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
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!
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
