Something for the girls
Something for the girls |
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Page 4 of 17  Cover, Wonder Woman (BC Comics, 1960), featuring the number one female American superhero. Art: Anon. If some British publishers were looking to older girls for their market, others realized that the eight to twelve age range was being neglected. DC Thomson took its chance. Bunty (1958) forged a different path to its predecessors by going for a 'cheap and cheerful' look. It was printed on the same low-quality paper stock as The Beano and it targeted a more working-class readership. It also hit upon an entirely new formula, typically involving a child alone in the world, away from fondly remembered parents, trying earnestly to do the right thing. Characters tended to be stereotyped in a way which was not a million miles from the formulas employed by Enid Blyton in her novels. They included the Cinderella figure, the wicked stepmother, bullying girl, gossip and swot. Occasionally stories would be set in Victorian times, thus providing a setting for sub-Dickensian tales involving pickpockets, orphans and toffs. The psychology of Bunty stories could sometimes be almost cruel. A great deal of time was spent in feuds: petty bickerings and misunderstandings between friends, punctuated by purse-lipped jealousies between enemies ('Now Nancy Smithers was netball captain, I hated her even more!'). The most popular strip, 'The Four Marys' was ostensibly a traditional tale about rivalry at a boarding school, but was much darker than anything that had appeared in Girl. Other stories centred on predicaments: aspiring ballerinas kept from their vocations by evil stepmothers and would-be nurses who have to deal with a crisis. What the story lines all had in common were heroines that were victims -everyone and everything was out to get them. Sometimes supernatural elements would be introduced to heighten tensions. In one story a 'magic mirror' makes any girl that looks into it obsessively vain. |