Billie is a fashion designer and her younger sister Lynn is her model and assistant.
Other Appearances:
When Grizel Garstang and her black crow were driven from Salem Rise, the power of witchcraft departed too. Throughout time a member of the Gargstang family would return to terrorise the village leading right up to modern times where schoolgirl Gail knew nothing of her evil ancestors.
Plot
The Mini Morgans are Little People, that perform as a circus act in 1885, along with their friend Martha Little. Unfortunately the circus has to close and while the owner thinks he can get Martha another job, for the Morgans he says the only option is to join a freak show. The Morgans are not happy with being considered freaks and Martha decides she will help find them jobs. The Morgans consist of Ada and Bert the older parental couple, Danny their son, Holly and Jake a younger couple and Frank and Freddy.
Along the way to find new jobs they have to deal with people’s prejudices as well as DeVere the owner of the Freak show trying to capture them. Danny is the first to get job when he comes across a young catatonic girl Emily and manages to entertain her. The grandparents are so grateful that the offer him a place to live and to train him up as a tailor to work with the grandfather. Soon after that, a scheme by DeVere to capture the Morgans leads Ada getting hurt. They get her to a doctor, who tries to scam them saying she will need an operation. Luckily Martha also does some research on Dr. Dakin, and finds out he’s a scam artist, Ada will be fine she just had a concussion
Later Madame DeVere convinces Frank and Freddy to give her a chance only for her to steal their horse and burn their caravan. Holly is the romantic of the group while her boyfriend Jake is more gruff and is not one to show his feelings. They get a job looking after chickens but on their first night a wild dog attacks the chickens, while trying to scare it off Jake is hurt. Unfortunately he doesn’t make it. Holly is devastated and doesn’t want to stay at the farm, but soon after Martha gets gets Holly a job with a family of acrobats. Frank finds a girlfriend, Sally and gets married. Freddy rescues a girl in a fire, and in doing so catches the attention of a rodeo manager who gives him a job. So that only leaves Burt and Ada. Martha does some temporary acrobatics with family. When the parents decide it’s time to retire the son Davy suggests him and Martha could start their own trapeze act. Burt and Ada, see Martha has a chance of love and job and decide to leave before she turns it down. Martha goes after them, she catches up with them just when Burt is nearly killed when he rescues a dog from a flood. Burt and Ada get jobs as gardener and housekeeper with the dogs owner, and Martha feels she can move on now.
Thoughts
There is a lot going on in this story. There is obvious drama but also some comic relief, with the way characters interact with each other, particularly with Frank and Freddy and Holly and Jake. There is also a good sense of family and closeness between the characters.
Holly and Jake are fun with her gushing romance and Jake being more of the gruff type but there is still the sense that he cares about her . His death is really unexpected and touching. We don’t actually see him die, but a doctor says it does not look good for him. It is well done with him declaring his love for Holly, then the next scene cuts to the next day Holly crying wanting to leave and a wordless panel with the Morgans comforting each other.
While that is well done, it is strange that the next issue Jake never gets mentioned, presumably a bit of time has passed but still even in the caption box it basically says there is now only 5 Morgans left but doesn’t mention what happens. Though I suppose it seems that once a Morgan has moved on no matter what the circumstances they aren’t spoken of again. Ada and Bert have a tearful goodbye with their son Danny only for him never to come up in conversation again.
DeVere drops off pretty suddenly as well. just before Holly gets her job, DeVere locks Martha up in order to convince the Morgans that she has abandoned them. She leaves them with her card in hopes they will join her. Martha escapes of course and then the move on, and DeVere is never heard from again. Perhaps she thinks with only 4 of them its not worth her trouble any more as the whole point was to get the entire group, but its never explained what happened to her.
It is a nice story, the Morgans do have to deal with prejudice and being mocked. When things get tough, some of them even feel that maybe being in a freak show is their only option. Clearly Martha is a good friend and very close to them, but its also a bit sad that they sometimes feel a burden to her and that without her help they wouldn’t get much of a chance. I did like that when Martha is upset that Bert and Ada have left and she has to go find them, Davy points out that they are adults and would maybe like to look out for themselves. (Also its one of the few stories featuring little people that doesn’t involve magic, or some hidden society!)
The artwork is good, especially at portraying some of the more emotional scenes. There is plenty of action, drama as well as some humour to keep the story entertaining. The characters are very likeable and their is a nice sense of family and comradeship between them.
In this annual there are 12 picture stories, 5 text stories and 6 features.
A common feature for Mandy annuals is to have a long picture story split throughout the book. In this annual there is one story that totals 36 pages and is split into 4 parts. The rest of the comic strips have a range of 3 to 11 pages.
There doesn’t seem to be as much variety as other annuals. The majority of stories are based on regular characters from the weekly comic such as “Stella Starr” and “Hilary of the Happy Bus”. The features are all quiz based features, each quiz has a theme. For more details read on… (For just a list of contents click here)
A Wedding for Wilma (Pages: 4-9)
Fran is looking for a husband for her elder sister. For what purpose… to quote Fran “If only I could find her a husband to take her away from housework sometimes” Yep not so the husband can help her out but so he can take her away from it sometimes. Really, if that is her worry why doesn’t Fran help her out some time?
Considering this is 1981 annual, Fran’s character seems to be oblivious to any feminist movement. While I don’t think its necessarily a bad thing to have a variety of characters, and not everyone has to be the sensible strong feminist but I think this seems to be a common theme in this annual. There seems to be a lack of characters to contrast the less feminist Fran.
Fran tries to set Wilma up with her gymnastics instructor Tim because he has the great husband qualities of being “ strong and handsome”. She tries to start their “courtship” off by giving them opportunities to spend time together. I question if a 13ish old girl be using the word “courtship” in the 80s. Meanwhile Wilma seems quite capable of making a play for Tim without help from Fran (Go Wilma!).
Unfortunately Tim is fitness freak and his idea of dates is getting her to watch him play football and as she’s so supportive he brings her the teams strips to wash. He also decides to get the girls training for football and a romantic trip on the river turns into skull training for Wilma until she tells him where to shove it. Wilma is actually a good role model in a lot of way. She doesn’t hesitate in considering Tim as a potential boyfriend, but at the same time isn’t dependent on him for happiness and knows when to get out the relationship.
“That’s Not My Gran” (Pages: 11-16/33-44/81-90/120-126)
This is the 4 part complete new story. Jenny goes to visit her gran’s grave. While she’s there a storm blows up and she is knocked out by a branch and doesn’t see a ball of lightning in the sky. She wakes up and goes home and discovers her gran is alive. Which is kind of a creepy premise. Suddenly Gran is back from the dead, not as some zombie but as a mean lady who likes to kick fluffy cute lambs or poor cats.
So this makes Jenny suspicious. Well that and the fact she is the only one that remembers her gran dying in the first place. Gran’s strange behaviour extends to cheating at a cake competition, deciding she wants a driving licence and nearly runs over a guide dog (she really has it in for animals!) and slamming her other granddaughter’s hand in the car boot.
But nobody else seems to notice Grans obvious evilness. Throughout the four parts the big mystery builds up, not only her strange behaviour but gran seems to be able to make people forget things when she looks in their eyes and she doesn’t show up in photographs. Jenny being suspicious of all this strangeness discovers that her “Gran” is actually an alien.
She overhears Gran talking over radio about wheter earth is suitable. It is never actually states what they want Earth to be suitable for but presumably it’s the traditional Alien takeover scheme. As a powerful alien though I don’t know where the thought process was that the best human form to take was that of a previously deceased gran! Luckily the alien accidentally disintegrates itself when it is attacked by a blind man. The aliens not getting their final data about earth presume it’s not suitable for a takeover and everyone forgets about fake gran again (except for Jenny). Alien plots like this are quite common, but what is less common is using an elderly person as often children or teens were used in some manner.
The Living Lie of Linda (Pages: 22-32)
Linda is in a wheelchair after an accident. She is making progress learning to walk again when she overhears her father talking to a woman on the phone saying he can’t leave until Linda’s better. Linda jumps to the conclusion he is having an affair and decides the healthiest way to deal with this is to pretend that she still can’t walk so the father will have to stay with the family against his will.
When she’s out swimming another girl gets into trouble and Linda goes to rescue her so the family discover she can use her legs. It turns out the father was talking to his new boss’s wife about a job offer he wasn’t going to take until Linda was recovered.
While the story is fairly average, I do really like the different angles the artist used in this story its nice to see some experimentation.
Lucy’s Locket (Pages: 45-48)
Art: George Martin
Lucy has a magical locket that brings bad luck to whoever’s photo is in the locket. So you’d think a magical object like that should be kept safe. Lucy thinks its fine to let her little sister play around with the locket and wear it around. When her sister, Ruth, is conned by some market sellers into exchanging the locket for two cheap lockets, Lucy has to figure a way of getting it back.
Luckily for her she doesn’t have to do much because the con woman puts a photo of herself and her husband in the locket. So after a string of bad luck Lucy is able to get the locket back.
Stars in her Eyes (Pages: 52-55)
Art: Richard Neillands
Karen is a girl who thinks horoscopes are a guide for life. When her horoscope for the week says she should take a chance on going someplace different but over-tiredness may ruin the day, she decides she can’t turn down any opportunity. So she agrees to go on a school trip, a youth club trip, help at a jumble sale and go to a disco all on the one day. At each trip she also has a different boy that she agrees to dance with at the disco. She tries not to tire herself out at any of the events, such as skipping the tidy up at the jumble sale, so she will have enough energy at the disco. Of course the three boys have been picking up her slack all day so they end up falling asleep at the disco, so Karen has no-one to dance with anyway!
Blind Ben’s White Christmas (Pages: 57-64)
I am an animal lover so I did feel for the dog in this story. Ben is the family dog on a farm and he is losing his sight. The family of course just let him retire inside the house. Jill’s aunt comes to stay with the family and disrupts everything. She moves furniture around so Ben gets confused and then when Ben is just lying down asleep she blames him when she trips over him. She also insists that he should be put down. I definitely would have told that aunt where to go!
Ben ends up being moved back outside in the snow. Then the aunt goes wandering off in the snow and slips hurting her leg. She would have probably froze to death only for Ben sniffing her out. The aunt apologises to Ben and the family, so everyone has a happy Christmas. I know the drama and conflict has to come from some place, but I really don’t see why the family would even consider putting Ben down because of the aunt’s suggestion. It’s already established other than not being able to see, Ben isn’t in pain and nobody is happy about aunt coming to stay in the first place so why would they be taking her advice!
A girl with amnesia is befriended by Charlie and Elsie Arnett, a cunning couple, who had tricked her into to thinking she was Kathy, the grand daughter of near blind Miss Mannering. The real Kathy was presumed drowned years before, and the Arnetts wanted to collect the reward for her return.
Selina Parr and her parents had just moved into a converted Victorian school building on Sinister Street. Selina enjoyed staying there but grew frightened whenever she heard the school bell ring. For this seemed to transport her back in time to cruel Sinister Street Academy where she became schoolgirl Sara Jane Smith.
When Jenny Johnston and her brother, Gus, went to a new school, all the girls fancied Gus. Jenny, a selfish girl, arranged for Gus to meet girls, but only if they had something that she wanted.
When young Helen Craig inherits Loch Rabb Castle, she sets to run it as a hotel with her Aunt Kate. But the hotel already has an occupant — McHuish, a ghost who has sworn revenge on all Craigs and who is intent on driving away Helen and all her guests.
Bunty Baxter is the envy of all her friends— she her very own Prince Charming! Handsome Prince Stanislaus appeared when Bunty had kissed a fluffy little duckling in the park one day. Many centuries ago, Stan had been bewitched by wizard and every so often, the spell returns, changing all sorts of creatures.
