Refugees from Sally

Discuss all the girls comics that have appeared over the years. Excellent titles like Bunty, Misty, Spellbound, Tammy and June, amongst many others, can all be remembered here.

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Marionette
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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by Marionette »

I completely forgot, but there's one more refugee from Sally that appeared in Tammy. Beatie Beats 'em All must have been a very late addition to Sally. One of the issues I have is 20th February 1971 and it's not in that, and that's only a month before the merger.

Edit: my bad. I don't think Beatie came from Sally at all. She just started the same issue as the Sally merger. Which kind of leaves me wondering why they didn't pick up another Sally strip instead.
The Tammy Project: Documenting the classic British girls' comic, one serial at a time.

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by Tammyfan »

Marionette wrote:I completely forgot, but there's one more refugee from Sally that appeared in Tammy. Beatie Beats 'em All must have been a very late addition to Sally. One of the issues I have is 20th February 1971 and it's not in that, and that's only a month before the merger.

Edit: my bad. I don't think Beatie came from Sally at all. She just started the same issue as the Sally merger. Which kind of leaves me wondering why they didn't pick up another Sally strip instead.
New stories often start with mergers. They could have been originally written for either comic, and this may be the case with Beatie.

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philcom55
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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by philcom55 »

As Mari has said, "My Best Friend's a Cave Girl' was a dead swipe off Clive King's 1963 children's classic Stig of the Dump - but it's pretty well done for all that. Here's the first episode from the issue dated 6th Feb 1971,

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- Phil Rushton

Tammyfan
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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by Tammyfan »

I can just see the aunt's face when she sees Yoo. I presume Annabel runs away with Yoo, and her aunt goes pursuit?

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by philcom55 »

Off hand I don't remember how the Aunt reacted but, as it suggests at the bottom of page two, the friends' first move was to run away and join a circus.


While there were no super powers or spaceships on display in 'Mandy's Secret Diary' - nor even the odd Yeti - it was significant in another way. Of course girls' comics had featured strips based on diaries before, but this story of a thirteen-year-old 'girl like you' with confessional asides to the reader seemed to go out of its way to foster an illusion of taking place in the 'real' world - even to the extent of being set in the very real town of Ludlow.

Here's the first entry, from the issue dated 4th July 1970.

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Given all these elements one can't help being reminded of 'Patty's World' which made its debut the following year in the pages of Princess Tina. Mandy even had her own Spanish artist in the shape of veteran illustrator Carlos Freixas! Could it have actually have been scripted by Patty's World's creator Philip Douglas as a kind of dry run for his more famous creation...?

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by colcool007 »

Marionette wrote:...I completely agree. There's a story in one of the Sallys I own that is maybe a female version of Stig of the Dump, entitled My Best Friend is a Cave Girl, which looks like fun, and a humour strip that fits the superhero analogy mentioned earlier, in Twangy Pearl the Elastic Girl....
After looking at that story, I am glad it wasn't just me that thought it was a female version of Clive King's book! And thanks for the scans Phil
I started to say something sensible but my parents took over my brain!

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by helsbels »

philcom55 wrote:

Given all these elements one can't help being reminded of 'Patty's World' which made its debut the following year in the pages of Princess Tina. Mandy even had her own Spanish artist in the shape of veteran illustrator Carlos Freixas! Could it have actually have been scripted by Patty's World's creator Philip Douglas as a kind of dry run for his more famous creation...?

- Phil Rushton
I wondered that too, Phil after reading it - the similarities are quite startling.

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by philcom55 »

'Trudy's Way' was the last full-on Science Fiction series to debut in Sally, though it seems to have had a very short run as this introductory episode from September 1970 is the only one I possess. In some ways it reflects the brief vogue for 'relevance' that became evident in certain forms of popular culture during the late 1960s and early 1970s - in particular Harry Harrison's novel 'Make Room! Make Room!' (later filmed as 'Soylent Green'), with its emphasis on overpopulation. Maybe there's also an anticipation of 'Logan's Run? Oddly enough we seem to be far less concerned about such things today - even though there are now at least three billion more of us to stretch the planet's limited resources! :?

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by Marionette »

So less than an hour after news is revealed that this planet exists they are posting random groups off to it? You'd think they'd at least give them some basic training in the skills they might require before they hurry them away.

And is Andromeda a constellation? I thought it was a galaxy. Couldn't they find a habitable planet any nearer?

ETA: I checked and it's both. The Andromeda galaxy is located in the Andromeda constellation, also known as M31. But as addresses go, it's pretty vague. It's like addressing a letter to Fred Smith, Earth. Only much less specific, since there are a trillion stars in M31. It's 2,500,000 light years away. That's a lot of distance to cover in a matter of months.
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philcom55
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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by philcom55 »

Of course nobody knew how rare 'Goldilocks-type' planets would turn out to be back in 1970, so maybe they were just taking the extremely pessimistic view that they'd only work out at about one per galaxy.

They surely couldn't have got confused between something as elementary as stars and galaxies? A mistake like that would be like Han Solo claiming to have made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs!

- Phil Rushton :wink:

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by Tammyfan »

Marionette wrote:So less than an hour after news is revealed that this planet exists they are posting random groups off to it? You'd think they'd at least give them some basic training in the skills they might require before they hurry them away.

And is Andromeda a constellation? I thought it was a galaxy. Couldn't they find a habitable planet any nearer?

ETA: I checked and it's both. The Andromeda galaxy is located in the Andromeda constellation, also known as M31. But as addresses go, it's pretty vague. It's like addressing a letter to Fred Smith, Earth. Only much less specific, since there are a trillion stars in M31. It's 2,500,000 light years away. That's a lot of distance to cover in a matter of months.
Perhaps they're used to colonising new planets in an awful hurry. It is the 53rd century. And with overcrowding being what it is, perhaps they are in the habit of grabbing what new space they can find ASAP.

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philcom55
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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by philcom55 »

Compared to some of the other strips which made their debut in Sally no.1 "Farm Boss Fanny' seemed like something of a throwback - and not just to the more traditional series to be found in titles such as School Friend. With its mustachioed villain and bumbling but kind-hearted 'tramps' it actually had more in common with the type of broad comic melodrama popular during the days of silent movies! Yet in spite of her old-fashioned storyline Fanny proved to be one of Sally's most successful characters.

Here's the first episode - apparently set in an age when children were allowed to go wherever they wanted and do whatever they liked without any interference from social workers! :shock:

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- Phil Rushton

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by felneymike »

You get that a lot in Japanese comics, the parents of children who seem to be around 11-14 are always "away on business" and the kids get into no end of scrapes, building robots, fighting demons, contacting aliens or having their computer programs come to life, when the computer is struck by lightning. :lol:

Speaking of the far east, that "cave girl" has quite a small nose, narrow eyes and black hair. If you ask me, she was just another left-alone Japanese kid who decided to dig an incredibly deep hole. Her clothes just got really tatty in the process.

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by Tammyfan »

Those farm hands bear a suspicious resemblance to Laurel and Hardy....

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Re: Refugees from Sally

Post by Marionette »

felneymike wrote:You get that a lot in Japanese comics, the parents of children who seem to be around 11-14 are always "away on business" and the kids get into no end of scrapes, building robots, fighting demons, contacting aliens or having their computer programs come to life, when the computer is struck by lightning. :lol:

Speaking of the far east, that "cave girl" has quite a small nose, narrow eyes and black hair. If you ask me, she was just another left-alone Japanese kid who decided to dig an incredibly deep hole. Her clothes just got really tatty in the process.
Can't be. in comics Japanese girls have massive eyes. And green hair. Or blue, pink, orange, purple; any colour but black.
The Tammy Project: Documenting the classic British girls' comic, one serial at a time.

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