Identical twins Jill and Janet Taylor are spending their holidays with their grandparents. When Janet goes to join the local leisure centre she finds there is only one place left. She joins up under the name Jay Taylor so her and Jill can both share the facilities. This causes some complications, especially when two boys Cyril and Terry take a fancy to each girl who they think is one person.
Picture Stories
(Click on thumbnails for bigger picture)
Plot/Thoughts
This story is narrated by Gemma, her life isn’t going so well, these days, her boyfriend Mike dumped her and her father has lost a job. So she isn’t having a great time, but she still seems surprisingly upbeat. She brushes off Mike having a new girlfriend as no big deal and encourages her father to keep going for interviews. Then people in her school start getting poison pen letters. Janice is called out for being spotty, Ben and Abigail break up after he gets a note that Abigail spent evening with another guy. Gemma and her friends Cathy and Laura decide to play detective and find out who is sending the letters.
Spoilers! In the end the shocking twist is that Gemma is the culprit herself! Having protagonists be the person behind nasty tricks was one of those plots that would pop up sometimes. The story tries to steer towards other suspects, even in the first issue two girls Babs and Josie are highlighted to be mean gossips, so later on they become suspects. In the second issue Gemma herself gets a nasty letter. Again this was common to have the supposed victim be behind everything.
The letters are written in different methods, so these clues to lead them to new suspects. In one instance a letter is typed right after girl bragging about new typewriter. Conveniently Gemma always is on her own when a letter arrives. When Gemma and Laura decide to hide in the classroom waiting for the writer, Gemma goes to tuck shop and it turns out a letter appears in another class. Next a letter is sent with cut out comic bookletters (Bab and Josie are suspects). Later Gemma and Laura find spare letters in cloakroom they are surprised that they are beside best friends Cathy’s peg. When Cathy is off sick the next day the rule her out,
Throughout the story Gemma’s ex Mike and his new girlfriend Dawn pop up. Her thought bubbles reveal she still wants him back even though she says she she doesn’t mind outwardly.
Mike and Dawn both become suspects, when they find a typed list of names including most of the victims. It is actually a party list and typewriter doesn’t match.
Cathy meanwhile has figured out why the crooked M on typewritten note looked so familiar, it’s Gemma’s. So Laura and her confronts Gemma and yes she did it because she was having a miserable time. Some people who got notes was just to make them miserable too, others like a girl Tania got a note because she disliked her for beating her in a race. Of course Gemma loses all her friends after everyone knows what she has done. She seems quite surprised by this.
Again its not breaking any new ground, but at least some of the suspects like Cathy, Mike and Dawn seem possible and less obvious than earlier suspects. Gemma seems a bit oblivious to the consequences but her motivation is plausible. She is not an overly vicious character, she did a terrible thoughtless things, more because misery likes company than any real spite. But in the end its good to see her get what she deserves. The art is solid. Some stories have settings that gives the artist lots to explore with like old style Victorian, or futuristic sci-fi, or even having crazy pets but with stories set in a modern era schools, there can seem to be less to play around with. Still the expressions are subtle, characters are distinctive and while there isn’t lots of action it is still nice nice and consistent.
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!
Peggy Shaw, affectionately called Smiley by the staff was a long-term patient in the children’s ward at St Martin’s Hospital. Peggy was always willing to give the staff a helping hand and took a warm-hearted interest in the other patients
