Tag Archives: Hate campaign

The Comp: Bunty PSL #348 (1992)

Bunty, Picture Story Library, , , , , , , , , ,

Published: Bunty PSL #348

Artist: Peter Wilkes

Writer: Anthea Skiffington

Special thanks to Goof for scans

Plot

Grim Gertie is hospitalised, bringing in a substitute teacher, Mrs Whitely. Laura Brady isn’t off to a good start with Whitely when she rushes to registration, which causes her to collide with Whitely and tread on her toes. “Trust me – I just crashed into Gertie’s stand-in!” But the real bad start comes when Whitely discovers Laura’s name during registration. All of a sudden she is looking daggers at Laura, seems to have a sudden thing about Laura being a problem pupil or something, and says, “I shall remember you, Laura Brady.”

From then on, it’s bully teacher time for Laura. Whitely constantly singles Laura out for unwarranted and unfair punishment, even for things that are totally untrue, and detentions are a particular punishment. It starts with her giving Laura detention for homework with four wrong answers, sloppiness and scribbles. Now that’s bizarre to say the least. Okay, so Laura did the homework while being engrossed with a Tom Cruise movie on television, but it looks like everyone else did too. Her mother, who checked her homework, can vouch it was tidy and scribble-free, so what’s Whitely talking about? Later, Laura finds out others did even worse than her on the homework assignment and didn’t get detention – so why did she get it?

At any rate, as Laura is soon to discover, it makes no difference to Whitely as to whether her schoolwork is the best or not.

At first Laura’s classmates think she is just imagining things about Whitely, but they change their minds as it grows more obvious. On one occasion Whitely pounces on Laura for trying to ping a paper pellet at Hodge; Hodge says it was his fault for pinging it first, but Mrs Whitely refuses to listen and punishes Laura with a stinging 500 lines. On another, she punishes Laura for talking in class; her friends admit they talking too, but Whitely doesn’t listen to them.

Whitely also refuses to hear Laura’s pleas that these constant detentions are causing her to miss out on vital hockey practice and matches, which incurs the displeasure of Miss Bliss (“The Blizzard”) against her. As a result, Laura eventually loses her place in the hockey team.

The class reckon it must be Whitely’s trodden toes. Their only advice to Laura is to ignore it, but that’s easier said than done. As Gertie will not be fit to return for a while yet, Laura fears her bully teacher ordeal looks set for the long haul. She has not spoken to her parents about it, not even when Mum asks at one point why she’s crying.

Meanwhile, the class visit Gertie in hospital and discover the maternity wing badly needs funds or face closure. They decide to pitch in, and settle on a Fun Day to raise funds. They need approval from their form teacher before approaching the Head. But when Laura suggests it to Whitely, she won’t listen: “Don’t bother me with your ridiculous notions, Laura Brady!” Then Laura discovers that a few minutes earlier, Whitely thought it was a great idea when Hayley and Roz suggested it, and told them to go straight to the Head for permission. This makes her even more convinced Whitely hates her.

The Head agrees to the Fun Day, sets the date for the last day of half term, and he must approve of the events being held. This could be problematic, as Hodge has scripted a parody of Redvale, “Riotvale Comp”, with parodies of the school staff. Laura is in the role of the Grim Gertie parody, “Miss Gruesome”.

Although Hodge tries to keep this school parody hidden from the Head, he inevitably finds out. Surprisingly, Hodge comes back with the news that the Head gave his approval to stage Riotvale, with “one or two tiny conditions”, such as a couple of small changes to the script. Hmm, is there a hint of something else here? Anyway, rehearsals for Riotvale continue. For Laura they are a welcome relief from her growing miseries with Whitely, and despite them, she is coming along well in the role.

But then Whitely goes too far. She forces Laura to do a homework assignment twice, saying the first was sloppy while Laura had taken care she would have no cause for complaint, plus having to do those 500 lines as well. Then she springs a surprise test on the class over the material. Laura is determined to score well, and ought to after running through the material twice. But when she does, Whitely hauls her before the Head with claims she saw Laura cheating in the test, but as there is no way these accusations can be true, Whitely can only be lying. The Head sends a letter to Laura’s parents, and there’s more detention for her. It’s getting too much for Laura, and she decides to drop out of Riotvale.

When the letter arrives, Laura reaches breaking point and finally tells her parents her teacher hates her. But they don’t believe it: “Now, that’s silly, dear. Why should she?” At this, Laura runs out of the house, still yelling that Whitely hates her and shouting at her parents for not listening to her. She then decides to run away, unable to take any more of Whitely. By now she has realised there has to be far more to this than trodden toes but can’t think what.

In class, Whitely notices Laura’s absence, but only says “perhaps we’ll have some peace and quiet for a change”, which further convinces the class that Whitely is gunning for her. She isn’t even asking questions about Laura’s absence.

Laura left the house in such a state that she forgot her schoolbag, which brings Mum up to the school. From there, she discovers discovers Laura is missing and reports it to the Head, who calls the police.

Mum asks to speak with Whitely. When she sees her, she now believes Laura, for she has recognised Whitely as Susan Stigmore, a nasty piece of work who used to be an old enemy of Laura’s aunt at school. When Mum confronts Whitely about this, her malice spills over and she expresses venomous comments about Laura and her aunt. She then realises her mistake in doing this right in front of the Head, but it’s too late – she’s been caught out. He sacks her and writes a report that will make sure she never finds another teaching job.

Laura is soon picked up, and everything is sorted out. When the other teachers hear about Whitely’s conduct, the Blizzard reinstates Laura on the hockey team. And Laura is back in Riotvale.

Two weeks later, it’s Fun Day, and Gertie is back. Riotvale is a thundering success. But then Hodge tells the gang what he had not told them before (aha!). The Head had granted permission to stage Riotvale on the condition that the school staff have their own sling-a-sponge event afterwards – with the Riotvale cast as targets. And boy, are the staff loving it! Revenge at last for all those things they put up with in class.

However, the Riotvale cast get revenge on Hodge with another fundraising idea: 10p to help throw him into the school fountain. And so he is, much to his chagrin. Ah well, it’s all in good fun and fundraising for Fun Day.

Thoughts

This is a PSL to be read over and over. There’s so much in it for readers to enjoy, and it is a well-constructed story that interweaves two contrasting elements with each other: the bully teacher and the Fun Day. Fun Day delivers the ever-popular charity cause theme, a brazen school parody that’s a welcome change from tired old fund-raising events, and heaps of fun on the big day that will finish half term with a bang. Providing contrast is the ever-popular bully teacher theme, with the drama, emotion, misery, and bullying that grows worse and worse until it becomes too unbearable. Added to it is the mystery element – what is Whitely’s problem with Laura?

There isn’t a DCT regular strip (The Four Marys, Penny’s Place, etc) that hasn’t had a bully teacher at some point, but it’s never a regular member of staff – it’s a new/substitute teacher. Whitely belongs to this long-standing tradition, as she does to the long-standing tradition of new/substitute teachers frequently spelling trouble of some sort in girls’ comics.

Bullying a pupil because of a long-standing grudge against a family member is a common theme. “Teacher’s Pet” (Judy) is another example of this. It also has the added tension of mystery to the story – why does the teacher hate the girl? And girls just love mystery in comics. And because the pupil doesn’t understand the teacher’s motives in bullying her, she may start wondering if she’s the one at fault.

The story was ingenious in throwing in the little mishap Laura had with Whitely right at the start, as misdirection for why Whitely hated Laura. If Laura (or reader) had looked more carefully at Whitely’s initial reactions to her, she might have realised it was something about her name that set Whitely off. Whitely changing her name through marriage was also a clever means in keeping her motives concealed and making them harder to figure out. If she’d come to the school as Miss Stigmore, it might have set off a few alarm bells with Laura’s family or laid some clues for Laura to pursue.

It’s no surprise to hear Whitely was a bully in her youth. It’s not clear if she was a bully teacher before Redvale or if Laura just brought out the worst in her because she was related to her old enemy. But, as it is obvious Whitely never learned her lesson about bullying, she was set to be a bully in adulthood. A teaching career would put her on course as a bully teacher who could bully other pupils, and ones who reminded her of Laura’s aunt would be particularly vulnerable. So we can all say thank goodness she was out of the teaching profession in the end. Her bully streak made her totally unfit for it.

But it’s not all depressing bully teacher time. The Fun Day thread is a total delight and a welcome light relief and contrast to the bully teacher situation. It’s all in a good cause, and Riotvale puts it above a whole new level. Without it, the Fun Day plot line would not have been nearly so much rollickin’ good fun for the reader. When the Head added the condition to performing it, we can just imagine his reasoning for it: “If you’re having your piece of fun with us, it’s only fair we have ours with you, eh?” Well, yes, he’s right – it’s fair exchange, and we have to laugh at the added twist it gives. Setting Fun Day at the end of the half term finishes off the half term in grand style, and the added punishment of Hodge gives Fun Day an even higher and more satisfactory note to end the story on.

Wynne Against the School [1978]

Emma, ,
  • Wynne Against the School –  Emma:  #30 (16 September 1978)  – #43 (16 December 1978)
  • Art: Carlos Freixas

Plot

Wynne Taylor is a promising track star, and when her family move to a new town she is approached by a top athletics club, the Harriers, to join. She promises to run in their next relay meeting, not knowing how many problems it will cause her in the future! Everyone in her new school become very unwelcoming when Wynne says she can’t run for the school at the meeting, as she has already promised the Harriers. Worse luck is that the Miss Baker who is in charge of athletics, is also her form teacher  and she starts to give Wynne a hard time in class . She tells Wynne, her work isn’t up to standard and calls her impudent when Wynne tries to defend herself. At the meeting Wynne wins for the Harriers against her new school, to the calls of “Traitor!”.

Despite saying she wants to run with the school when she’s not with the Harriers, nobody thinks this is good enough compromise. When Wynne tries to use school equipment, the girls, led by sports captain Wanda, pick on her and throw her uniform in the shower, she then gets extra work from Miss Baker for not being in proper uniform. Only one girl, Annie, tries to help Wynne out, but she gets her bike wheel stolen for her efforts. Wynne helps her find it, and promises not to tell anyone she helped so Annie doesn’t get hassled more . This gets her in trouble when she’s late for school athletic training, Miss Baker tells her not to bother to change. Tired of being pushed around, she runs in her uniform and still beats everyone, making her as unpopular as ever. The girls don’t even want Wynne representing the school at county level.

Despite efforts by the other girls, Annie continues to be friendly in secret with Wynne. She is still a timid girl, so when Wynne and Annie both get chance at scholarship to another school, Wynne fluffs her chance so that Annie can escape this bullies. This does mean Wynne that not only has to stay at Brainton Academy, but also loses her only friend at the school. She does briefly find friendship elsewhere with John Talbot, who also goes for morning runs to train for Rugby. A local newspaper takes a photo of the two of them together and quote Wynne out of context. This of course riles the girls up again, and Wanda ruins Wynne’s new friendship, by pretending to be Wynne on the phone. She tells John she hasn’t time to waste on stupid kids when he asks “Wynne” for some tickets to her next competition. Wanda meanwhile supplies the tickets and succeeds in turning John against Wynne.

Wanda’s hate campaign against Wynne starts to get more personal, as she is jealous of all the attention she gets. She starts trying to get Wynne in more serious trouble, like  when they visit a  school in France, she tries to set Wynne up as vandalising the school with graffiti. Luckily Wynne while up early for morning run, is able to repair the damage before anyone sees. More trouble follows when the local newspaper runs the story about Wynne’s treatment at the school, Miss Baker wants Wynne to show that everyone is really friendly but Wynne isn’t interested. The reporters get a picture that looks like Wanda attacking Wynne and then Wynne gets suspended while the head hopes the bad publicity dies down and she can investigate further! Knowing the school wants to keep the story quiet, Wanda again impersonates Wynne on the phone  telling  the local newspaper about the suspension and that Wynne is being victimised. Wynne is able to deny she made the call as she has an alibi.

With the story still out there, people are sympathetic to Wynne and start to send her gifts. Seeing this as an opportunity to stir more trouble, Wanda gets Wynne disqualified from a race as she claims she is not an amateur. Wynne’s parents have had enough of the way she’s being treated, and Mr Taylor says he will ask for another transfer, Wynne’s happiness is most important. Wanda not knowing of this latest development, is still out to get Wynne. Having stolen her pendant, she vandalises a classroom leaving the pendant there as evidence. Wynne out for her early run, notices lights on in school and goes to investigate. She catches Wanda burning  the head’s papers but it goes out of control. Wynne ends up saving Wanda and putting fire out, as a policeman arrives. When the head visits Wanda in hospital, she tries to blame Wynne at first, but then breaks down and confesses. Things happen quickly and the Taylors move away. At her first race in her new home, her old schoolmates and and teachers come to apologise and cheer her on. Wynne wins setting a new record and feeling accepted at last.

Thoughts

Firstly this has a very pun-tastic title,  I do like wordplay in titles! Carlos Freixas art is top notch as always and the story is engaging. While at the start, the campaign against Wynne is by whole school, by the end it focuses more on Wanda’s jealousy. While Wanda’s actions become more extreme, I feel she ends up becoming a sort of scapegoat for the rest of the school, who have all acted terrible too. The school show up at Wynne’s race in her new home, and tell her Wanda has made a full confession and they have come to apologise, which implies it was all Wanda’s doing that turned the school against her! While some of the girls follow the lead of Wanda, really it’s the adults that should have known better. It’s  some of their actions that influence the students.

Miss Baker clearly sets things up against Wynne, even coming down on her school work. As the girl’s coach she is held in high regard. She does still care about school reputation, so while simultaneously being hard on Wynne, she lets the French School fuss over Wynne rather than Wanda, as she wants their school to give a good impression.  It’s actions like these that fuel Wanda’s spite of Wynne. Miss Baker also tells Wynne to come back  and show the news reporters how friendly everyone is, when Wynne doesn’t listen, Wanda tries to pull her back, clearly following Miss Baker’s lead. It’s no wonder Wanda acts as she does, she may have her own jealousy issues, but is not helped by her her coach being antagonistic with Wynne (when it suits her!) and Wanda’s position of school captain being undermined. The headmistress is no better suspending Wynne while she investigates the whole story. You’d think punishment would be doled out after an investigation not before! Also odd that Wynne’s parents aren’t called in to discuss the matter. Even though Wynne isn’t seeking sympathy, it’s no wonder people reading the newspaper story side with her and really the school should be trying to put things right, rather than making things worse suspending Wynne.

While the Taylors don’t appear much, it is nice to see that they are supportive of their daughter. While Wynne doesn’t want her dad to set back his career, he puts her happiness first  (though luckily a similar position elsewhere is available). Wynne is very strong willed, despite all the obstacles, she doesn’t let that interfere with her running. She doesn’t take the easy way out and shows her loyalty numerous times. She doesn’t back out of running with the Harriers, she helps her friend Annie out of the school as she knows she is strong enough to deal with the bullies and despite the hard times she doesn’t go around bad mouthing the school and is opposed to the newspaper story (despite it being pretty accurate!). While the Taylors do end up moving away, it is good to see she does get acceptance from her old school at last, though I still feel they could have shown more contriteness. Wynne has shown that she that would succeed with or without their approval anyway.

 

Teacher’s Pet [1990]

Judy, , , , ,
  • Teacher’s Pet  – Judy: #1574 (10 March 1990) – #1583 (12 May 1990)
  • Artist: Julio Bosch (Martin Puigagut?)

Plot

Anna Norman gets on well in school until the arrival of a new teacher Miss Johnstone. Her new form teacher, starts favouring her immediately, earning Anna the name of “Teacher’s Pet” from her classmates. Even when Anna tries to get in trouble it makes things worse, such as when she is late to class she expects to be punished, like her other classmates were, but “Stoney” Johnstone just lets her away with it, and everyone else just thinks Anna’s taking advantage. When it comes time to elect a form captain Johnstone makes it clear that she thinks Anna has the right qualities for the job and commiserates with her when she lose out to Lucy. No amount of objections from Anna can convince her friends that she never wanted to be captain. It continues to get worse, on a museum trip, Johnstone implies that Anna told tales on Lucy and Anna rues the day the teacher took a liking to her. One good thing comes out of the trip is that her old friend Ros has gotten suspicious of Johnstone’s motives and points out to Anna that everything she does gets her in trouble and perhaps Johnstone doesn’t favour her at all!

Anna puts this theory test by speaking in slang to Johnstone when no one else is around, and gets a more typical “Stoney” response, but in class when she does it, Johnstone suggests she’d be perfect for reading the lead Pygmalion. She enlists Ros’s help to find out why Johnstone is doing this, Ros agrees to help but doesn’t want to get too involved for fear of losing friends. So in secret Ros and Anna start investigating Miss Johnstone, they find out where she lives and theorize that Anna may look like a sister that she dislikes. That theory is soon disproved as Johnstone is an only child. While Stoney is away for the weekend they do more snooping where she lives and gets talking to a neighbour of hers. Seeing a letter in a book she lent the neghbour, they think they have a new clue. It involves the local dramatics society and they think Stoney is upset because she lost out to a younger actress similar to Anna that also has the same name. Again this theory quickly goes nowhere, as the letter actually was Mrs Greys’, the neighbour.

Johnstone assigns Anna to the school disco committee, despite Lucy volunteering, not winning Anna any favours from the others. The theme is to be the 60s, so Anna asks to borrow some of her Dad’s records, but he won’t let his precious collection out of the house, her mom says he had them even before they met (some foreshadowing here!). Then while setting up for the disco, Anna gets in Stoney’s bad books temporarily for playing “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles. Stoney ends up scratching the record in her hurry to turn it off. Wayne, the owner of the record, blames Anna for putting it on. Ros thinks they finally have a clue to Stoney’s past and they must find out why she hates that song so much.

Things look up for Anna, when Ros introduces her to her cousin Tom and they hit it off, but of course Stoney tries to cause problems. Anna then tells her mom that she she is having problems with Miss Johnstone praising her all the time, so her mom says she will have a word with her on parents night. But on the night Johnstone leaves suddenly with a headache before meeting the Normans. Ros who has smoothed things with Tom, reckons that Stoney had a broken romance, and wanted to break Anna and Tom up, though it doesn’t explain why she’s targeting Anna specifically. She soon finds out the reason why, when they get a chance to look in Johnstone’s flat while Mrs Grey is looking after her cat. Anna finds a picture of young Johnstone with a man whose face is crossed out, but she recognises the car in the background. A visit to her grandmother and looking through old photo albums, confirms her suspicions, the man in the photo was her dad! Mr Norman had never made the connection with the name but he was once engaged to Jean Johnstone but broke it off because of her jealousy and moodiness. They contact the headmistress and Johnstone doesn’t even deny it when confronted, she is happy she took her revenge. Learning the truth her classmates are sorry for how they treated Anna, she forgives them easily as she doesn’t want to end up like Stoney holding a grudge for years.

Thoughts

This is an interesting hate campaign story, there are several things that make it stand out from similar stories. Firstly that it is an adult campaigning against the protagonist rather than a peer. Miss Johnstone is in a position of power, she abuses this terribly and has no regrets that she punishes an innocent girl for the perceived wrong doings of her father. She also doesn’t regret ruining her own career because of this. Even without her revenge plan, Miss Johnstone isn’t a nice person, she soon earns her nickname “Stoney” with her tough discipline and hard attitude. We later learn it is not just being dumped that has turned her into this bitter person (although it certainly doesn’t help!) as even as a younger woman Johnstone was prone to jealousy and moodiness. Seems Mr Norman had a lucky escape!

Another thing that makes it stand out, is that it is not clear that there is a hate campaign against Anna to begin with. Other stories have had the “friend” of the protagonist turn out to be their secret enemy, but here because of Miss Johnstone’s strategy it’s not clear there is a hate campaign. Certainly it is a devious scheme, by praising and acting like she thinks Anna is great, she causes trouble without suspicion. It is nearly half ways through the story before her motives are actually questioned. Some of the girls thoughts on why Johnstone is after Anna are a stretch (such as looking like a hated sister) but they don’t have a lot to go on, so they have to think of some reason. Anna was lucky to find the photo and recognise the car and end Johnstone’s revenge. I like that Anna’s parents are supportive too, because often adults in these stories can be dismissive, especially considering Anna’s complaints are “Johnstone’s too nice to her”! While her mother doesn’t think it can be that bad, she does say she will talk to Johnstone and when they find out who she really is, they go straight to the Headmistress.

Anna’s friends are a bit quick to judge her, even Ros at first when she agrees to help, she doesn’t stand up for her in public. This might be excused if she didn’t want to put Johnstone onto their investigation but she also says she doesn’t want to get involved and lose her friends. Although as Ros becomes more convinced of Johnstone’s motives, she does become more active in supporting Anna, even introducing her to Tom, her cousin. I’m sure Anna, as a nice person, would have forgiven all her friends anyway, but it’s good to see it tie in with Johnstone, as she doesn’t want to become a bitter, unforgiving person like her. It brings the story to a satisfying conclusion.