Tag Archives: Jorge Badia Romero

Misty Short Stories VI: Creepy Crawlies

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In our sixth volume of Misty Short Stories we turn to the creepy crawlies that were used in Misty’s short stories. You know – spiders, insects, larvae and slimy things that are guaranteed to make your skin crawl, cause plagues of pests, and set off phobias in a lot of people.

This entry is on picture stories from the regular Misty comic only. So insect/spider-themed text stories and stories from the holiday specials and annuals will be excluded.

1: Spiders

Naturally, spiders have to lead off the list. Arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, seems to be the most primeval of all the fears of creepy crawlies, and Misty herself used the phobia as a great source for plot material. Spiders were a heavy presence in Misty, particularly in her best-remembered spider story, “The Black Widow”.

Red Knee – White Terror!

Misty: #1

Artist: John Richardson

Writer: Pat Mills

Reprint: Best of Misty Monthly #1

Andrea Gray buys bananas from the market, not realising the poisonous Red Knee spider she keeps hearing on the news is in the bag of bananas as well. In a black running gag, Andrea keeps having a lot of unknowing close shaves with the spider and unwittingly gives it a good habitat while listening to news bulletins about the spider and its habitat preferences. There is also an in-joke when a Professor being interviewed about the spider is named Mills. In another twist of black humour, Andrea says she can’t stand spiders and won’t be caught going near one – and all while she has been very close to the poisonous one.

Then Andrea decides to have a bath. While in the bath her brother attacks her with a toy spider for a joke, and she throws it back at him (this part was an editorial toning down from the original draft). Thinking she is finally safe from poisonous spiders. Andrea relaxes in the bath and her hand is dangling down on the floor – but the real spider is approaching it!

Dressed to Kill!

Misty: #39

Artist: Jaume Rumeu

Reprint: Misty Presents: The Jaume Rumeu Collection (2021)

Nancy goes to Doris Day’s fancy “beasts” dress party, which was inspired by the legend of a black magic cult who could turn themselves into huge insects “spiders an’ that” (hang on, spiders are not insects!). Doris made a rule that the costumes must be homemade. But Nancy is cheating, first by hiring her costume (a fly), and second, by bullying Doris into giving her first prize later on. She sees Brenda Foster, who is dressed as a spider, slip into another room. She goes in to get revenge on Brenda for telling on her at school. But Brenda advances on Nancy, saying she wanted her to follow. Then huge spider legs close in on Nancy…

Afterwards, Brenda rejoins the party and everyone admires her spider costume. She declines an offering of food, saying she has already eaten.

The Secret of Lan-Shi

Misty: #6

Artist: John Richardson

Petra Harris buys her brother Paul a broken mechanical lion from a junk shop for his birthday. The store owner says Lan-Shi broke the mechanism to stop the lion from prowling. Paul also finds a note inside saying: “Beware the lion’s roar. His teeth are sharp.” Despite this, he gets it roaring and prowling again. But Petra finds the lion’s roars loud and terrifying, and there are reports on the news about something attacking and killing animals. Then the lion goes for Petra herself – but something stops it dead in its tracks. They find a spider slipped inside the lion and its webbing gummed up the works. Petra says she is going to have that lion destroyed.

Thoughts

In the first two spider stories, the spider was an agent of horror. So it’s a quite a reversal to have it the hero of the hour. And it’s just a humble, ordinary, honest-to-goodness spider. Nothing at all supernatural about it.

2: Bees

Two obvious reasons for making bees an instrument of horror. First, they have stings. Second, they swarm. But where a Misty protagonist is concerned, how the bees swarm and sting depends very much if she is on the right side of them.

Honey’s Bees

Misty: #13

Artist: Isidre Mones

Honey Bell and her father are beekeepers, and Honey has a natural affinity with the bees. Dad tells Honey a lot of old superstitions and beliefs about bees, including that bees are said to understand their owners and even foretell the future. When the father dies an uncle arrives to take care of Honey, but something is not right about him. Honey falls in love with Bill O’Casey, the new gardener, and wants to marry him, but the uncle is opposed to the match. At the altar Bill is suddenly arrested for theft. Honey believes he’s innocent, and says the bees believe it too. Then the bees attack the uncle, and he confesses he framed Bill because he gambled away the money Honey was to inherit at her wedding. He is arrested, and Bill and Honey get married.

Thoughts

The old adage: if you treat animals right, they will treat you right, and will repay your kindness. Even bees, it would seem.

Queen’s Weather

Misty: #18

Artist: Josep Gual
Sally and Gina are sunbathing. Sally wishes she could be a queen so she could do it all the time. Then she swats a bee, which happens to be a queen bee. Her hive takes revenge by collecting ingredients from flowers for a drug to turn Sally into a new queen for the hive, and inject them into her with a mass “sting” operation. So Sally gets her wish to be a queen – in the wrong way, of course.

Thoughts

This story has been discussed in Misty Short Stories I, so there will be less discussion of the story here. Just one point will be discussed: we’re not quite sure how Sally being the queen of the hive is supposed to work. All they do is shrink her to bee size and take her into the hive. But she’s still human, not a bee. How the heck is she supposed to lay eggs for the hive? It would have worked better to turn her into an actual bee, with her mind trapped inside her insect body.

3: Slimy Things

Misty had only one offering in this area, but it’s one you don’t forget in a hurry:

House of Snails

Misty: #77

Artist: Jorge Badia Romero

Sally’s father is trying to breed intelligent snails, and they’re all over the place in his house. Everyone thinks he is crazy, including Sally. Sally suffers a lot of teasing because of Dad’s snail experiments, but Dad won’t listen, saying she will have the last laugh when he has proved his super-snails. Deciding enough is enough, she smashes up his work and make it look like vandals, but Dad is devastated. The snails take revenge by tripping Sally into the coal cellar. There they crawl up by the millions and overwhelm her. Weeks later, a policeman tells Dad to accept the worst about Sally’s mysterious disappearance. Dad remains convinced of the snails’ intelligence, but he doubts he will resume his experiments. He’s only sorry he could not convince Sally.

Thoughts

Of all Misty’s short stories, this must rank the highest on the “Eeww!” scale, with thousands, even millions of snails, crawling all over you and suffocating you by sheer numbers and slime. Yucch! And did Sally really deserve this fate? She did commit a bad act, but it was borne out of desperation and people bullying her over her father’s experiments. This makes for a very grim story indeed. We would have got more satisfaction if the snails had done it to the bullies instead. That way, Sally would have finally got the last laugh and realise her father was right after all.

Dad must also fall into the category of obsessive scientists who don’t realise they could be creating a monster with their insane experiments. In the end Dad discontinues his experiments, but the damage may have been done already.

4: Butterflies

 Oh, surely not butterflies? Butterflies are beautiful, harmless things. Surely they don’t belong in a horror story? Actually, these two stories make two points about how butterflies can be incorporated into horror. First, you’re forgetting the other side of butterflies – caterpillars. Second, butterflies are related to moths, which are less pleasant and also leave a lot of holes.

Finder’s Creepers

Misty: #62

Artist: Jose Ariza

A judge has delinquent Amanda sent to the country to live with her Aunt (as if that’s going to reform her!) as part of a suspended sentence. Amanda finds a necklace and refuses to hand it in for any owners to claim, saying “finders keepers”. The necklace gives Amanda the power to grow butterfly wings, which she uses to cause more trouble. In the night the owners come for the necklace, saying they are the keepers of the necklace and need the necklace so their children can evolve. Amanda refuses to hand the necklace over – “finders keepers!” – but then she breaks the necklace. For this, they punish Amanda by turning her into a hideous caterpillar.

Thoughts

Next time you think “finders keepers” when you find something, you might like to think again. If someone is looking for it, you are not much better than a thief.

The huge, horrible caterpillar Amanda becomes sure is repulsive. But it’s sad too, with her wide, terrified eyes and her voice crying in vain for help. Maybe Amanda will eventually become a beautiful butterfly. After all, she is a caterpillar, and caterpillars pupate.

The Ghost of the Butterfly Ballet

Misty: #50

Artist: Jose Canovas

At Theatre Bartlett, Bartlett uses real butterflies to die in the last act in the Butterfly Ballet. Lead dancer Emma speaks out against the cruelty to the butterflies, but Bartlett is a cruel man and won’t stop because it is a real money spinner. Emma can’t get free of Bartlett either because of her contract. Emma releases Bartlett’s latest consignment of butterflies, but is surprised when a moth (looking bigger and prettier than most moths) settles in one of the jars instead and looks like it wants to stay there. Seeing this, Bartlett uses the moth in the act that night instead. But thousands of moths attack during the performance. They terrify everyone and send them running: “Moths! Ugly and fat! Their wings cold and clammy like the touch of winter!” They cause a fire that burns down Bartlett’s Theatre, never to be rebuilt, and Bartlett is ruined. The moths vanish as mysteriously as they came. Emma’s contract was destroyed in the fire, so she is now free of Bartlett too.

Thoughts

It’s appropriate that Bartlett gets a comeuppance that destroys his business and prevents him from rising again, where he could mistreat more employees and animals so he could make a profit. But one thing mars the story: there is no mechanism behind the moth revenge or explaining why the first moth came to begin with. All the other comeuppance stories here did have a mechanism of some sort behind the bug revenge (black magic, science gone wrong, drugs, folklore etc). This made the concept of creepy crawlies getting revenge even more credible because we understood both why and how they were able to do it. But here there is no explanation at all for why the moth suddenly showed up and then led the others in to attack the theatre. The title implies a ghost, but the story does not mention a ghost at all. So where the heck is the ghost?

5: Insect Collectors

The Purple Emperor

Misty: #12

Artist: Isidre Mones

Betty is a very cold, cruel butterfly collector. She is obsessed with adding a Purple Emperor to her collection. While hunting for one she trips and hits her head. She hears pounding footsteps of a giant purple emperor monster who catches her in a net and puts her in a killing jar to suffocate and be added to his collection. Betty screams that she’s imagining it and she’ll wake up soon…

Perfect Specimen

Misty: #67

Artist: Isidre Mones

Gail desperately wants a good fossil. She tries to steal one from the museum but fails. She climbs a tree and gets covered in sap-like amber. It turns out she was just dreaming, but the dream has her even more determined to find an insect specimen preserved in amber. In her quest to find one she gets directed to a glacier where there are good ammonite fossils. However, she falls down a crevasse (cut across the glacier when she shouldn’t have) and gets trapped in ice. Untold years later, the fossilised Gail is being viewed by futuristic insect creatures, who use the same words she used at the start of the story: “To think that primitive creatures like this, teeming millions of them, were once masters of the earth!”

Thoughts

Here we have very similar comeuppances, where the tables get turned on insect collectors. It was possibly the same writer and definitely the same artist. “The Purple Emperor” was discussed in Misty Short Stories II, so discussion will focus on “Perfect Specimen”.

Gail is not cruel like Betty – after all, what she collects is already dead. And she admires the things that were preserved, while Betty is just a cold fish and has a streak of the animal torturer too. But Gail is just as obsessive as Betty in getting what she wants and is not showing any common sense in doing so. For example, she disregards safety in climbing across the glacier, which is why she fell down the crevasse. And did she really steal that fossil from the museum or did she dream it? Either way she doesn’t seem to have any conscience, so maybe this is why she is in for a bit of comeuppance.

Closing Thoughts

In most cases, the Misty short stories used creepy crawlies for comeuppances, though the victims had varying degrees of deserving the fate. In rarer cases, such as “Red Knee – White Terror!”, the creepy crawlies were used for straight out horror, and played on the terror or simply the “yecch!” factor the creepy crawly is regarded with.

Misty Short Stories V: Aliens

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In our fifth volume of Misty Short Stories we turn to the theme of aliens.

Would you believe that throughout her two-year run, Misty did not have one single serial that featured aliens? This meant serials on space invasions, dystopia, alien worlds, body snatchers from outer space, alien visitors trying to blend into Earth society, and alien companions, which we were so accustomed to seeing in other girls’ titles, were completely absent from Misty.

So how did the aliens fare in Misty’s complete stories? As shown below, they did appear more often there. But what roles did they play in the complete stories as opposed to how they were portrayed in serials?

1: Reversed Roles

A popular theme in the Misty short stories was to have aliens put the protagonists in reversed roles, in allegories to how they treat animals on Earth. In the stories below we see people being fished, eaten, experimented on and played with by aliens. On occasion it was to wreak the Misty-style punishment on an unsavoury person, but more often this was not the case. The alien was often anthropomorphised, which in some cases was to inject humour into the story.

The Experiment

Misty: #100

Artist: Ramon Escolano

Fleur wakes up feeling like she has been asleep for ages. She is bewildered when her father says she is to remain permanently confined to the house and not go beyond the front gate. As she explores the house and surroundings she discovers everything is a fake, including her father, who is just a machine. Terror overwhelms her and she runs off, forgetting not to go beyond the gate. Outside the gate a giant rat kills her. It was an experiment conducted by giant aliens, and they express annoyance at yet another failure. Because humans are so small in comparison to them, they won’t accept that the reason for the constantly failing experiments is that humans are capable of thinking and feeling the way they do.

Food for Thought

Misty: #91

Artist: Ramon Escolano

Jill and Betty are at end of their holiday and looking forward to a BBQ. But then they get netted by aliens and taken across the galaxy to be eaten. The aliens decide to eat them raw, dipped in garlic sauce. As the aliens prepare to tuck in, one thinks it is immoral to eat other creatures; they may not be as intelligent, but they do have feelings and can feel pain and terror. They also have environmentalists who want a ban on such fishing and hunting of these endangered species. Back on Earth, people wonder what happened to Betty and Jill as they prepare to tuck into the BBQ.

Titch’s Tale

Misty: #26

Artist: John Richardson

Reprint: Best of Misty Monthly #5

Tina “Titch” is teased and left out of things because she is small. To cheer herself up she goes kite flying, and finds others are flying kites too. She starts seeing them being pulled up one by one into the clouds, but nobody notices except her. Then she gets pulled up too. On an alien spaceship, an alien boy shows his mother the missing people. He was fishing them for his father’s tea. But Tina was so small he threw her back. Tina wakes up on Earth, little realising how her small size just saved her life.

2: Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes was huge at the time of Misty’s publication. As these stories show, it made its impact on Misty too. In fact it could be called a direct steal, as the aliens appearing in these stories are straight out of Planet of the Apes.

Madhouse!

Misty: #90

Artist: Jorge Badia Romero

Sally Bishop and four strangers disappear from home and find themselves in a creepy house, the “madhouse”, with no idea as to how they got there. As they try to escape the madhouse they disappear one by one through all the horrors and traps in the madhouse. Sally is the only one to make it outside. It is then revealed that “Madhouse” is a board game and the players are giant apes. The giant ape who won three rounds in a row with Sally as his playing piece says: “These humans make such wonderful little playing pieces.”

The Pet Shop

Misty: #24

Artist: Martin Puigagut

Obnoxious Vivien and Steve Martin get a mouse from a pet shop. The shop staff have misgivings when the children say they are going to use it for an experiment (they have already mistreated another animal in the shop). They allow the sale on condition the children take good care of the mouse, and bring it back if anything goes wrong. Of course Vivien and Steve don’t take good care of the mouse in their (maze) experiment, and it dies from exhaustion. As instructed, they return the mouse to the pet shop, and they demand a refund. The shop staff and owners remove their human disguises, revealing themselves as giant talking apes. They have a very special policy for customers like Vivien and Steve who mistreat the animals they buy from their shop: lock them up. For what purpose exactly is not clear, so no allegory can be drawn there.

3: Close Encounters

As these stories show, Misty tended to go for crash landings when it came to UFOs landing on Earth.

The Visitors

Misty: #28

Artist: Ramon Escolano

Feeling she’s a burden and money drain on her low-income aunt and uncle, Susan runs away. She throws a coin into a wishing well and wishes her aunt and uncle would have enough money for them all to live in contentment. Aliens appear and tell her they have been on Earth ever since their ship crashed 600 years ago. They live in the well because it is similar to their home environment, but they find coins and stones being dropped on their heads all the time and hear these stupid wishes, which they can’t grant as “we no magicians”. But at least it breaks the monotony of living in the well. Susan wakes up by the well, and the police pick her up. Susan thinks it was all a dream, but back home she finds a huge box of ancient coins on her bed, which enables her family to become rich. Susan buys a chess set for the aliens to help relieve the monotony, which they enjoy very much.

Thoughts

A wishing well that can grant something, but it’s not the well – it’s what resides inside it. The aliens are very funny in the way they speak English and what residing in a well means when everyone thinks it is a wishing well. At the end of the story, we are glad to see Susan express her gratitude by giving something in return for the wish.

Last Encounters

Misty: #32

Artist: Ramon Escolano

A family on a spaceship have a recurring dream of landing on a monstrous planet, a giant mountain, a giant quake and being thrown into air by something outside their drive units. They get marooned on a planet, and then the nightmare begins to happen for real. But the quake throws them into the air and enables them to escape the planet. The reveal is that they are tiny aliens, the mountain was a sleeping man, and the man, upon waking up, throws the spaceship into the air, thinking it’s a kid’s toy: “…not all spaceships are gigantic!” They fly happily through the stars again.

Thoughts

Someone definitely had “Land of the Giants” on the brain with this one. It’s a twist though, having the Earth people as the giants and the aliens as the little people, a complete reversal of the show. And unlike the show, the little people do escape.

4: Space Seeds

Here we have two stories about seeds that arrive from alien worlds and start sprouting in Earth soil. Naturally, they soon prove that on Earth, they are very dangerous weeds.

Alien Seed

Misty: #20

Artist: Isidre Mones

Libby Regan has to stay with her boring botanist Uncle Marcus during the holidays. She is repulsed and frightened at the hideous Venus fly-trap type of plant he is growing, which seems to be growing at abnormal speed, and at times seems to be reaching out to her and her cat with its tendrils. He says it was grown from a seed that was millions of years old, but from the looks of it, that seed definitely did not come from Earth (and the title says Alien Seed after all). He won’t listen to Libby’s protests about the plant or heed warning signs it could be dangerous. To him, it’s a valuable scientific discovery. But Libby is right – the planet is carnivorous, and is capable of growing big enough to consume humans. It flowers, and the scent from the flower renders Uncle unconscious. Seeing the plant attempting to eat him, Libby saves him and destroys the plant. But he doesn’t believe her explanation and thinks she just took advantage to destroy his precious plant. He sends her home. Libby is relieved she at least managed to destroy the plant. But unknown to her, in the days ahead, its seeds start growing…

Thoughts

There are plenty of stories about mad scientists who get destroyed by their own experiments because they did not listen to warnings about dangers. Uncle Marcus nearly fell victim to it. He escaped this time but he still did not listen, so the odds of him getting a second chance are not good. And this time, his rescuer will not be around to save him. It would have been interesting to see how this story went if it had been expanded into a serial.

Jorum is Coming

Misty: #86

Artist: Jose Ariza

Heather finds a space egg that fell from outer space. She plants it in a wood while in a trance. She becomes increasingly detached to it and is sure that “Jorum is coming”. When her parents ask her about Jorum, she lashes out at them. Her behaviour changes for the worse and they grow increasingly worried. The egg grows to an enormous size, and Jorum, the creature incubating inside it, tells Heather to kill her parents because they must not interfere with his birth and conquest, so she gets an axe. The parents unknowingly break the spell when they say they love Heather, and she smashes the egg instead. Afterwards Heather can’t remember what happened and does not know what she means when she says: “Jorum is not coming now – not ever.”

Thoughts

This was the only time Misty touched on the subject of alien invasion, or an alien exerting an evil force over a girl. It’s a bit frustrating that Jorum gets destroyed before we see just what he is once he’s hatched and what he can do. Frankly, this story is crying out to be a serial. It would have been really exciting for Misty to fully develop Jorum, his powers, his plans for conquest, and the fight against him, and a serial would have done that. Just destroying Jorum by the end of a complete story feels a waste of potential.

5: Stuff of Nightmares

 Just Another Day

Misty: #98

Artist: Jose Ariza

Julia and Liz arrive at school and see it vanish. The rest of the street follows, and then the rest of the world. Last to go are Liz and Julia. Then it is revealed an alien dreamed the whole thing. He says it’s a pity Earth never really existed: “…so beautiful and the people were interesting too – not very bright, but full of vitality.”

A Scream in the Night!

Misty: #47

Artist: Ken Houghton

Jan Peters wakes at 3am to see a shadowy man outside her third floor window. He enters, revealing himself as a hideous alien who has come to collect specimens. He traps her in a specimen box and takes her to his spaceship, with her screaming all the way. But it turns out the alien was the one who was having the nightmare. He tells his comrade he dreamed they had already reached Earth and were collecting specimens, but the hideous screams this one kept making were torture to his ears.

Thoughts

Here we have horrible things happening to people on Earth, which turns out to be a dream. Having it all a dream can come off as a bit of a copout. It’s a matter of opinion and how it’s handled. The twist is, it’s not the protagonist’s dream but that of an alien.

Closing Thoughts

In the short stories, aliens were used most often as allegories to make a statement about humans and human behaviour/misbehaviour, particularly in regard to the treatment of animals/environment. They were not used the way they were in girls’ serials (alien invasions, alien worlds etc) though a few stories touched on some of those subjects. Aside from a few exceptions, Misty did not draw on popular culture or movies for her short stories featuring aliens, and what she did draw upon was very limited. Heck, Misty did not even have Martians!

Misty Short Stories IV: The Devil

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In this volume of Misty short stories we turn to the complete Misty stories that featured the Devil. The volume will focus on the roles the Devil played in the short stories, and how these compare to his role in Misty’s most famous Devil serial: “Winner Loses All!”.

Welcome Home

Misty: #68

Artist: Jorge Badia Romero

Linda is a pyromaniac and has burned down a number of buildings. Her life has become a string of doctors, criminal convictions, time served, borstal (which she set fire to as well) and so forth, but nothing changes her setting fire to everything. She escapes from her latest detention centre and sets fire to a warehouse. The fire gets out of control and, for the first time in Linda’s life, fire makes her afraid when she becomes trapped in the blaze. A dog rescues Linda and leads her to a cave. In the cave Linda meets the Devil and the dog is revealed as Cerberus. The Devil throws Linda into the fires of Hell, saying someone with a passion for fire like her should call it home.

Cold Comfort

Misty: #57

Artist: Carlos Guirado

Molly Grimshaw is selfish and a shoplifter, which causes trouble on a school trip. Her misbehaviour delayed their return, and as a result they get caught in a blizzard. The bus breaks down, and the teacher takes off in search of help. He tells the pupils to stay in the bus and together, and share what food they have. Molly has no intention of doing any of those things, though she does have food. Fed up with how cold it is on the bus, Molly takes off in search of someplace warmer, but soon realises just how cold and dangerous it is. She stumbles across a house, which is occupied by a hooded figure. When he lowers his hood, he reveals himself as the Devil. He tells Molly she will never be cold again. Guess why.

Thoughts

Here we have two delinquent girls who thought they had escaped death when their misdeeds backfired. Then they find they really had died because of this, and the Devil is waiting to cast them into the fires of Hell. In both these stories the Devil is the ultimate nemesis of the story, inflicting a Misty-style punishment for being bad. But he takes no part in the action of the story itself, nor does he set up the punishment that is to be inflicted. He is just there at the end, waiting for the bad girl to arrive. It is the girl who brings about her own destruction, through her own crimes.

It’s funny how one girl is blowing hot and the other cold when they come up to him. This makes the fires of Hell punish them in totally different, but fitting ways. In the case of Linda, she is being punished and tormented by fire, which she used to commit arson all the time. In Molly’s case, she finds a warm spot from the cold, but it brings her everlasting torment instead of comfort.

A third Misty story, “Room for One More”, follows a similar line of destruction for a young criminal. But it has been excluded from discussion here because the Devil himself does not appear in the story.

The Nightwatchman

Misty: #73

Artist: Maria Barrera

Mandy Siddons is a bad girl at school and a shoplifter. She meets a creepy old nightwatchman who keeps his face concealed. He says he will see her soon, but she dismisses this. The police turn up on Mandy’s doorstep about the shoplifting. While running away from them, Mandy nearly gets hit by a car. She is then surprised to find nobody seems to see her, not even when she’s shoplifting. In the evening she meets the nightwatchman again. In his fire, she sees that she really did get run over. And there is no sign of the things she stole that day. The nightwatchman says that if she’s ready, they’ll be moving on, and reveals himself as the Devil. Mandy begs for another chance. The last panel, in a hospital, shows a doctor saying Mandy will live. A policeman says this sort of thing might have her behave from now on.

Thoughts

It is not often Misty gives a bad girl a second chance in her short stories. But she does so in this case. And it is handled so effectively, with a near death experience. We have heard stories like these: people undergoing near death experiences in hospital, and some of them have included experiences of Hell.

In the story, the Devil seems to be more like the Angel of Death than the Prince of Darkness. Instead of being all ready to throw her into Hell, he seems to be holding the Grimreaper’s scythe in abeyance, and is allowing scope for one last chance before Mandy even begged for it. We presume this is because she is not actually dead yet, she’s at the halfway point in hospital, and could go either way. If she really had died, the last panel would definitely show her going the way of Linda and Molly.

The Love and the Laughter

Misty: #10

Artist: Maria Barrera

Reprint: Best of Misty #4

Molly Wright wants to help her Uncle Billy’s ailing circus, ignoring his assurances that she helps by just being his “pretty Molly”. She takes a book on dark magic from Scrodini the Magician’s caravan and summons the Devil. She makes a pact with the Devil for him to help Uncle’s ailing circus, for the usual fee. Performers arrive from nowhere to help Uncle’s circus and its business is soon booming. Molly can’t forget the pact she made because she sees the Devil everywhere. The Devil comes to Molly to collect his due. At this point Scrodini and Uncle Billy come up. They have worked out what happened but see a way out of the pact – destroy the book, which will destroy the spell. It works, and all the evil vanishes. Afterwards, Uncle tells Molly that please, please, she helps him by just being his pretty Molly.

Thoughts

This was the only complete Misty story to use the theme of a pact with the Devil, which was later used in “Winner Loses All!”. The story appeared early on in Misty’s run and could have been an inspiration for “Winner Loses All!” It may even be the same writer. After all, like the protagonist in that story, Sandy Morton, Molly makes the pact out of love, in a desperate but misguided bid to help her guardian. But unlike Sandy, there is an easy but credible way out of it, and without anybody’s soul being taken.

Birds of a Feather

Misty: #41

Artist: J. Garcia Pizzaro

A girl finds a small girl being bullied and rescues her. The child is not grateful, saying the bullies are her kind of people. The girl warns of a devil cult on a hill and to stay away. Actually the child welcomes the information and heads straight up there. The devil cult is sacrificing a chicken to the Devil. The child stops them, saying it’s useless because the chicken has no soul for the Devil to claim. They attempt to sacrifice the child instead, but she warns her Uncle will be angry. Her Uncle turns out to be the Devil. He opens up a hole in the ground, and the devil worshippers get swallowed up. The child takes the chicken to the girl, saying, “She is too good and kind to be my friend but I feel she will ever be yours.”

Thoughts

Here we have a twist where the Devil actually reaches out to punish wrongdoers – and they are Devil worshippers, who were worshipping the very entity that destroyed them! We have heard that evil gets destroyed by evil, but that’s a real twist on that old adage. It’s quite a surprise twist too, having the girl turn out to be the Devil’s niece. We didn’t know the Devil had family. It’s also nice to see that although the Devil’s niece can’t show gratitude to the girl who tried to help her, the girl will still get a reward for her kindness. And we are very pleased to see that the chicken will be safe.

Don’t Look Now!

Misty: #34

Artist: Eduardo Feito

Jan Parker is nicknamed “nosy” because she sticks her nose into everyone’s business. A man comes into pawn shop where she works and leaves a pair of glasses. Nosy Jan can’t resist trying them, but when she does, she sees everyone’s heads as the animal that reflects their characters (sly man is a fox, a timid woman a mouse, etc). This is driving her to distraction, but she can’t remove the glasses. When the man returns, the glasses enable Jan to see what he really is: a goat figure. She realises he is the Chief of Tempters i.e. the Devil. The Devil left the glasses deliberately because he knew Miss Nosy would be tempted to try them on. He says that if he tells her how to remove the glasses he will claim her soul instantly. Alternatively, he will leave her alone, but she will be stuck with the glasses forever, which nobody but her can see. To help Jan decide, he holds a mirror up to her face, and the glasses make her see herself as an ass.

Thoughts

The story has already been discussed in another list of Misty short stories on this website, so this discussion on it will concentrate on the Devil’s role. Unlike the other devil-themed complete Misty stories the Devil plays a proactive role in the story. He sets the story in motion by putting temptation in Jan’s path. Instead of waiting for her to hang herself with her misdeeds before claiming her soul, as he did so often in the other stories above, he plays on her weakness to set a trap for her, and force her to choose between her sanity and her soul.

Closing Thoughts

In Misty’s short stories, the Devil, although evil, was not used as a villain. He was used most often to illustrate the everlasting punishment Christianity warns against those who sinned in their lifetime, not to mention the damnation the complete Misty stories themselves loved to wreak against wrongdoers. Some of the stories also used the Devil as a warning against temptation, crime, and dabbling in the dark arts. It may be for this reason that some ended on a happier note than others.