairs and a dislocated arm (which is quickly treated). And what was that horror from the grave, you ask? Just a doctor’s skeleton.





They say a man can’t have two masters. Neither can a dog, as “Two Leads for Luther” shows. Two friends, Kim and Lisa, inherit a dog, Luther, but it’s led to constant arguments, heaps of trouble and a strain on their friendship because they have opposing views on how to take care of him. Luther’s had enough of the bickering and runs off, leaving them both in tears. The story ends with the girls making a deal that if they find him, only one of them will be his mistress. The clincher will be whoever he runs to first. They succeed in finding him, and now it’s the moment of decision. Will Luther choose Kim or Lisa, and what about the girl he doesn’t choose?





We now have three stories where girls are made miserable and friendless at school by mean classmates. For “Push-along Patti”, it’s just because she has no bike. When all she can get is a push bike, the school bikers turn up their noses at it and her. What a bunch of snobs. You’re too nice for them, Patti. Angelina keeps Jenny James ostracised at school, just because she doesn’t like her grandfather, so Jenny has turned to “Rita, My Robot Friend” for companionship. This week, there’s a new problem for Jenny in keeping the secret of Rita from Angelina: the science teacher turns on a huge magnet and unwittingly starts magnetising Rita’s metal parts. And in new story “Belinda Bookworm”, Belinda Binder is scorned by everyone at school, and also picked on by the school sports stars, because she is a bookworm and apparently hopeless at sport. But when she discovers she might have a sports talent after all and just needs confidence, training and a chance to prove it, she sets out to secretly train as an athlete – in the school library of all places – when she is dropped from games at school.






	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Tammy 2 March 1974
		

		
		

			1974, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 					

	


		

		






Cover artist: John Richardson





The Clothes Make Carol (artist John Armstrong)





Wee Sue (artist Mario Capaldi)





School for Snobs (artist J. Badesa, writer Pat Mills)





The Duchess of Dead-End Drive (artist John Richardson) – first episode





Little Lady Jane – cartoon





Leader of the Pack (artist Douglas Perry) – first episode





Jeannie and Her Uncle Meanie (artist Robert MacGillivray)





No Tears for Molly (artist Tony Thewenetti, writer Maureen Spurgeon)





Two new stories start this week. John Richardson didn’t draw many serials for girls’ comics, but he draws one of them, “The Duchess of Dead-End Drive”. Not a real duchess – it’s a comedy serial starring a lady who styles herself as an aristocrat in a slum area, and it’s off to an impressive start with a four-page spread instead of the usual three. The other is a Douglas Perry story, “Leader of the Pack”, about a dog who seems to have strange abilities.





If there’s one thing “School for Snobs” has shown us, it’s just about anything can make a snob out of someone. We’ve seen antique snobs and military snobs among others. This week, it’s a music snob who only cares about classical music. After the Hermione Snoot treatment, she’s happily playing bagpipes.





Poor Sue saves Miss Bigger from trouble twice this week, but all she gets is a ticking-off from her in front of the class. At least Sue takes it philosophically: “Ah, well – life’s full of ups and downs – ‘specially with Miss Bigger around!”





“The Clothes Make Carol” gets a six-page spread this week. Carol has grown more confident in standing up to her abusive family when she gets a mysterious blazer that seems to have magic powers. The family have caught on about the blazer and apparently destroy it, at which Carol reverts to her old mousy self. But her confidence is on the rise again when the blazer turns up, perfectly intact.





Uncle Meanie gets into more of his dodgy penny-pinching schemes when an encyclopaedia salesman comes calling. And for once, he gets away with it.





One of the weirdest Molly stories concludes this week, and it leaves more questions than answers. Bully butler Pickering thinks he is being haunted by the ghost of a labourer who had an accident because of him. He becomes so terrified he almost throws himself to his death and then jumps out of a window in fright when he sees the man in hospital. However, it turns out the man is not dead and been in the hospital the whole time. So who – or what – was haunting Pickering? One thing’s for sure: the bully butler remains as bad as ever. For the moment, Molly is safe from him as the haunting saga has left him all banged up, but he warns her to watch out when he recovers. We suppose he’s taking it out on her, as usual.






	

	
	


							


	

		
				

			Tammy 22 January 1972
		

		
		

			1972, Issues, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 					

	


		

		






Gina – Get Lost (artist Miguel Quesada)





Beattie Beats ‘Em All! (artist John Armstrong)





Dogs of the Duchess





Lulu – cartoon





Amanda Must Not Be Expelled (artist Jesus Redondo)





Star Struck Sister (artist Giorgio Giorgetti, writer Jenny McDade)





A Tammy Outfit Idea (feature)





Alison All Alone – final episode





Talk It Over with Trudy – problem page





Skimpy Must Ski! (artist Tom Hurst)





The Secret Ballerina (artist Roy Newby)





Maisie’s Magic Eye (Robert MacGillivray)





Cinderella Spiteful (artist José Casanovas)





No Tears for Molly (artist Tony Thewenetti, writer Maureen Spurgeon)





A Special Tammy Portrait – Dave Cassidy





Tammy is three weeks into her first new year and approaching her first birthday. How has she developed so far? There have been some changes. Initially, she started off with too much emphasis on misery-laden stories with girls exploited by cruel employers/racketeers, attending harsh schools, or being treated like Cinderella by guardians. She was seriously lacking in lightweight stories for balance and another mainstay of girls comics – sport. Nearly a year on, she has struck more balance with her stories, thanks in part to the Sally merger, and there is more variety in her themes, although she remains strong and proud on abused heroines and cruel guardians/employers. One story, “Gina – Get Lost”, carries on the theme, and another, “Alison All Alone”, finishes this week. 





Speaking of Cinderella, the title “Cinderella Spiteful” puts a twist in it, but the plot has no bearing on Cinderella. Emma is staying with relatives but feels overshadowed by her brilliant cousin Angela. This week, Emma sets out prove herself at hockey, and when Angela falls ill, she seizes her chance. Next week will tell if it works out.





Ballet was also a frequent presence in Tammy from the first. Her current ballet story, “The Secret Ballerina”, is now on its penultimate episode, but there is sure to be another ballet story starting soon.





Humour was non-existent in the early Tammy, but now she has a bit more of it, with “Maisie’s Magic Eye”, from the Sally merger, and a regular cartoon, “Lulu”.





Sport began to pick up in Tammy as her first year progressed. Among them was “Skimpy Must Ski!”, which started in Tammy’s first Christmas issue. Despite being a semi-invalid, Skimpy wants to learn to ski, but she hasn’t gotten off to a good start. Grandad almost stops her skiing after she nearly dies in a night ski, and now he himself has a bad accident while trying to help her. “Beattie Beats ‘Em All”, who started when Sally joined Tammy, makes sport a regular in Tammy, and she offsets the misery-enduring Tammy heroines with a feisty personality that won’t be beat. 





Bella Barlow is still two years in the future, but Beattie shares some parallels with her: sports-crazy, outspoken, speaks with a Cockney accent, orphaned but free-spirited and determined to look after herself and stay out of “care”, and drawn by John Armstrong. The Bella team must have drawn some inspiration from Beattie. 





Meanwhile, the gymnastics we see in Tammy right now is in “Amanda Must Not Be Expelled”, a gym-crazy girl who keeps getting herself expelled so she can go home to her gymnasium (like the school doesn’t have one too?). Her new friends keep trying to keep her from being expelled because they want her on the school gymnastics team. They manage it again this week, but how long can they keep it up? It’s not long before Amanda gets up to more tricks. After Amanda, there were no gymnastics stories in Tammy until Bella herself started in 1974, probably because Olympic gymnasts like Olga Korbut had put more spotlight on the sport. As Bella’s popularity grew, gymnastics really made its mark in Tammy. This was not just with the Bella stories and frequent comments on how popular she was, but also the Bella features and gymnastics-related competitions that she spawned in Tammy, plus getting her own book in 1981. 





The mysterious Duchess, who always keeps herself veiled, is on a crusade to help mistreated dogs. Pity she doesn’t treat Doris, the servant who helps with her campaign, with the same kindness she does the dogs. She punished Doris so harshly for failure that she collapsed, and when Doris asks the Duchess why she wears the veil, the Duchess slaps her. Another abused Tammy heroine, but it’s interesting to have an abuser who isn’t the usual sadistic/exploitative type in Tammy. Instead, it seems to be a case of the abuser having a psychological problem, and it’s clearly linked with what’s hidden under that veil and why.





An intriguing history of “Star Struck Sister” has been disclosed on the internet. Jenny McDade, who went on to become the first Bella Barlow writer, says “Star Struck Sister” was the first story she ever wrote for girls’ comics. A previous writer had “choked on” the story after the first episode, so she was commissioned to write the rest. The story itself concerns two sisters, Stella and Lesley, who are offered film parts, but the director is only interested in Stella, leading to jealousy from Lesley. So far this hasn’t led to anything really spiteful, but we know something will happen. Meanwhile, Stella wants to help hungry street urchins. How will it work out?





When it came to Molly stories about new/temporary servants, you could be sure of two things: first, they would bring trouble with them, and second, they would be gone by the end of the story, never to be seen or mentioned again. Mr Jenks, the butler standing in for Pickering when he is hospitalised, is no exception. Unlike Pickering, he’s a good sort. Unfortunately, he’s hopeless at running the staff – again unlike Pickering, whose slave-driving style at least kept them working – so work’s gone to pot at Stanton Hall. Jenks takes his leave now, but on good terms.