Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

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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Tammyfan
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Tammyfan »

Goof wrote:
Tammyfan wrote:She has the same hairdo and freckles she had in Sandie. Later the freckles disappear and she has a more tousled hairdo.
Yes, and Capaldi also makes quite a lot of how poor she is, in the patched and mended state of her clothes. I don't know if this was also stressed by Torregrosa in the Sandie series.

Also, isn’t it rather unusual that Tammy revived the series so long after it had ceased in the comic it was taking over? Unless there was a brief reappearance in the last few months of Sandie’s run, it looks as if Tammy restarted the series in its first post-merger number, nearly a year and a half after it had finished in Sandie. Somebody at Tammy must have had a sharp eye for unexplored potential.
It’s possible that the reboot was conceived as a sequel in Sandie. But when the merger grew imminent they decided to hold it until then. If so, they had no regrets, because Sue went on to become the second-longest running character in Tammy. My Sandie collection is patchy but on what I have, I can’t see any evidence of Sue reappearing.

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stevezodiac
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by stevezodiac »

I think (back in the sixties at least) every class had one kid who was from a very poor background. I remember when I was about ten halfway through term a new boy joined our class. He looked like he came from a poor family and was put next to me. His name was Timothy Tyler and we became good friends. I like to think I was good for him. My mum and dad were quite hard up themselves.

Kashgar
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Kashgar »

I had a boy in my class at primary school who came from the local 'orphanage'. It was a place where children, from what were termed broken homes, were housed but it still got called an orphanage. He was only at our school for a few months so I'm not sure how his life worked out. His name was Douglas Pethrick.

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Adam Eterno
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Adam Eterno »

Kashgar wrote: His name was Douglas Pethrick.
Very rare name. There's only one registered in the UK in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Tyne And Wear, NE12

Phoenix
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Phoenix »

Tammyfan wrote:Thank you Goof. Actually, a scan would be most useful.
I have this very evening discovered on Lew Stringer's 'BLIMEY!' blog that GOOF is an 'all-new digital comic'!!.

Goof
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Goof »

Phoenix wrote:I have this very evening discovered on Lew Stringer's 'BLIMEY!' blog that GOOF is an 'all-new digital comic'!!.
If they send me a sub I won't sue.
Last edited by Goof on 18 Jun 2019, 23:17, edited 1 time in total.

Goof
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Goof »

Tammyfan wrote:It’s possible that the reboot was conceived as a sequel in Sandie. But when the merger grew imminent they decided to hold it until then. If so, they had no regrets, because Sue went on to become the second-longest running character in Tammy.
Yes, that’s possible, but if the opening episodes originated as a Sandie series I think they must have been reworked a lot for Tammy. I only know one or two Sandie Wee Sue stories, but to me the new series looks different from the word go. As well as the changing style of humour, they have changed the location from a posh school with Sue as a scholarship pupil, to a working class setting in a poor industrial town. Also, the new teachers Bigger and Tuft establish the Tammy touch straight away. These types are not just the usual narrow-minded and arbitrary classroom tyrants – they are determined to persecute Sue from the outset.

There’s also a harder edge to some of the first plots. Sue is accused of theft twice in the first two episodes, and in the second case Miss Tuft is unscrupulously determined to get Sue into serious trouble even though she must know that she’s innocent. Another early story involves an autistic girl bullied by the teachers, who is only diagnosed through Sue’s intervention – quite a radical story idea for 1973.

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philcom55
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by philcom55 »

Mergers were generally a way of transferring readers and subscriptions from one title to another so there always had to be at least a couple of series from the cancelled title which continued in the new one. Unfortunately this often meant that the dominant comic in the merger ran the risk of being saddled with material that might not be very interesting for its own regular readers, so it makes sense that the crossover series should be 'tweaked' by the new editorial team for their benefit. Something similar happened when the historical series Black Hawk developed science fiction elements when it transferred from Tornado to 2000AD.

Kashgar
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Kashgar »

Adam Eterno wrote:
Kashgar wrote: His name was Douglas Pethrick.
Very rare name. There's only one registered in the UK in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Tyne And Wear, NE12
Thanks for that Adam. So it looks likely that Douglas is still around and that he hasn't moved far in the last 55 years. A mere ten miles. In fact I think he came from Newcastle in the first place if memory serves. He always seemed to be a bit of a 'townie' compared to us pit village kids.

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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Goof »

philcom55 wrote:Mergers were generally a way of transferring readers and subscriptions from one title to another so there always had to be at least a couple of series from the cancelled title which continued in the new one. Unfortunately this often meant that the dominant comic in the merger ran the risk of being saddled with material that might not be very interesting for its own regular readers, so it makes sense that the crossover series should be 'tweaked' by the new editorial team for their benefit. Something similar happened when the historical series Black Hawk developed science fiction elements when it transferred from Tornado to 2000AD.
That’s true, and thinking about it, the Tammy editors may have had this problem in finding more than one Sandie regular (Jeannie and her Uncle Meanie) to transfer over. As far as I can see from the contents of issues near the end of the run (thanks to the Jinty website for these), by this time almost all the other stories were one-off serials. It may be this that started them hunting through the back numbers, and spotting the potential in Wee Sue.

Tammyfan
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Tammyfan »

philcom55 wrote:Mergers were generally a way of transferring readers and subscriptions from one title to another so there always had to be at least a couple of series from the cancelled title which continued in the new one. Unfortunately this often meant that the dominant comic in the merger ran the risk of being saddled with material that might not be very interesting for its own regular readers, so it makes sense that the crossover series should be 'tweaked' by the new editorial team for their benefit. Something similar happened when the historical series Black Hawk developed science fiction elements when it transferred from Tornado to 2000AD.
Misty didn’t even have that when she merged Tammy. All she had were Miss T, Misty herself to become a co-storyteller with the Storyteller, and scripts of serials and, I suspect Monster Tales.
I suspect the real reason Jinty revived Pam of Pond Hill some issues before her merger with Tammy was that Pam had the best potential to carry on in the merger.

Tammyfan
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Tammyfan »

Can anyone please provide a scan of Wee Sue after she was moved into the "Old Friends" slot during the Tammy & Jinty merger 1981-82? Thank you.

Phoenix
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Phoenix »

Tammyfan wrote:Can anyone please provide a scan of Wee Sue after she was moved into the "Old Friends" slot during the Tammy & Jinty merger 1981-82?
Regrettably I can't help, Briony. I have 12 issues in 1981, plus duplicates in some cases, the latest being 12 September, but the heading block on all of them is TAMMY and MISTY. The only issue I have from 1982 is 28 August, but that doesn't contain an episode of Wee Sue, nor is MISTY mentioned on the front cover.

Tammyfan
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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Tammyfan »

Phoenix wrote:
Tammyfan wrote:Can anyone please provide a scan of Wee Sue after she was moved into the "Old Friends" slot during the Tammy & Jinty merger 1981-82?
Regrettably I can't help, Briony. I have 12 issues in 1981, plus duplicates in some cases, the latest being 12 September, but the heading block on all of them is TAMMY and MISTY. The only issue I have from 1982 is 28 August, but that doesn't contain an episode of Wee Sue, nor is MISTY mentioned on the front cover.
Thank you Phoenix. Oh, by the way, you wouldn’t happen to have a duplicate of 13 June 1981?

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Re: Looking for first appearance of Miss Bigger

Post by Phoenix »

Tammyfan wrote:Thank you Phoenix. Oh, by the way, you wouldn’t happen to have a duplicate of 13 June 1981?
Check your private messages.

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