Welcome to the World of Yesterday! If you haven’t guessed, this is a site about UK girls’ comics that ran from the late 50s to the early 00s. At the height of their popularity there were tons of comics available, Bunty, Debbie, Diana, Girl, Jinty, Judy, Mandy, Misty, Tammy……. By the time I was reading them in the late 80s/early 90s a lot of these comics had disappeared or merged into one of their successful competitors.  This site is primarily addressing the 3 publications that I am most familiar with; Bunty, Mandy and Judy. While it is in the early stages at the moment updates will include descriptions/observations about the annuals, picture library stories and stories that were published by these comics.  So put on some nostalgia goggles and enjoy!  🙂

Just for some fun to start off, here are some out of context panels:

When I was growing up I had the excitement of going to the newsagent and getting my weekly dose of girls comics, filled with stories about girls in boarding schools, girls starving on the Victorian era streets of London, girls who had drank invisible or shrinking potions, girls who had mysterious neighbours to investigate and many other stories that pulled me in each week.

While I never aspired to be a ballerina or to own a horse, there were lots of other stories to appeal to me. Whether you liked ghost stories, sci-fi, mysteries, historical stories, tragedy, drama, romance, or the stories about ballerinas and horses, there was a wide variety of stories that appeared during the comics’ long run. Unfortunately the last of these types of comics ended ten years ago, although the Christmas annuals were still alive up to 2009. Of course these stories weren’t perfect, often plots were recycled, so many stories saw the tragic heroine denied to dance/skate/sing by their strict parents/cruel aunt and uncle or some variation on that. Sometimes the protagonist were ridiculously good and the bullies unredeemable. Often the story was resolved suddenly with some sort of a deus ex machina. Despite these flaws these comics did provide some gems of stories, beautiful artwork and great entertainment all around.  I mean where else would you find a story about a girl finding a talking rabbit shaped spaceship that flies her around exploring new planets?