Were there ever any good girls' comics?

Also, Misty had a story in which the Nazis had won the second world war - RoXoR.

japanese girls comics (aka shojo manga) roXoR HARDCORE.

When Eagle first came out, its sister paper was called GIRL!! I never saw it: I have a suspicion it didn't last the course.

What's this "boys comics" "girls comics" distinction you are making? I thought they were "everyone comics". If they have to be one or the other then Love & Rockets is DEFINITELY "girls comics", as is everything with good art, because we all know that only girls can appreciated aesthetically pleasing things.

well i think if you title a comic "girl" (or indeed 'judy") you are probably targeting yr market a bit more exactly than IT'S FOR EVERYONE HURRAH. However "bunty" i haf nevah understood..., and i did in fact always secretly read my sister's "jackie", in search of exotic fun-fur possibility.

What's this "boys comics" "girls comics" distinction you are making? I thought they were "everyone comics".

if i understand the question correctly, DV means children's comics (very definitely boys vs. girls) as opposed to adult (everybody). most girl's comics - Bunty, Mandy and such - were pretty spanky, functioning merely as a stepping stone from Twinkle to Jackie/Just 17 (evil IPC had it all tied up). one could make a case for Misty but only as the best of a bad lot.

but at least there was Beano, Dandy and Krazy ...

THE FOUR MARYS!

People in old UK comics fanzines (poss. even including Andrew L of this parish) had a magical ability to make the stories in old girls comics sound MAD and GRATE. I have always suspected that this wasn't really the case though. As I remember the idea is that there is incredible amounts of masochistic infirmity action as brave brave gurls struggle through life despite being blind, deaf, penniless, subject to whims of wicked governesses etc.

I don't think I've ever seen a girls comic then. We read Archie, Commando, Phantom & various horror comics as kids - no matter whether we were male or female. We shared. Oh, and Caspar & Richie Rich.

Obviously I am talking about UK kids comics, not poncey American comics like Love & Rockets.

Tom has reminded me of a brilliant example of the girls' comic genre: a story in Mandy, Bunty or some other comic ending in -y where a girl who was bringing up her little brothers and sisters following the death of her parents had to find people to adopt each one of her siblings because she herself was terminally ill. The pathos!

I am not a fan of comics but Ghost World entertained me for an hour. I just gave all my comics to my nephew. He was chuffed. Was putting them in piles and then rearranging them. It was actually dreadful: I had taken such good care of them and in five minutes he had managed to smudge a couple. Ah I don't mind really... but I used to be quite anal about my books.

http://www.elidor.freeserve.co.uk/alessi.htm

This is why 1950s School Friend annuals used to arouse me intensely, and sometimes still do.

"Misty" was awesome. Many of the folks who were better known in 2000ad (EG pat mills, ian gibson) were in it, albeit uncredited. Somewhere I have a 'zine w/an interview with mills in it, in which he goes on about misty. I don't remember the story DV refers to, but I do remember one where a girl steals some art, and turns into a picasso-esque monster. I especially remember this tale where a governess comes to look after a little girl. The little girl locks the governess in a remote room, where she finds her predecessor, almost starved to death. At thee end, we see the little girl running up to her original governess - a scary spectral figure. Brrrr. There was also one about troglodytes living in the London underground, who abduct a girls father, and one where the devil, a sleazy betting shop owner, owns the souls of most of this little town. The protagonist sells her soul to him, to cure her father of his alcoholism. In case yr wondering, my sister used to get Misty every week. I'd probably pay money for a full set of them in good nick.

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Mandy and Judy. Twinkle! oh i see, yes they are all v poor aren't they. I am known to buy those repackaged fleetway mini-comics you get at railway stations. full of bullies, moving to live in the country with distant relatives, spooky goings on, and mean boys of course. i WUV them. (There, that's my first use of the W word on IL*)

Misty was the best, by a country mile... but does anyone remember the Valda character from Mandy? She kicked ass! her and that magic crystal...

I took Bunty, my sister took Mandy. They dropped through the letterbox with the newspaper every Wednesday morning and had both been read cover to cover by the time we went to bed that evening. Mandy was always slightly trendier, with the odd story involving BOYS and ROMANCE but it didn't have the Four Marys. The Four Marys were in the 3rd form of St Elmo's when my Mum read Bunty.

My favourite story was called Blind Faith and it was about a swimmer called Faith who went blind (see?), but kept swimming and kept winning! And then in the final episode, she decided to dive off the top diving board and banged her head! And her sight came back!

I was less keen on the kind of stories about a Russian peasant girl who was so poor she had to collect scraps of wool from thorny bushes to sell for money to feed her numerous orphaned siblings in the freezing Russian winter, but secretly she was a ballerina and one day the director from a touring ballet troupe would spot her pirouetting amongst the thorny bushes and *had* to have her dance the lead role in place of the prima ballerina who had broken her ankle the previous day. That kind of story was a bit rubbish. But good rubbish!

wasn't there also a blind tennis player story much along the same lines? there were all these marvellous "thinks" balloons while she was waiting to return a serve. i'm not kidding.

Funny how every time a Mary left St Elmo's another one joined just in time. They were still going strong last time I looked (about 2 years ago)

Anyone interested to hear the plot of my girls comic story that I have lying around?

What were the 2 evil girls at St Elmo's called? was one Ursula?