• Tara’s Terrible Twin – Mandy: #824 (30 October 1982)  – #843 (12 March 1983)
• Artist: Dudley Wynne

• RoseMary – Nikki: #52 (15 February 1986) – #72 (5 July 1986)

Plot

Both of these stories involve a troublesome girl moving to a new town and pretending to be good and nice, while inventing a twin to do all the bad things she wants. Tara (in Tara’s Terrible Twin) pretends to be Terry to get back at people she thinks has done her wrong, while Rose (in RoseMary)invents Mary when she wants to cause trouble. They tell people their other twin goes to other school, because their parents want to keep them separated. They also take advantage of being the “nice twin”  and gain sympathy from classmates about having to deal with such a terrible sister. Even the way they change their looks are similar – both wear school uniforms usually, but change to casual clothes and spike up their hair as the bad twin. Although the main plot is the same, the weekly events and different endings make them distinct.

       

Tara’s Terrible Twin

Tara Young enjoys a lot of aspects of pretending to be nice, with her parents also believing she has changed, they are more lenient with her, such as allowing her to stay out late. It’s not always to her advantage though, as sometimes she ends up in situations where she has to help out, as she is supposed to be sweet and nice. Of course she gets back at the person she helped by venting as Terry, but she still gets annoyed at having to pretend to be nice at times.

In one instance, Tara has found out a classmate, Sally,  is secretly working at a fish shop. The school does not approve of pupils taking part time jobs, so when a teacher asks Sally to help with the library after school she asks Tara to cover for her. Tara not able to say no, in case she blows her cover, spends her evening working and planning her revenge on Sally.  She later visits the shop as Terry before it closes and orders loads of fish then says she doesn’t want them and thrashes the place

Tara continues to terrorize people she believes have done her wrong even when that person isn’t directly involved, such as the time a prefect scolds Tara and she gets back at her younger sister. But not everyone buys into Tara’s act and one girl, Rosemary, begins to get suspicious; if Terry doesn’t get along with Tara then why is she going after people that may have upset Tara? Rosemary gets solid evidence when she catches Terry changing back to Tara, but before she can act on it her family move suddenly when her father has to start a new job. Even after this Tara’s not in the clear as Rosemary sends a letter to her classmates to tell them what she found out but Tara manages to gets to it first and destroy it.

This is not the only time Tara nearly gets caught.  She is again annoyed that she has to help with teas/coffees because her classmate, Fiona, has to help with her visiting cousin. She catches up with Fiona as Terry, but when she changes back into Tara she finds the cousin staring at her. She expects a big blowup at school but is surprised when everyone is still acting friendly. Then Fiona introduces Tara to her cousin, who is blind, so Tara has yet another lucky escape! Another classmate Barbara gets suspicious and tries to set up Tara, by telling her about a party and waiting to see if Terry shows up to spoil it. Tara having heard the plan knows she can’t have Terry ruin things but she does get back at Barbara later.

When it comes to class elections, Tara thinks she’s actually in with a chance as she has friends and people like her. She is jealous when Sylvia wins instead, she is so distracted by this jealousy that she ends up burning her self in cooking class. Of course she doesn’t take any responsibility for this and blames Sylvia for her accident. She thinks it is time for Sylvia to meet Terry! She is surprised that Sylvia isn’t scared of Terry and actually tries to befriend and help her. Then Sylvia sees the burn mark on Terry’s arm and knows she is Tara. She tells her to clear off, and goes home trying to think of a story to make up to explain it, it turns out her parents have news for her though – her dad has been offered a new job. Again Tara thinks she has escaped and pleased that her family have to move quickly due to the job transfer(her parents actually think she’ll be sad to leave all her friends – little do they know!).

Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t recognize the name of the town they move to – Tinsford. She immediately sets up her scheme again when meeting her new classmates telling them about her awful twin Terry. When one girl annoys her, she decides she needs to be visited by Terry, she gets a shock when the girl is surrounded by friends and they all laugh at her. Then Rosemary appears, she has told everyone about what Tara did at their last school and she is not going to get away with it here. So Tara ends up friendless and alone – a deserving punishment!

RoseMary

Rose Bolder also  takes enjoyment of using her “twin” Mary to wreck havoc, while she puts on the innocent act. She also plays up a lot on people’s sympathies with how hard it is dealing with her twin, this way she can get them to do things for her. In one episode she tears up her workbook and tells the others that Mary did it, so a sympathetic classmate allows her to copy her homework. While Rose does like scaring people, she isn’t out to intentionally hurt anyone. When one girl hurts herself running away from Mary, she thinks she didn’t mean for that to happen, but that is the only glimmer of decency we see in Rose, she is soon delighted that it means she gets a place on the hockey team instead.  Sometimes her scheme backfires on her, like her classmates deciding not to tell Rose about party or a picnic in case Mary shows up. Rose is of course very angry when she overhears the plans and makes sure Mary gets revenge, while continuing to pretend to know nothing about it herself!

Like Tara, Rose also has some close calls with people nearly catching her lies. One girl is not going to tolerate being bullied without doing anything and tells Mary she will be informing her parents. Rose has to convince her parents to go out that evening so she can be there to answer the phone. She disguises her voice and reassures the girls parents that Mary will be punished. Another time all the girls decide to confront Mary, Rose tells them Mary found out about their plan and pushed her into a rockery and her parents have sent Mary away for few days. This also deters the girls from confronting Mary again as they don’t want Rose to get hurt. One girl Helen gets suspicious when Rose and Mary coincidentally get injured in same place, but Rose is too crafty and manages to turns the others against her and Helen ends up transferring schools to get away. Rose does so well at deceiving people that even on a school trip, when they run into her old classmates the others don’t believe the bad things they say about Rose and stick up for her. Another person gets suspicious, Amanda, she does not doesn’t take kindly to bullies and stands up to Mary. She also thinks Rose is very crafty so she wants to make sure she has proof to her theory before she challenges her.

Amanda finds an ally and together they trick Rose into confessing. Rose believe’s Amanda is trying to take a photo of her changing into Mary and tells her she is too smart for that, but in fact it’s a bluff by Amanda as she knew Rose would be looking for camera, she actually records their conversation. Amanda and others, go to confront Rose at  her house, she is dressed up pretending to be Mary when her mother comes home and hears everything. Mrs Bolder is upset that Rose’s attitude change has all been faked. Her parents decide the must send her to special school, where she won’t be able to pull her tricks. A few days later, the girls look on as the family move away, Rose shows no remorse, the girls feel sorry for the Bolders and Amanda also feels sorry for Rose because people like her can never really be happy.

Thoughts

Certainly there were many stories with two faced girls, pretending to be nice, while really being nasty, but I don’t think there is many that actually went so far to invent a whole other person to do their dirty work! It’s not that uncommon to have similar stories but for this very specific plot to be used twice in 3 years seems a little unusual, although as they were in two different publications this could be justified! From memory, I did at first confuse the two and thought that RoseMary was a reprint of Tara’s Terrible Twin with a different artist, but it was on rereading I saw the different situations.

The title’s are interesting, “Tara’s Terrible Twin” keeps up the traditional use of alliteration, and I like the “RoseMary” title particularly for it’s clever title card, that distinguishes the two names. Both stories are quite episodic throughout the run, (probably due t their long length 20 and 21 episodes respectively) but have good strong endings. Overall I think Tara’s Terrible Twin has the slight edge,  the use of Rosemary suspecting Tara over several issues is quite effective, especially as she ends up being her downfall in the end, after making the reader think that she was no longer a problem for Tara. Meanwhile Rose has some close calls but the ongoing suspicion from Amanda is only at the end, you get the feeling that Rose’s downfall is close, though there was a nice build up so it wasn’t just wrapped up in the last episode.

I also like how Tara ends up having to give up her time to help people  because of her nice act. She is a very selfish person and any problems she blames on others, such as being “forced” to help. She shows ambition too and seems to think she is deserving more than she gets, such as when she wants to win student council. She is jealous of Sylvia and doesn’t see why she should win over her. It’s clear to the reader why Sylvia would win as she is a genuine and considerate person, which is proven when she actually tries to reach out to Terry and support her. It could have been interesting if  Tara had accepted her help, even after her secret was revealed. Instead she is happy to escape to a new town, where she ends up alone and the one chance that someone could have taken the time and help redeem her is gone.

In RoseMary, throughout the story – Rose, while she does get back at people she believes wronged her, she doesn’t seem to be as vindictive as Tara and let her anger fester, she really just seems to get most enjoyment from causing trouble. Like Tara she does show some ambition as she enjoys sport and does want to get onto the hockey team. Not only does she not show any regard for her classmates, she has no sympathy for her parents either. Again she only thinks about what she can get from them and doesn’t care that they are upset and disappointed in her when her lies are revealed.

Both girls get the ending deserving to them, they’ve caused so much trouble the reader must be happy to see the girls get what’s coming to them. Still there can’t be a complete feeling of satisfaction by the endings, as the last panels show reasons the readers should sympathize. In Tara’s Terrible Twin the last panel (along with the closing caption) shows Tara looking dejected and alone, leading us to think she may not be as tough and uncaring as she likes to portray. In contrast, Rose still has an uncaring attitude at the end she believes even in a new school she’s clever enough to outsmart the teachers, the readers must feel bad for her parents at least, but even Amanda expresses that girls like Rose are also deserving of our pity.