A humour strip with jungle girl Lulu.
Other Appearances:
A short wordless humour strip, featuring a young girl. It usually appeared at the bottom of a text story and was 3 panels long.
Other Appearances:
Short humour strip about a young girl, usually appeared in the Mini Mag section of Judy. M&J had a cartoon section for a while, that featured different 3 panel humour strips, this included a Little Sister strip.
A humour strip featuring TV Mad Madeleine.
Sadie Macbeth comes across three witches, one Halloween night. Now all she has to do is whistle and the witches, Vinny, Cassie and Prue, will come and do her bidding.
Other Appearances:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Judy’s title character went through some changes in the 30 year run of comic. Unlike Bunty and Mandy the title character Judy didn’t have as strong a presence throughout the book’s publication. The first issue from 16/01/1960 had the character as a young girl with platinum blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, she wore blue dungarees and a red shirt with white dots. This outfit was her most regular look. She was also accompanied by 3 cats; a white cat with black patches, a black cat with white paws and a tiger striped cat.
While Bunty and Mandy were on the cover for a long time Judy lasted only until #293 (which is quite respectable number but nowhere near the 1000+ covers the others had). Judy didn’t have any text along with the cover either. When she was removed from the cover, she did appear for a time as small three panel wordless strip called Judy and the Kits, usually with the kits getting into to trouble, This usually appeared at the end of the Letters or the Club Page. She also introduced the club page for a time.
Instead of Judy as the cover girl she was replaced by different picture strips, including “Topsy and the Scientist Secrets” and “Marina and the Monster”. In issue #432 (20 April 1968) popular character Bobby Dazzler first appeared as the comic strip on the cover. Bobby Dazzler had a long run as the cover strip in the 1970s, until being replaced by covers that represented a story inside the comic. As for the Judy character she had disappeared from the book, returning later with a complete makeover in the 1980s.
I believe Judy’s first reappearance on the cover was to celebrate 21 years of the comic with issue #1097. She was very changed, looking older and also she had changed to a brunette with long curly hair. Previous to this Judy had also been joined by the comic Emma, in issue #1029. Emma’s presence was most noticed in the addition of Emma’s Mag in the middle of the comic. During this time other than the 21st birthday issue, the cover continued to represent inside stories.
It wasn’t until another comic joined with Judy that the characters started appearing on the cover again. Tracy joined with Judy in issue #1306 and both the characters of Judy and Tracy started to appear on the cover. Tracy was blonde bobbed hair girl who in her own comic appeared with her pet budgie, Elton. As said previously Judy now appeared to be brown curly haired girl but there is an indication that it was the same Judy as there was a reappearance of her 3 cats looking the same as early issues.
Judy and Tracy had a long run before the Tracy name was dropped from the title and it reverted back to being just called Judy. But the character of Tracy didn’t disappear and for the first time Judy had a comic strip called Judy & Co. to go along with the covers. This started with issue #1449 and the “Co.” part of the title referred to Judy’s 2 friends Tracy and the return of Emma.
The cover still had a one page shot of Judy and her friends with no dialogue, that would set up the strip of Judy&Co. usually on the next page though sometimes on the back. The stories involved Judy getting into misadventures, dealing with school, boys and life.
(Judy & Co. – Art by Norman Lee)
The story lines weren’t anything new they were similar in tone to Life with Bunty, but they were still fun and it was good to see the character of Judy actually get a comic strip!
(Judy & Co. – Art by Sean Phillips)
Of course when Mandy and Judy joined together they made a completely new magazine starting from issue 1. The last of issue of Judy had her moving away and ending up next door to Mandy. So they became best friends, and Emma and Tracy disappeared once again. The new strip concerned the 2 girls but there were other regular friends that popped up like Pauline and Dishy Dave! Later this was turned into a text story as a diary form.
It is interesting that the Judy character had no presence for such a long time and when she did return she was unrecognisable as her earlier counterpart. I did like that Judy & Co. incorporated Tracy and Emma into the strips, often when comics merged the characters were usually swallowed up by the main title so that was a nice nod to them.
Other Appearances:
While a few girl comics had general names like School Friend or Spellbound, the most common thing for the titles was to be named after girls, i.e. Bunty, Judy, Tracy, Emma, Tammy, Sally etc. Bunty isn’t the most common girls name, particularly these days, so I think the name is more likely to bring up memories of the comic than a person. Bunty was represented by a girl of the same name in the comic. For the majority of the Bunty publication she was the first thing you saw on the covers, but even after revamps, she still survived by moving inside the issues and having a comic strip.
The first issue of Bunty had two girls featured on the cover a blonde and a curly black haired girl (the cover art for issue 1 by Doris Kinnear who continued to draw the covers for many years). The emphasis was more on the fact that this was a brand new comic with free gift rather than any cover character. The second issue again emphasized the free gift more than the Bunty character but it was now clear that the blonde girl was the comic’s namesake.
By Issue 3 the cover was dedicated to a Bunty comic strip. It was usually laid out with three small panels and one big panel for the pay off. There was no word balloons instead the story was told in short rhymes. Sometimes competitions or advertised free gifts would take over the front cover but otherwise this format stayed for over 1500 issues, after which the cover had pictures depicting stories inside the comic instead.
Bunty started off as young girl with long blonde hair in plaits, later her image was updated, with a new shorter haircut. The other regular characters were her two parents, who would often be exasperated with her, in the early covers, she also had an older dark haired sister. She disappeared later, perhaps old enough to move away or just simply forgotten about! Sometimes friends would pop up but mostly just as when it was convenient to the plot.
When the covers started to portray stories from inside the book. Bunty was moved to the back cover, so usually a full colour strip. Although sometimes if an advertisement or Design a Fashion was on the back cover the strip was inside and in black and white, The strip was named Life with Bunty. Her hair was short and curly and now it was a longer strip more of a story and more dialogue with word balloons, no more rhyming captions. It was still wrote as a humour strip.
This only lasted a 100 or so issues, then Bunty got revamped again. With issue 1658, the comic was now being printed on glossy paper and inside a lot more fully coloured strips appeared. The Bunty strip was renamed again; as Bunty-A Girl Like You. I believe a regular artist for this was Andy Tew. Again Bunty got a new hairstyle to depict the change, this is even commented on on the first strip.
Her parents were still there and still recognizable as their earlier counterparts. Two more regulars were added; friends Lisa and Jo and they became a permanent trio. Jo was a black curly haired girl (I wonder if she was a nod to that black curly haired girl that appeared on the first issue!) and Lisa a red head. Often these strips concentrated on Bunty’s crush of the week, or fashion, so it was a lot more teen aimed than earlier strips. Bunty as a humour strip of a teenage girl also seemed to replace the younger Toots model. Later the srips were re-printed under Girl Zone banner.
Its good to see the comics namesake survived throughout the years and the character of Bunty was a memorable one.
Other Appearances
Annual Appearances
Summer Specials
It wasn’t all drama, orphans and ballet in Bunty. There were a variety of humour strips that ran in Bunty. Most were a page long though some extended to two pages, others like Haggis, and from later issues, Girl Talk, were just a few panels at the end of the page.
Toots was a long running strip in Bunty. There was no continuous plot to follow so it didn’t always appear in consecutive issues, it was just a light-hearted funny strip. It was about a young girl, Toots,that wore a polka-dot dress and got into various adventures every week.
It was drawn by Bill Ritchie who is probably best known for his strips in comics like Beano, Beezer and Topper such as Sweet Sue, Smiffy, Baby Crockett and Gnatasha. Some stories had Toots not really winning at the end of the story. Such as a story where she is told she is needed for a “leading” part of the dramatic society ballet only for the strip to end with her leading people to their seats.
Other times she would come up on top of the situation. Whether it was outsmarting her friends or making use of an umbrella on a dry day.
A lot of the time she would exasperate her parents, usually not intentionally. In one strip she is making noise by wearing her mother’s shoes and ends up getting a telling off from her parents for scaring them. So she switches to slippers and ends up scaring them by “sneaking” up on them!
Whatever the situation, it was always a fun read.
Other Appearances:
Annual Appearances:
Summer Specials:
Humour strip about very lazy girl named Lizzie
