Tag Archives: Supercats

Marion Turner – DCT writer

Creator,

Another prolific DCT writer, that I am happy to be able to give credit to – Marion Turner (née Eadie)  under the pen name Fiona Turner, submitted over 500 scripts to various DC Thomson magazines/ comics, from 1973 to her retirement in 1994.  Stories that will be well remembered by many people including Supercats (Spellbound) Madame Marlova Remembers (Debbie) , The Double Life of Sad Sarah (Mandy) and Cybela (Judy).

List of stories on next page

(Supercats : Wings of Fear – Spellbound #67)

As she begin her career editing Urania (Journal of the Junior Astronomical Association) and later contributed stories and editorial experience to science fiction fanzine Zenith, it’s then no surprise that she many of the girls comics stories she wrote were science fiction stories. Her Supercats scripts combined with Badia’s artwork must make it one of the most well regarded stories (although she didn’t write all the scripts for that serial). She wasn’t limited to just science fiction though, she should she could write variety of styles successfully such as historical emotional stories like Cold as Charity (Judy) or mystery stories like Where is Melanie Forbes? (Judy) . My personal favourite story of hers has to be The Double Life of Sad Sarah. In the story the protagonist, Debbie’s father writes a comic strip “Sad Sarah” which had the character Sarah endure many hardships but was always patient. When the Sarah character comes to life, she is not as nice as she is written and causes trouble for Debbie! It is very cleverly written and for anyone with familiarity of these comics will appreciate the meta commentary!

(The Double Life of Sad Sarah – Mandy)

It’s interesting to see a glimpse of some of the working before the finished product, many of the stories submitted had their names changed, such as Madame Marlova originally being Madam Zaza and Marsali-Girl of Mystery becoming Nola -Girl From Nowhere. Supercats had an editorial note to “do a kind of female Star Trek” but to avoid being over technical considering the readership. It was editorial that suggested having a dark-skinned protagonist for Cybela, which is nice that they were pushing for more diverse protagonists in these comics.

(Cybela – Judy)

Sadly Marion has since passed away , but her son Phillip (who got in contact with me) is keeping her memory alive with a site dedicated to her, which is a good read as she led an interesting life and has lots of information on her writings – http://www.htspweb.co.uk/fandf/romart/mft/mftidx.htm

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Supercats

Debbie, Spellbound, , , , ,

Plot

Regular feature with Supercats, a team of super heroines and their outer space adventures. The members are:

Helen Miller – captain of the Supercats. The brains of the team and the only one with no superpowers.

Electra – generates electricity.

Hercula – super-strong.

Fauna – changes body colour.

Supercats

In The Planet of the Children – the Supercats investigate why the planet Zyros has ceased contact. They find  Zyros has been invaded by the Tarkus, who force the adults to work in Zyros’s gold mines while keeping the children brainwashed.

Notes:

  • Writer: Marion Turner (pen-name Fiona Turner)
  • Artist: Jorge B. Galvez/ Jordi Badía Romero (main artist)
  • Artist: Enrique Badía Romero (only for few stories)
  • First Appeared in Diana Annuals as “The Fabulous Four”
  • Each story had it’s own title
  • Marion Turner wrote a number of scripts but have not confirmed if it was all stories for the series. Some Scripts changed named at publishing. Scriptsl
    • The Fabulous Four:
      • The Walking Plants of Hudron
      • City In The Sea – published as Slaves of the Sea-World
      • The Mammoths of Marandra
    • The Supercats:
      • Company For Cybela
      • The Tower of Thalos – published as The God of the Sea in Spellbound 52 & 53
      • Wings of Fear – Spellbound 67

Appeared

  • Supercats – Spellbound: #01(25 September 1976) – #69 (14 January 1978)
    • [no episodes in #60 and #61]
  • Supercats – Debbie: #258 (22 January 1978) – #272 (29 April 1978)

Other Appearances

  • The Flight of the Fabulous Four – Diana Annual 1974
  • The Fabulous Four – Diana Annual 1975
  • The Manovitch Experiment – Diana Annual 1976
  • Vengeance – Diana Annual 1977