Suzy serials

[Tammyfan]

I am looking for titles of serials from the DCT title 'Suzy' 1985-1987 to add to the index at Girls Comics from Yesterday. It needs expanding and Suzy is hard to find. So if anyone has any Suzys, could they provide a list of contents, please?

This thread is also open to anyone who wants to discuss Suzy too.

[Tammyfan]

I reckon Suzy was one of DCT's underrated titles. I was impressed with the quality of the writing. One story was set in a Tenko women's camp. Another is where Britain is invaded and the heroine's father is acting as spokesman for the invaders. But she just can't believe he is a traitor and is determined to prove it.

[peace355]

So I actually got a Suzy comic! It is quite feature heavy with pop pages, puzzles, a problem page, letters page and posters. So there is actually only 4 stories well 5 if you include Smudge's Diary (a text story of dog's week)

The best of them is "The Silver Sword" it is set during the war and it is also a story with a sympathetic German helper. Three siblings Ruth, Edek and Bronia are alone after the Nazis take their mother away, their father is looking for them, but most people believe the children are dead after their house was blown up. Also interesting is in this is that in this issue it is the male protagonists we follow, first Edek and then the father Joseph.

Jet's Incredible journey involves a girl looking for the injured racing pigeon, Jet, that she had adopted.

My Perfect Brother? is a photo story with a sci-fi theme. Zara's brother was the first British astronaut to land on Mars, but has been acting strangely since he came back.

Finally A New Life for Libby, is set in the 1800s where a girl has been adopted by a rich couple. The mother believes that Libby is her actual daughter Charlotte that was lost at sea when she was a baby. They are on a search to find the man who gave Libby to the gypsies.

[helsbels]

I am looking for titles of serials from the DCT title 'Suzy' 1985-1987 to add to the index at Girls Comics from Yesterday. It needs expanding and Suzy is hard to find. So if anyone has any Suzys, could they provide a list of contents, please?

This thread is also open to anyone who wants to discuss Suzy too.

I have just posted a list of Suzy stories that I've come across over the years, on the Girls Comics of Yesterday site.

[peace355]

Thanks for that! I've found little information on Suzys though I do recognise some of the serials that must have been reprinted in other D.C. Thomson comics like "The Jordans of Jedworth" was in Judy and there was a story called "No Dogs Allowed" in Mandy but that might just be the same title.

Was 4-5 stories the usual amount of stories in an issue? It does seem it was going for a mixture of comic and glossy magazine.

[helsbels]

Yes, I've seen The Jordans of Jedworth in Judy as well. There's a really good story called "The Quest Of Katie Courage" that starts in issue 1 of Suzy and goes on for quite a while. It was drawn by Paddy Brennan and feels as if it had appeared in Judy or Bunty before. Suzy did tend to have 4 or 5 stories, some of them 4 - 6 pages long, especially in later issues. I only read the picture stories - I never read the photo stories, I can't stand them! The only one I didn't mind was Bunty's "Luv, Lisa".

[philcom55]

Ian Serraillier's 'The Silver Sword' is something of a children's classic. Look & Learn previously serialized it in 1965 with illustrations by (I think) the veteran girls' comic artist Colin Merritt:



Literary adaptations were more the sort of thing that DC Thomson tended to feature in Diana, lending weight to Peace 355's suggestion that Suzy was envisaged as a similar magazine/comic hybrid.

- Phil Rushton

[stevezodiac]

Our class read The Silver Sword in primary school in the mid sixties. Don't remember anything about it now.

[helsbels]

I remember the BBC adaptation of this story, in the late 70's I think.

[Tammyfan]

I'm glad to see this thread finally taking off. Yes, I remember the book of The Silver Sword, but never saw adaptations.

[Tammyfan]

One Suzy story I'd like to know the ending to is 'Blackmailed!' It was probably finished in the Bunter merger. Does anyone have the ending or know how it went?

By the way, did Suzy bring the photostory to Bunty, or did Bunty have photostories before then?

[Tammyfan]

I am looking for titles of serials from the DCT title 'Suzy' 1985-1987 to add to the index at Girls Comics from Yesterday. It needs expanding and Suzy is hard to find. So if anyone has any Suzys, could they provide a list of contents, please?

This thread is also open to anyone who wants to discuss Suzy too.

I have just posted a list of Suzy stories that I've come across over the years, on the Girls Comics of Yesterday site.

Thanks for that! I was reading through the list, and the titles are jogging memories. Quite a number are serials I do remember, though not their titles.

[Phoenix]

I have just posted a list of Suzy stories that I've come across over the years, on the Girls Comics of Yesterday site.

Helen posted this in September 2013. Has the list got lost, because I can't find it? Any clarification gratefully received.

I've found little information on Suzys though I do recognise some of the serials that must have been reprinted in other D.C. Thomson comics like "The Jordans of Jedworth" was in Judy

There were two series of The Jordans Of Jedworth in Suzy, one in 1983, the other in 1984, but the serial in Judy in 1988, despite the fact that it features the Jordan triplets and their implacable nemesis, Meriel Barnes, is not a repeat of either.

[Phoenix]

Literary adaptations were more the sort of thing that DC Thomson tended to feature in Diana, lending weight to Peace 355's suggestion that Suzy was envisaged as a similar magazine/comic hybrid.

I only have around a hundred issues of Suzy, but they run between issue 1 and issue 238 out of the full run of 249. Apart from The Silver Sword, Phil, I haven't seen any other adapted novel. Furthermore, given the time gap between the demise of Diana (December 1976) and the launch of Suzy (September 1982) I don't see Diana as a major influence although it is certainly true that for some time she had been turning her back on fiction in favour of features similar to those found in Jackie, by whom she was eventually consumed.

Between the demise of Diana and the first issue of Suzy Thomsons launched Emma (February 1978) and Tracy (October 1979), both of which followed the standard pattern inaugurated in 1958 by Bunty, and which the company had maintained with Judy, Mandy, Spellbound and Debbie. Although Emma was seen as a failure and closed down after only 81 issues, Tracy had a reasonable life with 277 issues, sufficiently satisfactory apparently for the company to feel comfortable launching Nikki in February 1985, a similar story paper, a month after the demise of Tracy. Remember, in 1985 Bunty, Judy and Mandy were still being published as well.

It would appear that as far as presentation is concerned the major influence on Suzy was Patches, which had been launched by Thomsons in March 1979 for the older teenager. Patches had three photo stories, and features including letters, fashion articles, horoscopes, general information pages, and pop music presentations. Suzy had four photo stories and two drawn ones, and more or less the same sort of feature pages as those in Patches. The balance between the fiction and the features would suggest that the editors felt that the younger girls would prefer more fiction whereas the older ones would prefer more features. An important difference between Patches and Suzy on the one hand, and on the other hand all Thomsons' other story papers for girls at that time, was that Patches and Suzy were printed on glossy paper.

It is important to accept that it is the presentation of Patches that is the major influence on Suzy, just the fiction and the features, certainly not the content of the stories. Some examples of the themes in the fiction in Patches included drink driving, guys getting girls drunk at parties, the importance of getting and keeping boyfriends, gangs of thieves, two-timing boyfriends, and girls getting pressurised by their boyfriends into sexual activity, and those giving in feeling afterwards that it had all been too soon, but if that is what it took to keep a boyfriend........

[Tammyfan]

I'd still like to know how the Suzy serial "Blackmailed" ended.