Category Archives: M&J

Hateful Harriet \ “Be Nice to Nancy!”

Bunty, Judy, M&J, ,

Girls comics were full of bullying, blackmail and nasty girls. As evidenced in this interesting article: http://www.booksmonthly.co.uk/bully.html. So I thought I’d take a look at some of these, starting with two similar stories:

Hateful Harriet

  • Hateful Harriet–  Bunty:  #668 (31 Oct 1970) – # 677 (02 Jan 1971)
  • Reprinted- Bunty: #1164 (03 May 1980) – #1173 (05 July 1980)
  • Art: Andy Tew

Plot

Peg Roberts has to keep Harriet Marlowe out of trouble in school, or else her widowed mother will be fired by middle manager, Mr. Carrick.  Harriet has been expelled from many schools, and is sent to live with the Roberts as well. At the same time as this, Peg   is competing for a drama scholarship, which also relies on her getting a good character reference from her teachers. Of course Harriet causes Peg all sorts of trouble, and has the teachers fooled that she is a sweet girl.   Mrs. Roberts can’t do anything to help as she is also at the beck and call of Harriet. Finally Harriet gets caught out and expelled and Mr. Carrick  fires Mrs. Roberts. Luckily for her she gets a job in a travel agents. Harriet is to be sent to school in Switzerland, though she doesn’t seem happy about it.  On the day of Peg’s big interview for her scholarship, Harriet is in an accident with a bridge collapse. After Peg misses her interview to save her life, Harriet turns over new leaf and helps Peg get a second chance with the scholarship. She in turn is given a second chance with the school and is allowed to come back.

hateful_harriet_03

 

“Be Nice to Nancy!”

  • “Be Nice to Nancy!” – Judy: #1559 (25 Nov. 1989) – #1573 (03 Mar. 1990)
  • Reprinted as Be Nice to Nikki – M&J: #288 (16 Nov. 1996) – #300 (08 Feb. 1997)
  • Artist:  Andy Tew

Plot

Yvonne Baxter has to be nice to Nancy Norden (Nikki in the reprint), or she fears her father will lose his job. Nancy is openly nasty and a bully and is not popular at school. This of course causes many troubles for Yvonne as she keeps covering for her. She loses friends and gets in trouble in school.  When she tries to explain how nasty Nancy is to her parents, they don’t listen. Only her best friend Maggie knows what’s going on. Eventually Mr. Norden catches Nancy out and he apologises to Yvonne. He was hoping that she would be a good influence on Nancy. He is going to send her to a special school instead and of course Mr. Baxter isn’t going to be fired.

be nice to nancy_02

Thoughts

A girl forced to be friends with a nasty girl for fear of a parent’s job is a common theme. There were ,any variations of this theme such as the family’s reputation, rather than a job, being in jeopardy. The link at the start of this post discusses a lot of the different types of bullying that went on in these stories.

Both Hateful Harriet and Be Nice to Nancy have an overall similar storyline. Even their looks correspond with the long blonde hair for the antagonist and the shorter dark hair of the protagonist. Both Harriet and Nancy get up to similar trouble and share a lot of the same personality traits. At the same time Peg and Yvonne both feel helpless and dislike having to cover for the other girls. There are differences though, in how the stories develop and conclude. In the case of Hateful Harriet, Mrs. Brown knows what Harriet is like but not only can she not help Peg she also has to give into Harriet’s demands. (Incidentally this story would not work today, as Mrs. Roberts boss could be charged with wrongful dismissal, at first he wants to fire her because of her age and only keeps her on as long as she keeps his boss’s daughter out of trouble).

hateful_harriet_02

Yvonne on the other hand tries to tell her parents what Nancy is like but they don’t listen. Her father in particular keeps the pressure on her to be friendly with Nancy. While Nancy does use this to her advantage,  Yvonne seems to feel the most pressure from her father and Mr. Norden rather than Nancy herself.  Harriet likes to constantly remind the Roberts that they have to keep her happy.

be nice to nancy_03

Harriet does get redeemed in the end but Nancy hasn’t learned her lesson. This contrast could be to do with the way their fathers deal with their daughters. While Nancy’s father is actively trying to help her out (though he may be going about it the wrong way!). Harriet’s father doesn’t appear at all, instead his orders are passed through lower manager Mr. Carrick. Clearly Harriet is not used to people being kind to her for no reason, she seems to be following her father’s behaviour of using power and threats to get what she wants. She is used to being shipped around and her behaviour becomes more understandable when it seems she hasn’t had a very caring home life. When Peg shows her friendship, even after Mrs. Roberts gets a new job and then saves her life, Harriet turns her life around and starts to appreciate her friendship.

hateful_harriet_01

Nancy is a less sympathetic character. Mr. Norden does try to help his daughter but he goes about it the wrong way. He puts the pressure on Yvonne to be friends with her thinking that if she is not with a bad crowd then she will be a better person and stay out of trouble. He dosen’t realise that she needs more help than that and that it is unfair to expect Yvonne to be responsible for keeping his daughter on the right path. At least Nancy does get the chance to go to a school that will help her, but she doesn’t have the excuses of Harriet for her bad behaviour.

be nice to nancy_01

Hateful Harriet is a bit more dated, and Peg is such a good person that she goes to support Harriet in a play that she should have been lead in (this is after Mrs. Roberts gets her new job). It’s a bit unbelievable that a girl could be this nice! Harriet’s change of heart may be a bit sudden but after a near death experience not unlikely. Be Nice to Nancy is a story that is remembered pretty well so it must have stuck in people’s mind. It is more realistic in it’s portrayal of characters and everything isn’t all wrapped up neatly in the end. Still most importantly the protagonist gets a happy ending, free of Nancy!

It’s interesting to see how a similar theme can develop differently, and of course very telling is the different time periods as they were first published nearly 2 decades apart.

The Locked Room

Judy, M&J, ,
  • The Locked Room – Judy: #1153 (13 February 1982) – #1162 (17 April 1982)
  • Reprinted – Judy: #1459 (26 December 1987) – #1466 (13 February 1988)
  • Reprinted (as Judy Classic ) – M&J:  #188 (17 December 1994) – #195 (04 February 1995)
  • Reprinted and translated into Dutch (as “De afgesloten kamer”) – Debbie #48 (1985).
  • Art: Paddy Brennan

Plot

Susan Brown lives with her parents, her older brother Phil and younger sister Linda. They are a close family, helping each other out and sharing everything. That is until one night something strange happens. First Susan hears and accident on the road, she runs out to investigate and finds a puppy on the road and a car driving away. She settles the puppy in the shed, as he seems to be terrified of the house. The next morning she gets up and can’t find any of her family. She finds one of the rooms locked and her family reappear acting peculiar.

lockedroom_01

Her father tells her he has new scientific equipment in the room that can’t be meddled with and that is why it is locked. The family continue to act strangely, they don’t joke or talk naturally. Instead they seem cold and their speech is stilted.  Her mother finds it interesting that Susan thinks they talk strangely, and after this conversation Susan sees them watching a TV programme about learning English.  When she raises concerns with a family friend, already the speech patterns are loosening up. Susan feels very alone and tries to find the secret of the locked room herself.

lockedroom_02

She gets an opportunity to search the house when the family leave looking for samples, for an experiment. She finds a furnace with a very high temperature gauge in her father’s office and she also finds a false eyelash in her parent’s room. Later when her father and Phil are using the furnace she burns her hand on the office doorknob and passes out.  She wakes up locked in her room (with bandaged hand) and gets another chance to investigate as the family are missing again.

Finally she gets into the locked room through a trapdoor in the attic. What she finds in there are her parents, Phil and Linda lying unconscious in the room.  Fearing they are dead Susan cries, and her tears un-paralyses her real family. The fake family were actually copies made by miniature aliens that crashed outside their house. They have collected all the metal they needed to repair their ship and fly away. The copies of themselves just melt away.

lockedroom_06

Thoughts

This is one of my favourite stories, I mean who couldn’t love a story where the explanation for a family acting strangely is because they are copies being controlled by miniature aliens! It is a good sci-fi story, the mystery of what has happened to the family is interesting. Also what the secret of the locked room is, is quite intriguing, I would have guessed some alien technology or something similar at first. In my first reading I assumed the family were being mind controlled rather than copies (which has been the case in other stories like “The Face in the Crystal”). Also nice change to to see there aren’t sinister motivations, the aliens are just trying to get home and have no interest in taking over Earth.

lockedroom_05

So it is a nice pay-off to see what is in the locked room and I do love the image of the little spaceship flying away afterwards. Though one flaw is the ending seems to be full of expository dialogue. First the explanation of why Susan’s tears free the family, then the father’s theory of what has been going on from the aliens crashing and why they locked them up.  Also conveniently the clones melt away clearing up any last bit of evidence. Still other than that it is a solid story.

lockedroom_07

There is a lot great imagery in the story and also the contrast of the family and alien family is handled well. It could have been interesting to see the aliens in their actual form, but I think it works well with just having them fly away, and not interact with the family after they are free. It was good to see them try to fit in, and adjust to human life while they are working on their repairs. The real Mrs. Brown was relaxed and a bit scatty, whereas alien Mrs. Brown tries to follow advice from housekeeping magazines, to try and be the best mother. As Susan was out of the house when they took it over, they were not expecting a fifth member of the family. Although they are cold and wooden to Susan and don’t want to her to interfere with their plans, they don’t actively set out to hurt her.  Fake Mr. Brown bandages up her hand when she is hurt and Mrs. Brown tries to follow housekeeping’s advice in being a mother to Susan. Good characters, intriguing mystery and some nice sci-fi explanations.

Double Take

M&J, ,
  • Double Take – M&J:  #178 (8 October 1994) – #187 (10 December 1994)
  • Artist: Juliana Buch

Plot

Toni Dayley’s family move to a bigger, newly built house, down the street from their old home.  Toni notices a new couple with a baby have moved into her old house. She soon becomes friends with the “Baileys” and offers to babysit the baby. Passing by one evening a small fire breaks out in the sitting room and Toni warns the Baileys. After all her help, they decide to name the baby after her. (They had previously been undecided between the names  Hannah and Natalie). Toni is thrilled about this, although she is reminded that her parents had said their was a fire in their house previously and it scorched the same wall.

double_take_05

After this Toni,  notices similar things keep happening to baby Toni, that happened to her as a baby as well. Like baby Toni’s gran dies, her christening is cancelled when she gets German measles and she comes third in a beautiful baby competition. The one thing that convinces her that it just a bunch of coincidences is that their surnames are different. Then she hears a postman calling Mrs. Bailey; Mrs Dayley,  she realises that she had assumed the family were Baileys when she had answered the door to a delivery man on the first day and he had called them Baileys, mistakenly.

double_take_02

She goes home and find old photos of her family and sees they are the same as the Baileys/Dayleys. She rushes over to tell them but a new family has moved into the house and the spell seems to have been broken. Toni is sad at first because she feels she has lost friends, but then realises that she still sees them every day as they are actually her  own parents and she is baby Toni!

double_take_01

Thoughts

So this is a story that involves time travelling, but as the protagonist doesn’t know she’s travelling back in time, the character/story is more focused on the mystery of  the odd occurrences.  There are several hints that she is back in the past. For the most part she only meets the young family at their house, so she does not interact with the past much. Only once do they go to a fair, and Mrs Dayley says comments on the new music, which is old to Toni.  There is also a few incidents where, they comment that they can’t find Toni’s house and she’s like “its the new one” and they brush it off as just not being able to place it, oh well! She is also the only one to interact with the family,  although her present parents arrange to meet family on a few occasions,  something always comes up like the Christening being cancelled.

double_take_04

While this story isn’t really grounded in reality, in order for the story premise to work, a major plot point is that is that Toni doesn’t see any physical resemblance between her parents and the “Baileys”. Yes they have got older, new haircuts and the such, but Toni doesn’t see any resemblance until she finds an old photo, that seems odd.  It’s only 14 years or so, it seems strange that that they would look so different, also a bit odd that she had never seen old photos of her family!

Another thing is, I wonder what the younger parents reaction to Toni disappearing was.  Considering they named their daughter after this girl and they were going to make her the Godmother, did they ever wonder where she went to? The mother comments on Toni having the same top as an old babysitter, but it doesn’t seem like it brought back terrible memories of a young girl vanishing. Maybe they rationalised it as she moved away quickly or something? But if she recognised the top that a babysitter wore years ago, wouldn’t that trigger memories like wait a minute she was called Toni as well and she looked a lot like you do now! Or maybe I shouldn’t over think this!

double_take_03

Other than these issues with some plot points, the art is decent, the story is fun, and the characters are likeable. This was printed in the 90s, which was a time where a lot of stories involved romance (which I do like, some of the time too), so this made a nice change, a story with a focus on a mystery and mostly just a girl forming a good friendship with her parents as young adults. There are other stories where girls actually knowingly made friends with younger versions of relatives, but I think her not knowing is part of the charm (even if it does cause some story problems!).

My Cousin Quacker

M&J, , ,
  • My Cousin Quacker–  M&J: #1 (18 May 1991) – #11 (27 July 1991)
  • Artist: Wilf Street

Plot

Sally and her friend Jean are on a camping holiday. Also with them is Sally’s older cousin Kate who spends her whole time complaining and getting the girls to run around for her. While out for a walk they stop at an old woman’s cottage which is surrounded by animals. Kate makes fun of the old woman, who informs them that the animals used to be people who annoyed her. Kate continues to make fun, so the woman seems to put a spell on her.

mycousinquaker_01

When the girls get back to camp it starts raining hard.  Kate complains and wants to go home, but that would mean the end of the holiday for Sally and Jean too,  so they go for a takeaway, to keep Kate happy. When they come back Kate is gone and instead there is a duck on her bed with a half eaten note that just says Kate. The girls conclude that Kate has been turned into the duck and that they will have to go back to the old woman to change her back. Miss Knight won’t admit to anything but tells them to come back the next day. When they return they find she has gone to visit her sister. The girls name the duck the more inconspicuous sounding Quacker and and go to track down Miss Knight.

Of course mishaps and adventures happen along the way including Quacker getting sold to a restaurant. Luckily it’s actually a vegetarian restaurant and Quacker is there just to enhance the scenery  The owner Miss Boxer tells the girls if they want the duck back they will have to pay for it, so the end up being waitresses  at the restaurant.  Later they also end up disrupting a carnival procession, where Quacker is quite the hit.

mycousinquaker_04

They finally catch up with Miss Knight, who agrees to change Kate back at a price. There is no immediate affect but Miss Knight tells them it takes a while. So they head home, but soon realise they have been swindled and wonder how to break the news to Kate’s parents.  Suddenly Kate arrives it turns out she had met some friends at camp and gone off with them in their camper van. Of course Quacker had eaten most of the note she had left. The girls are disheartened to learn they’ve been chasing after a real duck and now Sally is stuck with it as a pet.  But as Quacker chases Kate, Sally can see advantages of having her new pet.

mycousinquaker_05

Thoughts

I don’t know who the artist is but they seemed to do a lot of humorous,  light hearted stories including “Haunted Hotel” and “Polly and the Prince”. Which does suits the artist style as the characters do have a cartoon look too them and actually act quite cartoony as well. Even though Quacker is not actually Kate, she would be quite extraordinary for a normal duck. Including one instance where she ends up riding a horse.

mycousinquaker_03

While the girls thinking Kate has been turned into a duck would be ridiculous in most circumstances, in these comics it was not uncommon for girls to be cursed by witches. For example “Dogsbody Debbie” is a story where a magician places a spell on a girl, so every time she complains about being a dogsbody she turns into a dog! Though the girls become more convinced that Quacker is Kate, such as Kate being a good horse rider, there are clues from the first issue that she is not a duck. There is a camper van next to there tent before they go for takeaway, which is gone when they get back. Also when they confront Miss Knight the first time, she seems surprised commenting that she must be more powerful than she thought! Whether you know that the girls have spent their time chasing after a real duck or not it’s still works as a fun story.

I Love Dave!

M&J, Nikki,

Plot

Humour strip about  girl who tries to get the attention of her crush, Dave. Several of the shorter strips were reprinted in M&J under the cartoon section.

i-love-dave

Notes

Appeared

  • I Love Dave! – Nikki: circa #139 (17 October 1987) – (?)
  • Reprinted  –
    • First appeared  M&J: #75 (17 October 1992)
    • Last appeared  M&J: #87 (9 January 1993)

Debbie’s Dream House

M&J,

Plot

Debbie Jackson and the younger siblings were living in a children’s home. In a recurring dream Debbie had seen a large house which she felt sure really did exist. Convinced that the house was intended to be a home for her family, Debbie was determined to prevent a permanent foster home being found for them until she had found their dream house.

debbie-dream-house

Notes

  • Artist: Bert Hill

Appeared

  • Debbie’s Dream House – M&J: #49 (18 April 1992) – #57 (13 June 1992)

City Farm

M&J,

Plot

When Alice Hanson’s dad lost his job, the family had been forced to move to a flat in the city. Alice found it  hard to fit in at her big new school and she was glad to find refuge at the local city farm. But the farm’s future was at risk from a new development…

city-farm

Notes

Appeared

  • City Farm – M&J: #215 (24 June 1995) – #222 (12 August 1995)

All Change! [1997]

M&J

Plot

Dawn Burton’s family had got new neighbours. The two families sounded almost identical — their fathers had the same jobs and the children were all the same ages — but Dawn believed that, somehow, the Jones family was better than hers.

allchange1997

Notes

Appeared

  • All Change! – M&J: #308 (5 April 1997) – #314 (17 May 1997)