Friday, December 3, 2021

The Comic of Catriona's Heart

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  From the time I was oh, maybe 10, until the time I was maybe 14 (and found the Beatles), there was not a day that went by when my mother didn’t yell at me to “put down that comic book!” I know I read all of the Archie comics and things like Richie Rich and Scrooge McDuck Duck, but I quickly moved to Superman, and Wonder Woman, and Justice League of America. All of those super power heroes--- Supergirl, and Aqualass, and The Flush, and Green Hornet, and the Legion of Superheroes, and whoa, I really wish I still had them.


But that was in Indiana, and little did I know that Catriona McPherson, at the same time of her life but in Scotland, was reading comics, too. But they were ––from the looks of these––very different from the ones I read.

(As I said, I eventually moved onto MAD, then the Beatles magazines, and then Seventeen, and Glamour, and Vogue. So our reading preferences change. And the other day AARP Magazine arrived, but whatever.)

Catriona is always fascinating, but the childhood insights—and the comics she read that she shares with us today--I had never heard before of. Have you? Have you read any of these?

 

The Comic I Loved

By Catriona McPherson

 

The Mirror Dance, Dandy Gilver No. 15, is largely set in Doig’s & Co. the fictional publisher of a women’s magazine – The Rosy Cheek – and its sister paper – The Freckle for girls.


They are what Dandy Gilver calls “strenuously wholesome organs promising thrift without want and entertainment without corruption”.

Neither title ever existed, but the descriptions of the covers and the stories inside wrote themselves, because until I moved to the US, I spent every sojourn in a doctor’s dentist’s and hairdresser’s waiting room, leafing through The Rosy Cheek’s real-life equivalents.


I can’t remember who said this but there’s never been a better summation than “knit your royal family!”. And that was after a childhood steeped in papers and comics exactly as bouncing, cheerful, normative, and unsettling in retrospect as the Freckle anyday.

I lived not far from Dundee and that city was the home of D.C.Thompson, a fount of comics: The Beano – full of anarchic cartoons; The Dandy – an action-packed upstart (it said “Better than The Beano” on some covers), Oor Wullie – a Just William style rascal; and The Broons – a rabblesome family that prefigured the Royles ( not the royals!) or maybe Shameless.

DCT also published and still publish daily, weekly and weekend newspapers, and a slew of magazines. (They’re so ubiquitous that the only way to make it clear that Doig’s wasn’t Thompson’s was to put Thompson’s into the book in a cameo.)












And then there were those comics for girls. They’re probably better now – if I still lived there I’d nip and buy one to check – but in the seventies The Twinkle, The Bunty, The Jackie, and The Shout were roughly: fun with Mummy, japes at school, tears over cute boys, pregnancy scares. I ducked out at the Jackie stage and went to Cosmopolitan. But that was after a lot of years of boarding schools, ballet classes, ice skating accidents, secret diaries and blood feuds.

The comic of my heart was none of these, although I devoured them every week, spent summer pocket money on the Bumper Seaside Special and always found a Christmas Annual in my stocking. No, the comic I loved was the Teddy Bear Weekly. I still remember waiting to hear the letterbox flap on a Saturday afternoon when the paperboy delivered it. Joy until bedtime, guaranteed.

And I was pretty fierce about it as an adult too, because everyone I spoke to was convinced I had imagined it.

Pre-Wikipedia, when I tried to reminisce about a comic whose primary avatar was a teddy bear, I met with blank looks all round.

Out with Mummy?” I’d say. “You mean, Watch with Mother?” would come the reply. “That was on the telly.”

Paddy Paws the Puppy?” I’d try next. “Sounds like Enid Blyton,” they’d respond.

Doctor David and Nurse Susan?” I’d pitch, getting a strain in my voice. “What?” I’d hear. “No way. I mean I know things were conservative but no one would ever …”

Edward and The Jumblies?” I’d offer up. “A little boy called Edward who went to a magical land full of jumblies and befriended the king?” That’s when people would either say “Sounds like  fever dream” or “You mean ‘The Jumblies’ by Edward Lear? Well, there you go. You’ve invented a comic, Catriona, and you probably owe the Lear estate some royalties.”

I was beginning to doubt it myself – gaslighting is highly effective – when my parents cleared out their attic and gave me The Teddy Bear Annual from 1969.














Out with Mummy. Bam!














Paddy Paws the Puppy. Kapow!












Nurse Susan and Doctor David. Re-ordered to appease women’s libbers but definitely there. Booya!














And – drumroll – Edward and the Jumblies. Whoever owes the Lear estate for the use of intellectual property it is not me.












I was so happy to see all these characters again.


Did you read comics when you were a child, Reds? Have you looked at them since you’ve been grown up? There’s nothing quite like it. The taste of a madeleine doesn’t get a look in, if you ask me .


HANK PHILIPPI RYAN: Honestly, Catriona, I am trying to figure these out. I am baffled by these. I remember something called Highlights for Children, which they had in the dentist’s office, and which I loathed. But the nostalgia, I understand.

How about you, Reds and readers, did you read comics as a child?

 


National-bestselling and multi-award-winning author, Catriona McPherson was born in Scotland and lived there until immigrating to the US in 2010.

She writes historical detective stories set in the old country in the 1930s, featuring gently-born lady sleuth, Dandy Gilver. THE MIRROR DANCE is number fifteen. After eight years in the new country, she kicked off the comic Last Ditch Motel series, which takes a wry but affectionate look at California life from the POV of a displaced Scot (where do we get our ideas, eh?). Book 4, SCOT MIST, is coming in January. She also writes a strand of contemporary psychological thrillers.

Catriona is a member of MWA, CWA, Society of Authors, and a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.  www.catrionamcpherson.com

109 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Catriona, on your newest Dandy Gilver book. Could you tell us a bit about the story?

    I must admit that I never thought about it, but it makes sense to me that countries might all have their own comics. My brother is a huge comics fan, but Jean and I didn’t read comics much when we were growing up; we read [and enjoyed] the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew [and Hank’s un-favorite Highlights magazine] . . . .

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    1. I just burst out laughing! Yes, I have to admit, I thought Highlights was truly weird what was it? Goofus and Gallant? Ah—kinda weird. But I know I am in the minority!
      And I so agree! I never thought about comics in other countries. So fascinating.

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    2. I can, Joan, and thank you for asking. It opens with a bit of intellectual copyright infringement - a travelling puppeteer has added Rosie Cheeke and Freckles cameos to his Punch and Judy show and Dandy is sent in to scold him into stopping. But halfway through the performance, in full view of fifty onlookers, he is killed, in his kiosk, in the middle of an empty stretch of lawn. It's a locked room mystery. I've always wanted to write one..

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  2. Well, Goofus and Gallant was pretty lame, but there were some good stories and the hidden picture hunt was always fun . . . .

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    1. Joan, I loved the Hidden Picture feature!

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    2. Oh, I don’t remember those! Maybe it was just because I did not like to go to the dentist… :-) and that was the only place I saw it.

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    3. I spent half my childhood at the eye doctor's, and he always had Highlights in the waiting room. Goofus and Gallant WERE weird, but they were meant to teach manners. Goofus was a clod, and Gallant, natch, was a perfect gentleman.

      The puzzles were the best.

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    4. This has cleared up a puzzle for me. I've heard people refer to an "Archie" - and now I see that it might be this one. I thought they meant Archie Bunker.

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    5. They COULD be...but they'd probably use Archie Bunker's whole name.

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  3. I had never heard of your Scottish comics, Catriona, but I love hearing how special The Teddy Bear made Saturdays. I read some of the same as Hank--Archie, Richie Rich, and Scrooge McDuck. I also remember Little Lulu, Casper, Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse. I'm sure there were others I ran across, too. But, the comic books that I loved were called Classics Illustrated Junior that had fairy tales and folk tales and myths and legends, such as Jack and the Bean Stalk, The Golden Fleece, Johnny Appleseed, Aladin, and more. I still have two of those comics, The Pearl Princess and The Golden Touch. Then there were the older Classics Illustrated that got into books like A Tale of Two Cities, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, but I had quit reading comics before I got to the ones for older readers. I'm glad I did because I read the actual books of those comics, and they weren't spoiled by having read comics of them. I never really got into the super hero comics.

    And, congratulations on your new Danny Gilver, Catriona!

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    1. Still reeling form realising (see above) that Archie and Archie Bunker are two different people. I was proud of knowing who Archie Bunker even was! Because he was called Alf Garnett "over there".

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    2. Oh, that's...hilarious. Yeah, those are very different.

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  4. I never did read comics like these as a kid. I always felt like I would be through them too quickly for the money I'd spend. I was borrowing books from the library, instead.

    I did read comics strips in the paper, but things like Peanuts and Sally Forth and Rose is Rose and Calvin and Hobbes, when my paper finally started publishing it.

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    1. Amazing how Peanuts could be so consistently good . And those characters became so iconic!

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    2. My poor husband, Neil, never got the Christmas Annuals in his stocking because his mum and dad were with you about the price per page problem. I only found that out when we were talking about this blog. And you know what? I think I'll try to get him one for this year. (He won't read this - he's got back to back meetings today.)

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    3. And what's the comic with Zeeba Neighba? With the crocodiles?

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  5. WOW, I never heard of your comics Catriona. I remember Humpty Dumpty and Highlights. There was another comic book, but I can't remember. I did read Archies.

    Congratulations on your book release.

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    1. Thank you, Dru. I wonder if viewers of Acorn and Britbox often miss references to comic characters. I know the Beano gets mentioned pretty often. Funny, Desperate Dan was a cowboy and so I assumed he was an American character that we had got to share.

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  6. Comics were a huge part of growing up in the Midwest. I had an allowance — 50 cents a week — and comics were a dime. Do the math. But I called them funny books. Even though I far preferred the super heroes and the scary ones. Batman and, yes, Batwoman, Superman and Wonder Woman, and Tales from the Crypt — bound to keep me awake.

    Then there were the classics. Julie and I were talking this week about how these introduced us to some of the great books.

    Catriona, thank you for The Mirror Dance. It remains one of the loveliest gifts ever received. And thank you for being my long distance friend, texts in the evening to solve the problems of the world.

    Xo

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    1. We called them funny books too. Until you said that, I had forgotten it.

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    2. Ha! remember hearing people on the telly talk about "the funnies" and assuming they meant amusing news stories. The sort that today would begin "A Florida man" and end "Alcohol may have been a factor.

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    3. When I was about 7, the woman next door used to tell me she had to go watch her stories on TV. I was so excited--there were stories onTV? People would read stories to you? I asked Mom about it, and she said there was nothing like that. I was so confused---until at some point, I realized the neighbor was talking about soap operas.

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  7. How fun to see comics from elsewhere. After my sons learned French by immersion at a young age, we tried to keep it alive by getting them TinTin and Asterix books, which are horrifyingly racist looking back.

    I read lots of Superman and Archie, plus the classics illustrated as Ann and Kathy mentioned. Mad Magazine was big in our house, and my brother got Highlights. I'm still a big fan of the comics in the newspaper!

    Congratulations on the new Dandy, my friend.

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    1. Well, maybe those comics taught you all what not to say :-)

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    2. Thank you, Edith. And OMG -yes. My oldest friend from babyhood - Catherine - is married to a French man who loves his comics. I can assure you that Asterix has evolved. Some of his older ones are . . . problematic.

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  8. CATRIONA: Getting your hands on those comics must have been nostalgic. I did not know there were comics made for boys and others for girls. I just read whatever was around, mostly Archie, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman. No MAD magazine.

    And yay for a new Dandy book!

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    1. And like MARK mentioned above, I enjoyed reading the comic strips from the daily newspapers, especially the separate comic insert in the large Saturday editions: Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbs etc.

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    2. Isn't it odd - because we never had comics in newspapers (except whole page stories of The Broons and Oor Wullie) I never got in the habit of reading them and I still find my eyes sliding past them today, whereas I will read a whole volume of Peanuts if one turns up.

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    3. Oops, I forgot GARFIELD was another staple in the comic strips in newspapers.

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  9. Welcome Catriona, what a fun post! I loved Archie, Veronica, and Betty--the first inkling I had about romantic triangles I guess LOL. My magazine of choice in the tween years was TIGER BEAT. I can remember begging for that one...

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    1. Yes, and I always liked Veronica better, which I know was wrong.

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    2. Veronica was so exotic, Hank, and not a cliche, snub-nosed blonde. I get it!

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    3. This is such an education! I am realising right now that Betty and Veronica are not Laverne and Shirley. Thank you.

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  10. Well, as an adult, of course! Pogo! And Calvin and Hobbes. brilliant brilliant brilliant, I love those, and still think about them. I remember reading Pogo all the time, Long ago, and Calvin and Hobbes is still fabulous.

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    1. The Far Side is my favourite as an adult.

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    2. Yes, Calvin and Hobbs was my fave. So sad when Bill Watterson retired and there were no more new comic strips for the daily papers.

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  11. I loved the Archie comics and the Donald Duck ones. My younger brother had what seemed like tons of Classic Comics, which he devoured. One comic book wasn't really a funny book at all, I guess it would be a graphic novel, was from the John Wayne movie, The Wings of Eagles. I did a search for it a year or so ago and it is worth a pretty penny now. Of course, I no longer have it!

    I read the comics in the paper and have found a site where they put out many if not most of all the comic strips. GoComics I'm especially happy that they are running Stone Soup.

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    1. I wonder what would have happened if we had all kept all of our comic books—Would we all be rich?

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    2. I think we might be! And hey - I (drumroll) have heard of Stone Soup. But I thought it was a picture book for little kids.

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    3. It's a great comic strip all about the foibles of 2 grown sisters, their mother and 3 children. On daughter is a widow with 2 daughters, one of whom is a teenager - horrors! The other grown sister is divorced with a toddler. As the strip goes on, the family grows too. Written by Jan Eliot

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  12. I was never much of a comics fan. Oh, I checked Peanuts in the Sunday funnies, but not comic books. But I'd love to see some of these!

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    1. They are really unusual and different from the ones we grew up with, aren’t they?

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    3. Well, Liz, they are patchy to be honest. And some of the content has dated very badly. "Children From many Lands" has got quite a whiff of the British Empire about it, decades after Indian Indpendence and - what? - three hundred years after the USA slapped us away like a fly? You'd never know from reading this!

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    4. A true historical culture lesson. :)

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  13. Catriona, welcome to JRW and congratulations on Mirror Dance. Wow, number 15. I have some serious catching up to do! Tell us a little more about this one.

    I've never seen any of the comics you mention above, Catriona. I did like comic books, but didn't buy a lot of them. I loved Superman and Wonder Woman and all the Disney ones but found Archie problematic even as a kid. My brother was a huge comic book and Madd Magazine fan, and I frequently read his super hero ones.

    I always read all the comics in the newspaper, even on vacations in NYC where there would be so many more than in my home newspapers. Those newspaper comics were my absolute favorites even though some of the story lines could be a bit "adult." The soap opera ones like Apartment 3G and Brenda Starr, always intrigued me as did Terry and the Pirates. (What was that even about?) And I loved The Phantom. Wo-o-o. So mysterious. It's interesting to think about what was considered funny then and now. Really. Some humor stands the test of time, some doesn't.

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    1. I just burst out laughing! What were they even about, indeed :-) I think the story arcs would probably not hold up…

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    2. You just reminded me! There was a boy in my class, Roderick Strother, who got Madd Magazine. Everyone borrowed it.

      What is The Mirror Dance about? Puppet shows, life backstage at a theatre, working life in a publisher's office, academia. I really went to town on the settings here. I think that was because the "locked room" type of puzzle is so pure, you need quite a bit of cover to keep the solution hidden. I do anyway.

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  14. Oooh...The Jumblies! That's one fond - and scarce - memory from those early years. Now I need to dig out my copy and read it again.

    I did the Archie thing, too, but that was about it. Never got into superheroes.

    Fun to share your trip down memory lane, Catriona. Thanks!

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    1. It’s funny how we remember reading certain things, isn’t it?

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    2. Those Jumblies were the main reason no one believed the The Teddy Bear was real!

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    3. How on earth did the Jumblies torpedo The Teddy Bear, Catriona? There's plenty of room for both!

      And Hank, I'm guessing that one stuck because it's one of the few good moments from the early days that I have with Mom.

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  15. Congratulations on the new book, Catriona! I love Dandy Gilver, so I clearly need to get cracking and catch up.

    As for the comics, I've read them since I was a kid, but didn't read too many comic books--just the strips in the paper. Every now and then I'd spend an afternoon at a friend's house, or the dentist's office, and uncover a cache of Richie Rich or Classics Illustrated, and I think the first thing I read by myself was a comic version of a Disney film, but they never played an ongoing role in my life.

    I have heard of 'Oor Wullie,' though, because Paige Shelton featured it in one of her Scottish Bookshop mysteries. I've got to ask, Hank, what was "The Flush" you mentioned in the intro? I'm guessing it's a typo, but my imagination is going straight down the toilet.

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    1. If any of you were fans of the short-lived Green Hornet TV show, way back when, check out Jose Sibaja and the Boston Brass on the theme song: https://youtu.be/kETa5KAq02A

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    2. Oh, that’s hilarious! And we are now all creating comics based on plumbing or… Poker, right? But of course, it was supposed to be The Flash.

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    3. Perhaps a subterranean high-stakes game reached only through the sewers? It could work!

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    4. Gigi, I think that's already been done. Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles!

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    5. Yay! Someone has heard of Oor Wullie! We always used to say that if Billy Idol had been Scottish he'd have rethought that hairdo. The Flush sounds like something from Viz magazine - a filthy spoof of the Beano and Dandy. It's offensive and kind of adorable in the same way as ... I'm trying to think ... maybe Joan Rivers? Some of the cleaner content is strips like "Sid the Sexist" and "Finbar Saunders and his Double Entendres". The tips page is priceless. E.g. "a small conifer in the corner of the room is the perfect pace to store Christmas ornaments"

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  16. What fun memories, Catriona! How could anyone not remember the Teddy Bear is what I want to know? It's adorable.

    The summer between third and fourth grades me family moved into our aunt's house for five years while my uncle worked as an electrical contractor on a power plant in rural Argentina. They had two sons, my cousins who were four and five years older than me (and the subject of my hero worship). They left a lot of their stuff in the basement of the house, including stacks of Boy's Life Magazines (Boy Scout family, including my aunt, who was den mother), Mad Magazine (and a few of their competitor, Cracked), and piles of comic books taller than I was. A mother lode of reading material.

    We had no air conditioning in those days, so it was most pleasant in the basement, and on hot days that's where you could find me with my nose buried in comic books of every description: All the superheroes (my favorites were Flash (not Flush, I think), Green Hornet, and Supergirl), all the Dell comics like Donald Duck; Archie & Veronica, Richie Rich, Sluggo, and even some Katzenjammer Kids. I read them all ragged over those five years.

    Comic strips were fun, too. Does anyone else remember The Jackson Twins? They were my favorite, along with Steve Canyon, and Dick Tracy with his wrist radio (precursor of the Apple watch!). I didn't understand some, and couldn't figure out why they were meant to be funny: L'il Abner, and Alley Oop--a time-traveling caveman?

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  17. And Mirror Dance is dead brilliant, Catriona!

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  18. Boys' Life and Madd - sounds like a broad range of content! And thank you!

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  19. I'm going to make this fast. Comics were read in my house only if they were printed in local newspaper or my cousin gave me her castoffs that she had finished. Yes, I know the papers printed comic strips but some of them has story lines that would get resolved while a new one was starting.

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  20. I've done this in the wrong order; I wanted to join the discussion! But now, a bit late: thank you for having me, Reds. And thank you, Hank, for that lovely intro. Cx

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  21. First off, CONGRATULATIONS on the new book, Catriona! I'm a rabid long-time Dandy Gilver fan. On comics... I loved Archie (I'm definitely a Betty) and Little Itch in Little Lulu. My parents did not support comic-buying so I had to read them at my friends houses. Not much into the superheroes. Guilty pleasure: romance comics. And belatedly I developed a taste for horror comics. Go figure.

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    1. Horror comics? I NEVER would have predicted that, Hallie!

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    2. And Hallie, the cover of this Dandy reminds me of your beautiful coat.

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    3. Hallie, finally someone else who read Little Lulu. I admit I don't remember much about them, but the covers were always interesting to me.

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    4. Oh those romance comics! There was always close-up of a woman with a tear in her eye, and the cause of the tear in the background, square-jawed and horrible (I see now). Square-jawed and irresistible (I thought then).

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    5. The tears! Like blobs of clear gelatin shimmering there. Always a happy ending.

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  22. Wow, this took me down a rabbit hole, including to this blog that shows a whole bunch of British girls' comics from days gone by: https://kb-outofthisworld.blogspot.com/2010/11/british-girls-comics-girl-pioneer-of.html

    I can remember reading one as a girl in England, but I cannot for the life of me remember it's name. It was all wholesome fun things to do, as I recall. I loved the anticipation of its arrival, and I think it made me feel grown up to have my own 'magazine'.

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    1. Wow, Amanda, those are fascinating! I almost went down the same rabbit hole with Belle of the Ballet, and Nurse Susan. I could not believe the title of Susan's episode! WOW.

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    2. I know, eh? So intriguing. I'm sure PhD theses have been written on this genre -- is it a genre? "A feminist analysis of female agency in girls' comics" -- a possible title for an academic exploration LOL

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    3. This is a great reference, Amanda. Thanks!

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    4. Amanda, was it The Bunty?

      And thank you for the link to the blog about The Valentine. it brough back so many memories. How creepy were those bands?!

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    5. Catriona: No, I don't think it was The Bunty. I've emailed my mum to ask for her best thoughts on this...

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  23. Of course my brother (3 years older) and I read stacks of comics. And my mother didn't despair, because, as she told me when I was older, we read real books too. All three of us were voracious readers of everything.

    Of course, in Canada we had, generally, only the American imports, but I occasionally had access to my friends' English comics (post war influx of Brits to Canada meant they all had aunts over 'ome who sent them Brit things). Sunshine Weekly and, um... School Friend, featuring plucky schoolgirls.

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    1. Plucky schoollgirls! Like Donna Parker, remember those books?

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    2. The Sunshine sounds like The Rosy Cheek!

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  24. Hi, Catriona, and congratulations on the new Dandy!! I love this series so much and can't wait to read this one--you'd have had me at Punch and Judy and locked room in any case! And the cover is gorgeous.

    I do know some of the British comics, especially The Beano, but more by reference than actually reading them. Now I feel a bit slighted by having missed out on the Teddy Bear Weekly! As for the American ones, I read the super heroes, but did not like the Archies at all. I don't remember ever seeing a Classics Illustrated--what sort of cultural desert did I live in? But my cousin was a rabid fan of MAD and towering stacks of them which we read by the hour. Now I wonder if they were really as warped as I remember them??

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    1. MAD was hilarious. I adored it. It taught me about satire and parody and double entendre and puns and general snarkiness. VERY valuable!

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    2. Huh. I thought MAD had two Ds. Live and learn. Believe it or not the TBW was the hard-edged option. The Twinkle (for little girls) was emetic. Not at the time, but looking back.

      Thank you, by the way!

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    3. MADD is Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I loved the Spy vs Spy cartoons

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  25. Catriona, I'm one of the biggest comic book fans here on JRW. I read comics as a kid. They could be in comic book form, newspapers or comics in magazines like Boy's Life and the like.

    I still read them today as well. I mix in the occasional superhero title with mystery, science fiction and Conan the Barbarian comics. And I get the occasional hardcover collections for some comic strips that have been put out. I've met a bunch of writers and artists at comic conventions that I've covered. I'm friends on Facebook with a few of them as well. I've got some original sketches from great artists.

    I'm active on a couple of groups and message boards devoted to comic books. I pick up a weekly stash of new books and I give out comic books at Halloween too.

    Catriona, I'm not familiar with many of the titles that you mentioned in your piece but the four-color funnies world is one that I am glad to be a part of all these years.

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    1. I am always in awe, Jay, that you give out comics at Halloween. SO brilliant.

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    2. My nephew (by marriage but we've stitched him into the family pretty tight) is a comics fan like you, Jay. I just sent him a new graphic novel for Christmas that I'm hoping he hasn't got already. It's always a risk. When we're all together again, I'm hoping to pick his brain about how to read a comic properly. I know I haven't picked it up organically, but the one linguistics lecture I got about visual grammar and comics was fascinating.

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  26. Oh, hysterical, Catriona. What great memories for you. Full marks to your parents for keeping the comics!

    I remember Highlights, Hank. I loved it because it had find the differences puzzles.

    I was permitted to read the Sunday comics, but all comic books were banned from our house. Fortunately, I had a brother who was nine years older than I. He was adept as smuggling them in and hiding them under his mattress and I was adept at find and reading them. I loved Dick Tracy, that two way wrist radio was way ahead of it's time. Mad was fabulous, although I was too young to understand most of the humor, my all-time favorite was Lil Henry. My father brought it home to me once when I had bronchitis. It was the one time he went against my mother's no comic edict!

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    1. There's definitely a trend of parents banning comics - I wonder what the modern equivalent is. Candy Crush?

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    2. And so silly, isn't it? As long as the child is reading, who cares (mostly) what they read?

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  27. I read and still read the comic strips in the newspaper. When I was a kid, I read all kinds of comics: Classics, Disney, Archie, DC (Superman and Batman), but when Marvel started their superhero comics, I dropped the others. When Marvel expanded, I had to stop getting Millie the Model and other romances, Two Gun Kid and other westerns and most non-super hero ones. I did read Conan the Barbarian for years. Now he is in Savage Avengers. I just called in my comic order for the month yesterday. I love comics but don't know any British or foreign ones.

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    1. Millie the Model! I have not thought of that in YEARS! xx

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    2. Love this! You honed and refined and kept reading. Good!

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  28. Oh, wow, that's an incredible treasure trove of comic love! I was a diehard Spider-Man and X-Men girl but also loved Bloom County when I was a middle schooler and they started putting it and Calvin and Hobbes in compendiums. Glorious lazy Saturdays spent laughing with my brother over Spider-Man's witty banter. Probably, where my love of puns comes from!
    Congratulations on your latest release, Catriona! I love Dandy Gilver! And number 15 - that's fantastic!

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    1. So agree..! Dandy is a rock star. And look at the link Amanda sent. It's astonishing.

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    2. I feel quite envious of US comics now!

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    3. You can STILL read them! (But maybe, don't....)

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  29. When I was little I thought for years that Highlights only came from doctors or the dentist offices! I really mostly liked those find-a-puzzle pictures! And since I loved to draw, I learned how to draw Veronica from the Archie & Jughead comics! We used to put Silly Putty on the "funny pages" of the newspaper, too. I loved Brenda Starr and wanted to be like her when I grew up! Oh, and I read my brothers' Mad magazine all the time. This was a fun blog post, to walk down memory lane! I learned a lot from you all, especially Catriona! Love your books!

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    1. Yes, Silly Putty on the pages--that was SO much fun! (And my mom used to call me Brenda Starr when I was SO little I didn't even know who that was. Aww.)

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    2. Thank you, Lynn. But help me out. What on earth does it mean to put Silly Putty on the pages mean? Why? To turn it 3d? I'm mystified.

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    3. Catriona: The putty became (becomes) like a transfer sheet. Roll it over the image and it becomes imprinted into the putty. At least, that's what I used to do.

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    4. Catriona, Silly Putty was a kind of rubbery thing like Play Dough, and it just transferred images when you pressed it on newspaper. Does that make sense?! We were easily amused in the 50s and early 60s!

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    5. ANd the Silly Putty would pick up the comic graphic, and then you could twist and turn and pull it, so the images would change and contort. Weird Betty, Fat Archie, Twisty Veronica, things like that Um, that's what I did, at least.

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    6. Me too, Hank! Better said than I did. And you could roll it up and it bounced like a little ball. And it seems like besides the graphics it also could be molded from other shaped objects. It was just silly fun!

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