Text Stories

Waiting for John  (Pages: 23-25)

A girl is waiting for her long distance boyfriend John to come visit. She reminisces about their history. She’d known him through his crybaby and later bully stage. Then when her friends began dating she jumped at the chance of having a boyfriend when John asked her out. She soon realised what a pain he was.  So when she was in middle of figuring out how to dump him, he solved the problem by moving away. She promised to write figuring a few letters and then it could die out naturally. To her surprise though she found herself liking his letters, he seemed to be more sweet, and interesting, less selfish. She is excited to see him come off the train, but some bad doughnuts she had previously ate, means she has to run quickly to the bathroom. John misunderstands thinking she had seen a scar that he was self conscious of. It soon cleared up and though her stomach churns its not because of the doughnuts but because of love.

Big’s Tall Tale   (Pages: 48-49)

Unusually this prose story is actually told by Big from the Big ‘n’ Bertha humour strip. Big gets up to similar antics that he does in the strip, annoying Dad. After upsetting Dad so much and him calling Big useless, he decides he has to impress him. His attempts don’t work and he is feeling downhearted. Then he realises he has done something impressive…he wrote this story!

Its a fun story and suprisingly for a strip that often relies on the visuals for the gag it actually works well. Its also fun to see things from Big’s perspective.

A Dog is For Life…   (Pages: 72-74)

Laura is very attached to her dog Bess. She has had her for most her life, so Bess is getting old and tired. Her uncle gets her a new puppy because he figures bess is getting old and will need to be replaced when she dies. Yep not the most sensitive relative. Bess is super sensitive though and helps Laura accept this new puppy by teaching him her old trick of fetching the paper. So while Laura isn’t going to give up on Bess she finds she can accept and have affection for this new puppy too. Its not the most exciting story, but it is sweet and for dog lovers I think Laura’s reactions are understandable.

Features

While older Judy annuals used to be crammed with make and do and factual features, there isn’t a whole lot of features here. But still there is some variety and its not features on the latest pop stars or fashion, which later annuals tended to focus on.

• If Only…  (Pages: 12-13)
• Easter Parade (Page: 47)
• Doggie Tales (Page: 81)
• Cat-astrophes! (Page:82)
• Treats for Halloween (Pages: 88-89)
• Best Friends-The Quiz  (Page: 104)

If Only… is a a poem about a girl imagining things like being a pop star, or having leopards for pets. Doggie Tales and Cat-Astrophes are just pages of one shot funnies related to dogs or cats. Easter Parade is a make and do page for painting up eggs for easter. Treats for Halloween has spooky recepies like Horror Fudge Crunch and Witche’s Brew. The Best Friends quiz tests how good a friend you are. Of course most of the questions blatantly make you horrible friend, an obsessive friend or just right!

So overall a pretty decent annual to finish up Judy’s run. Long running characters like Bobby Dazzler and Cinderella Jones are still humorous. The new stories are pretty solid, for the most part, though the romance theme was a predominant feature for nearly all of them.  The three prose stories were different from each other which is good. The art throughout the book is solid and some in particular I found very pretty. It’s still an annual that I can enjoy rereading.