Mirror Image

  • Mirror Image – Bunty PSL: #437
  • Artist: Veronica Weir

Plot/Thoughts

This is a story about Alternate Worlds. I personally love stories with alternate worlds, Fringe, Man in the High Castle, It’s a Wonderful Life are some of my favourite stories. While this story doesn’t reach the high levels of storytelling of the latter, it is still a fun read.

The main character, Donna, isn’t too happy with her life. She wishes that her family and life was different. She would like to live in a better modern house and have parents that are less eccentric and more attentive like her friend Denises. Denise on the other hand thinks Donna has a great life, a good family, a cool house and Donna is an A student.

When her Mum buys an old  three way mirror at an antiques fayre, Donna discovers it has special qualities.

 

So she is able to travel to alternate dimensions. She finds her first wish coming true, as in this world her parents are well off so she lives in a big modern house and has expensive clothes and all she ever wanted. Her mother is a famous professional artist and her father is a successful business man. Of course things aren’t as perfect as they first seem, her father is all smarmy calling her princess all the time and at her mum’s art exhibition she has a very boring evening with her parents ignoring her. Things don’t get any better when she goes to school next day and finds her friends are all stuck up. Having enough of this world she travels back to her own world. She discovers that hardly any time has passed in her world. Out of curiosity she decides to check out other dimensions.

She finds herself in a life where she isn’t smart and struggles at school. Her home life is dreary, her parents are strict. Her mother’s an art teacher and a dragon of a teacher. Which doesn’t make Donna popular with other students.

Donna is quick to leave this world and she decides she has enough of travelling to other worlds. But when she goes to talk to her parents they are both too busy to talk, feeling fed up Donna decides to give the mirror another go. She finds herself in a similar world to her own except that her and Denise are partners in competitive disco dancing. When Denise makes a mistake at a competition, Donna’s mum is quick to get rid of Denise and get Donna a better partner.  It turns out she’s a very pushy controlling stage mum, Donna begins to appreciate her own mother.

She is panicked when she discovers this mother has given away the mirror, she worries she will be stuck in this world forever, luckily she finds it at a jumble sale and is able to travel back. She is happy to be home and has realised she has a Wonderful Life after all.

It’s fun to explore alternate worlds. The art is good at representing the different people and worlds, Donna’s mother looks snobby in the first world , old fashioned in second world and sharp in the third world but they are all recognisable as the same person.  The moral is nothing new discovering that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but its a fun story anyway.

 

 

8 thoughts on “Mirror Image

  1. This exploration of alternate worlds sounds more light-hearted and fun compared to other alternate world stories I’ve seen in girls’ comics, while still making as much a point as the darker worlds that make up most of the alternate world stories. Here are some examples.

    There’s Jinty’s ‘Land of No Tears’, where disabled Cassy Shaw finds herself in a future world where disabled people are treated as criminals, and ‘Jazzy’s Wand of Power’, about a water diviner in a very superstitious Britain. There’s ‘The Sentinels’ from Misty where Jan Richards stumbles into an alternate Britain which was conquered by the Nazis in 1940. Jan manages to escape the alternate world, but her father is not so lucky and is mistakenly arrested by the Gestapo. So now it’s a return visit to the alternate world to rescue him – but will the Gestapo torture put him beyond rescuing? And back to Jinty for ‘Worlds Apart’ where six girls are knocked out by a strange gas and find themselves in alternate worlds ruled by greed, sports-mania, vanity, crime, intellectualism, and fear. These worlds are actually their dream worlds coming real – and turning into the stuff of nightmares.

  2. I wonder if Donna looked in her mirror anymore after her exploration of the three worlds? Knowing girls’ comics, the mirror probably lost its powers at the end of the story.

  3. If you like alternate worlds, you could give Misty’s ‘The Sentinels’ a go. This one not only has an alternate world (where Hitler won WW2), but it has the alternate world meet our world, and anomalies occur.

      1. If you want to write something about The Sentinels on Blublog, the credits for this story are:

        Writer: Malcolm Shaw (I found that out from Pat Mills)
        Artist: Mario Capaldi

  4. Interesting don’t often see a writers’ credit! I will probably write about it at some stage 🙂 It is a great story.

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