On 21 November 1981 the final Jinty was published.

Inside: Exciting News For All Girls Who LIke A Good Read!

Whether Jinty readers would really have been thrilled or excited by the news might well have been another matter. The Tammy & Jinty merger published two letters from former Jinty readers who weren’t.

The last seven issues could be considered a countdown to the merger, with a reprint of the seven-part series on Monday’s Child is Fair of Face, Tuesday’s Child is Full of Grace etc, short filler stories and Gaye’s attempts to farewell Sir Roger end in disappointment because he failed to pass the test to the House of Ghosts. She does not realise he deliberately failed his test because he thought she would miss him too much. But in the last issue, Gaye finds out what Sir Roger did and, when she wangles him another another tryout, she makes sure he passes. Only one long serial, The Bow Street Runner, began, and would conclude in the Tammy & Jinty merger.

Two stories, Worlds Apart and (probably) Dracula’s Daughter, suffered rushed endings, evidently to clear the decks for the seven-issue countdown. Worlds Apart was the greater casualty of this; the final of the six dream worlds it explored was clearly cut too short. That world was only allowed one and a half episodes while the others had four or five. The result was an unsatisfactory exploration of the final world in the name of a rushed conclusion. Dracula’s Daughter gives the impression it may have been cut a bit short as well, but fortunately not so drastically that you would notice too much.

We also have two bookends in this issue. The first is Phil Gascoine, the only artist whose work lasted from the first issue (Gail’s Indian Necklace) to the final one (Badgered Belinda). The second is Tansy of Jubilee Street, who reminisces on her very first story in the very first issue of Penny (which merged with Jinty),  where she loses her diary and gets into all sorts of scrapes trying to find it. In the final Jinty, Tansy finds her diary has disappeared again. We get flashbacks of what happened the first time, and watch Tansy as she gets into new scrapes in her search for it, and horrible thoughts of what people will find out if they should read it. Much to her relief, Tansy finds her mother just put the diary away for safekeeping.

(Cover artist: Mario Capaldi)

• Pam of Pond Hill – continues in merger (artist Bob Harvey)
• The Magic Tambourine: Gypsy Rose story – Gypsy Rose continues in merger (artist Douglas Perry)
• Tansy of Jubilee Street – ends, but returns in the Old Friends slot in merger – (artist Peter Wilkes)
• Sunday’s Child (end of series)
• Gaye’s Gloomy Ghost – ends (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• A Window on the Past – Gypsy Rose story (artist Hugo D’Adderio)
• Badgered Belinda – ends (artist Phil Gascoine)
• Fancy Meeting You! (text story)
• The Bow Street Runner – continues in merger (artist Phil Townsend, writer Alison Christie)

[Edited by Comixminx: I thought readers might also be interested to see the double-page advert that ran in this final issue for the merged title.]

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