Tag Archives: Summer

The Summer Fête [1996]

Bunty, , ,
  • The Summer Fête – Bunty Picture Story Library : #427 [1996]
  • Art: Jesús Redondo

Plot

Westfield Community Centre run a Summer Fête each year, but the Women’s Circle who usually organise it, feel that it’s only fair some other group take charge this year as all the groups benefit from the money raised for the facilities. While most people are reluctant, Anne from the youth group, spiritedly volunteers herself and her two friends (much to their dismay!). After Anne talks her friends, Sally and Julie, around they set off confidentially making a list of things to do and actually getting excited about the project, but things don’t go quite as smoothly as they would have liked!

First they contact Farmer Buckley for use of his field and he tells them they can use last years stall that are stored in the barn… though they may need a lick of paint. The girls find the stalls in poor condition needing more work then a paint job. When they can’t find anyone to help repair the stalls, they set about doing it themselves. This does not go well, but then Farmer Buckley’s son, Billy, comes across them and offers his woodwork skills. With the first problem sorted they go about trying to find someone to open the fete. Seeing a poster of pop star, Chris Rich, the girls think it would be great to get him to do the opening, even if it is most unlikely to get such a star. Being optimistic, even though it’s a slim chance they figure no harm in asking, and after getting no response from his agent, they go and try and see him at a show to ask in person. They get mistaken as contest winners and introduced to Chris, before they get a chance to ask him about the fête, the real contest winners burst in to expose them as frauds. Luckily when the girls explain why they are there, Chris takes it all in good humour, he even says if he is not too busy he’ll open the fête and his agent will be in contact.

Unfortunately after a few days they hear nothing from Chris’s agent, so are back to square one. They tell Mrs Lucas about this problem when she asks how preparations are going, she says she can get Bob Benning the local radio DJ to come. The girls accept, though privately Sally says she isn’t pleased to have an old  boring guy with terrible jokes as their special guest, but they don’t have other options. More bad news for the girls when they go to barn and find the prizes have been stolen. With Billy’s help they find them dumped close by, some of the prize are broken, but they manage to salvage most of it . Their luck seems to turn for the good  when Chris Rich shows up saying he can do the show, apparently his agent has been fired for mismanagement. The girls are so delighted until they realise now the have two openers! Then Bob Benning shows up! He tells the girls he appreciates being asked to open but he’d prefer to dress up walking around the fete entertaining people. The girls graciously accept, relieved the problem sorted itself.  On the way out Bob makes a comment that he’s sure they could find some one else to open, like maybe the latest heart-throb, Chris Rich. The girls then realise he overheard their earlier conversation with Chris, they think he is great for doing that and they would never refer to him as boring again.

 

So just as things seem to be coming together, of course another obstacle presents itself. When they go to the field to start setting up everything, they find caravans there instead. Farmer Buckley tells the girls he didn’t realise they would need to set up so soon, he can’t ask the caravans to move, and that they will have to use the smaller  field instead. Trying to make the best of things Sally decides to start moving things to field but slips and hits her head while moving a slide. She wakes up in a caravan, the owner Mary is a nurse and lucky Sally isn’t badly injured. Mary asks her what she was trying to do when she had the accident, and after hearing her story, Mary tells her she would be happy to get all the caravans to move to smaller field. Of course noting can ever go smoothly and soon after Mary notices her diamond ring missing and she blames Sally as she was in her caravan. The police are called, but it turns out two young boys had found it and took it not knowing it was valuable. Everyone is very apologetic to the girls after that, for the accusations.

Again things are finally running smoothly they’ve even come up with a contingency plan if it rains. Of course there is one final obstacle to overcome, when Mrs Lucas enquires about the food for VIPs like the opener and Mayor, the girls had not thought of that or even to invite the mayor. Luckily a quick phone call and persuading Mrs Lucas that the Mayor asked for her food specifically solves that. The day of the fete arrives and it is a sunny day, everything goes well, even Mrs Lucas says it may be the best one yet. Anne tells Mrs Lucas was thinking about the Christmas fair but Sally and Julie quickly shut that idea down!

Thoughts

A Summer story for Summer! A campaign/project can be a fun setting for a story. While often these type of stories have a saboteur working against the protagonist (like in Follow-My- Leader-Lil or “Hands Off Our Club!”), sometimes its just a a series of events to make an ordinary task more exciting.   Organising a fete is no easy project on its own, and the girls of course get even more drama thrown their way with trying to track down a pop-star, having prizes stolen and even being accused of thievery themselves! The story keeps things interesting by giving the girls all these obstacles to overcome, while never letting things get too frustrating for them.

It also has some good humour, especially with Sally and Julie being the long suffering friends of Anne’s ideas. Although they soon come around to helping out and are proud of achievements at the end of the day, they are not ready to take on such another project again, unlike Anne! The girls are quick thinking, pretending to Mayor that his invitation got lost and taking the opportunity to meet Chris Rich in a case of lucky mistaken identity. They do get some help along the way, Mrs Lucas despite not wanting to run things does check up on the girls reminding them of things and even getting convinced to provide food, Billy Buckley and his friends despite the girls initial misgivings about the boys do offer a helping hand when needed and are the only ones to stand by them when they are accused of theft. Even both celebrities Chris Rich and Bob Benning come to the girls rescue in different ways.

It’s also another good example of Jesus Redondo art, whose style seems to suit the restrictions of the smaller picture story library format. As always with these PSLs it can be a challenge to present an interesting story with satisfying conclusion in a short format, but this works well, ending on success of fete and Anne getting grand ideas on the next fair.

A Holiday to Remember

Debbie, ,

Plot 

A series of complete stories about holidays. Such as in

Sleepy-Town Surprise

Marion Jackson arrives at sleepy town to help her gran for the holidays.  She wishes the village was livelier. Then she finds a mystery with pies and meets baker Mike, the pies are being ate by young runaway Willie Tomkins

Notes

  • Each story had individual title with the “a holiday to remember” subtitle, except for The Stranger’s Secret which had no subtitle.
  • Appropriately the series ran during the Summer.
  • Various artists including Terry Aspin

Appeared

  • A Holiday to Remember – Debbie: #177 (3 July 1976) – #184 (21 August 1976) [no episode in issue #179]

 

List of Stories

  • Beside the Seaside – Debbie: #177
  • Too Good to Be True – Debbie: #178
  • Sleepy-Town Surprise – Debbie: #180
  • A Dream Come True  – Debbie: #181 (Art: Terry Aspin)
  • The Cottage by the Sea – Debbie: #182
  • The Stranger’s Secret – Debbie: #183 (Art: Terry Aspin)
  • Susanna’s First Ball – Debbie: #174

Bunty Summer Special 1996

Bunty, , , ,

Summer has arrived so I thought it would be fun to look at something appropriately themed – a Summer Special! This isn’t something that I’ve looked at before on this site, in part because Summer Specials seem to be more rarer to come by then other issues. There may be a few reasons for this, firstly  just looking at the DCT girls comics, despite having many popular long running titles, it seems Bunty was the only comic to get Summer/Holiday Specials. For a few years it did combine with Judy (from 1974 to 1980) to share a special between them, but it means there just aren’t as many specials out there in the first place.  To the best of my knowledge Bunty Summer Specials ran from 1963 to 2004, so there are only 42 issues in total. I wonder if they didn’t sell as well as the weekly issues, and weren’t deemed cost efficient to produce issues for multiple publications. Like the Annual, these were filled with favourite characters and one-off complete stories, so there was less of need to collect in case of missing an episode of an ongoing serial. Unlike the Annuals these were just a thicker weekly issue, so not as durable as the hardback books. They could have also been a bit more disposable, as they would be bought to entertain on holidays, long car journeys, read on the beach etc. , maybe not all of them made it back home again.

The comic I am looking at in this post is the Bunty Summer Special 1996 (issue 34). Also Special thanks to Jim Eldridge (The Four Marys artist) for sending me a copy. At 48 pages (including front and back cover) it is an extra 16 pages than the weekly comic. Inside there are 9  stories, 4 of them being regular characters, The Four Marys, Luv Lisa, Bunty -a girl like you and The Comp. The 5 others are complete stories and filling out the rest of the comic is a number of features, including Puzzles , Pin Ups, Star Chart , Cut-Out Wardrobe and a fun highlight for me, is  a Four Mary’s Game.

Of course the features and stories stick with the holiday theme. First up in The Four Marys, (art: Jim Eldridge) the girls are in Venice with the rest of their class. Mabel and Veronica are flashing their money around, while the Marys enjoy exploring. It turns out all their walking around helps them stop a thief as they have learned the back routes to places and they get rewarded for returning the stolen purse. So while the Marys can enjoy treating themselves, Mabel and Veronica run out of money and the boys they were hanging around with are suddenly not interested any more!

Lisa Codd meanwhile is having trouble with her brother Martin in Luv, Lisa. For the Summer, they are meant to be sharing  the job of looking after the dogs, but Lisa ends up doing all the work, alongside her summer job. She complains about the dogs taking up all her spare time, but when the family are to go away on holiday she doesn’t want them to just go in the kennels, and persuades her Mom to take them with her.

In Mystery Maid, while Becky is staying in a hotel her room keeps getting messed up and she sees a maid in a black uniform, but  can never catch up with her. When her parents point out all the cleaning staff just wear jeans and t-shirts, she wonders who the girl is. Then coincidentally her friend arrives with the History Society group she is holidaying with. It seems they are doing tours of haunted buildings and they are at this hotel because it is meant to be haunted by a maid from when it was a private house…

In Bunty – a Girl Like You  Bunty enjoys a day out at the beach,  but she doesn’t enjoy the wet dog smell on the way home!

Holly’s Hero with art by Eduardo Feito is set in America, where A girl Holly is a big fan of Beach Watch (obviously a Baywatch reference) and in particular it’s star Chad Chadwick. When Beach Watch starts filming nearby, she is starstruck, but when her dog gets in trouble in the water and Chad wont help because it will mess up his hair and makeup, she sees him as the vain, selfish person he is. Luckily a  friend, (a boy who has had a crush on Holly) saves the dog and Holly sees how he is much better than her “hero”.

The only other photo story besides Luv, Lisa, Dee’s Day Out is about a girl who just moved to a town. As it’s Summer holidays she hasn’t made any friends yet so she is quite fed up. She decides to make a trip to her old home town but misses the train. She does end up meeting a local girl, Tanya, who offers to show her around. By the end of the day she is pleased with what the new town has to offer, she has made friends and has a date.

In Rags to the Rescue, Yvonne is spending her Summer holidays at home in the remote farm, she is happy to have her dog, Rags for company but she wouldn’t mind some human companionship too. There is potential when a neighbouring farm has their nephew, Lee, visiting, but Yvonne seems to keep missing him. But when he gets lost in a cave it is Rags that tracks him down and it is a start of a friendship for Yvonne.

Karen and Jenny are best friends, but after a holiday together will they be Forever Friends? (art by Julio Bosch)At first they are excited that Karen’s parent’s are bringing them to a holiday camp but Karen is not pleased to see how much stuff Jenny is bringing with her. By the end of the car journey they are not talking to each other and neither one of them wants to make up first. After getting stuck on a chair lift together they realise how silly they’ve been and enjoy the rest of the holiday together. Although it looks like there will be more arguments on the way home!

The pupils at The Comp set off for a school trip to Scotland, Grim Gertie expects them to wear their uniform but luckily she is not actually on the trip and Carlton says they can change once they’re away from the school. Freddy and Hodge mess around at one of the Lochs causing Freddy to fall in and later the class participate in some highland games. When the boys get kilts on, Laura threatens to pin the photo on school notice board when they return.

While the regular characters all get at least 5 pages, but the other stories only get 3 pages. This can leave things a bit cramped plot wise, for example in Forever Friends? the girls having a fall out in the car seems a bit soon or in Mystery Maid, we don’t get much of a reason why the ghost maid would be messing things up, other than because she’s a ghost! Still it is a fun issue, that would certainly get readers in the holiday spirit, it has lots of colour and fun features, such as puzzles and it would be good entertainment, whether you were stuck on a long journey or just at home.