Bully teachers in girls comics

[philcom55]

'Callous Cassie' from Nikki was another variation on the 'bullying teacher' theme. In this case Cassie Brown had to pretend to be cruel in order to protect her pupils from the genuinely horrible headmistress Miss Pike. Unfortunately this led to her being universally hated by the entire school!



(Incidentally, Miss Pike demonstrates the time-honoured rule that if your teacher wears her hair in a tight bun she'll inevitably turn out to be one of the cruel ones. Presumably it has something to do with restricting the brain's blood supply!)

- Phil Rushton

[DavidKW]

I'm afraid Tammyfan I don't have the Ratbag drawing I did - it got drawn before a quiz I was participating in started and I absent midedly turned the sheet over & scribbled answers on it

Plus I do not have I scanning facility at the moment I'm afraid - I have no computer and no modern mobile phone to do it (am saving up) - and I'll need to hire a mentor to show this technophobe what to do.

Have done a better sketch recently with a drawing of the "Mrs Decripid" next to it; will keep and scan up soon as its ready (along with the other sketch I did of "Mr 50-something know it all patroniser").

As for being wired up - I don't know if in the late 70s there was technology conspicuous enough for it; and my parents would never allow it as they believed all teachers are good no matter how bent/corrupt they are (and they were children & non-teens in the 30s & 40s; I was in late 70s/80s in a very different world).

[DavidKW]

I've read about that "Patsy On The Warpath" as it was called in June & SF in an article on grittier strips and how some comics were doing the things Tammy became synominous with & took to the next level, before it started in 1971.

"Patsy" is a great strip - I have got most of the Junes with that in bar about 2 or 3 episodes (inc conclusion). Shows the likes of June could do & have grittier stuff amongst its good variety.

Speaking of John Armstrong, he did a long running strip called "Cherry & The Children" in June (originally from Girls' Crystal); I think I saw a strip in a 65 edition with a nasty teacher featured in it; I'll have to check when I've got time.

On Sue Day, I can remember in similar story in a 1969 PT annual where Sue encounters a new young teacher who's a tyrant, but changes when Sue helps her find a man she eventually marries.

[Tammyfan]

Here we have another variation on discipline being taken too far. Mr Graves is all but Victorian in his views on how his daughter Lydia's free-and-easy school should be run. So when he is appointed headmaster he rams his ideas of discipline down its throat in an over-zealous, high-handed campaign to turn it into an old-fashioned grammar school running on the lines of his previous school. His methods include butting in on classes, shouting at teachers for using free-and-easy methods, ordering them to teach the pupils his way, taking them to task for not wearing teachers' gowns, and generally treating them like children. It gets so bad that one teacher is driven out (but she gets the last laugh when she returns as headmistress in the final episode).

However, unlike Misses Steele and Bramble, Graves does have a heart. He is portrayed more as a harsh, over-zealous, arrogant and naive bigot who thinks the whole education system should be run his way than a sadist who tortures his pupils in the name of discipline. Surprisingly, he eventually learns to open his mind and gets a whole new respect for progressive teaching methods. Still, the whole school is relieved when he returns to his old school because he has discovered that its discipline has slipped to the point of pupils running riot.

But there is a real bully teacher in this story - Miss Snape. Graves thinks Snape is a teacher after his own heart. He is too naive to realise that she is a dragon who picks on pupils. Snape is two-faced as well. She makes Lydia her teacher's pet (much to Lydia's chagrin) because she is after the deputy head position. When Lydia's demonstration (below) causes this to fall through, she goes from teacher's pet to pest as Snape picks on her far worse than all the rest. Snape's failure to become deputy head was a deciding factor in her changing schools as well.

This story appeared in Jinty 1981 and was drawn by Mario Capaldi.

[Tammyfan]

'Callous Cassie' from Nikki was another variation on the 'bullying teacher' theme. In this case Cassie Brown had to pretend to be cruel in order to protect her pupils from the genuinely horrible headmistress Miss Pike. Unfortunately this led to her being universally hated by the entire school!



(Incidentally, Miss Pike demonstrates the time-honoured rule that if your teacher wears her hair in a tight bun she'll inevitably turn out to be one of the cruel ones. Presumably it has something to do with restricting the brain's blood supply!)

- Phil Rushton

The artist for Callous Cassie has been identified as David Matysiak. I read it on another forum.

The theme of a girl pretending to be cruel, and/or curry favour with the villains of the piece in order to secretly help their victims and having to endure the hatred of those same victims was very popular. Detestable Della (Bunty) and Slaves of the Sewing Machines (Mandy) were two of them. Sometimes they adopted a costumed identity as well, as in Hateful Hattie (Mandy) and Catch the Cat! (Bunty). Mind you, I don't recall them in the IPC titles (unless June or School Friend had some?); they were more a DCT theme.

Miss Brittle in Dulcie Wears the Dunce's Hat (Tammy) was another teacher with her hair in a bun. However, she is merely strict and is not the villain of the piece. That falls to Annie Archer and her classmates, who deliberately sabotage Dulcie Dobbs' schoolwork just so they can see Miss Brittle exercise one of her special methods - forcing Dulcie to wear the dunce's hat!

Now you mention it, it is funny how teachers in girls' comics who have their hair in a bun were either bullying or strict. Still, not all those bully teachers and headmistresses had their hair in a bun. Some of the teachers in Hard Times for Helen and Mrs Whitely (The Comp) didn't.

Stories set in Victorian times were certainly ideal for bully teacher stories. One bullying Victorian teacher appeared in flashback in Jinty's Sea Sister. Her methods included the cane, the dunce hat, and forcing her pupils to stand for long periods. Her descendant teaches at the modern school in the story. She is strict but not a bully like her ancestress.

[Tammyfan]

I've read about that "Patsy On The Warpath" as it was called in June & SF in an article on grittier strips and how some comics were doing the things Tammy became synonymous with & took to the next level, before it started in 1971.

"Patsy" is a great strip - I have got most of the Junes with that in bar about 2 or 3 episodes (inc conclusion). Shows the likes of June could do & have grittier stuff amongst its good variety.

Speaking of John Armstrong, he did a long running strip called "Cherry & The Children" in June (originally from Girls' Crystal); I think I saw a strip in a 65 edition with a nasty teacher featured in it; I'll have to check when I've got time.

On Sue Day, I can remember in similar story in a 1969 PT annual where Sue encounters a new young teacher who's a tyrant, but changes when Sue helps her find a man she eventually marries.

In Penny's Place (M&J and then Bunty) a new teacher picks on Penny because she had a contretemps with him at her cafe. Eventually she snaps at him and this gets her sent to the headmistress, where she explains what is going on. When the teacher emerges from the head's office he has a "face like thunder". He treats Penny more respectfully after that. The teacher settles down a bit and becomes a regular, though still not very popular.

[Tammyfan]

Another school run by Squeersian teachers, but with a time travel twist. Arrogant Rosie Cooper always gets her own way at school because her father chairs the school board. But she is in for a shock when a picture transports her to the days when her school was, well, a bit different. Art by David Matysiak.



And sometimes there is more to a Squeersian school than bullying and exploiting pupils, as becomes apparent the longer Rosie stays at the school:

[Tammyfan]

Sometimes teacher tyranny reaches out from beyond the grave, as the girls of Ratcliffe Park School discover when they are temporarily housed at Ratcliffe Manor while their own school is under repair. Art by Carlos Freixas.





But if they thought Lavinia Wykes was not around today, they soon learn otherwise when her spirit starts to possess their headmistress:

[Tammyfan]

Here we have a bully teacher from this Four Marys picture library. Of course the Four Marys come to the rescue with a bit of detective work. But it is a crying shame because Miss Wilson started out really nice, and the class liked her. Things would have been different if Miss Wilson had not let an old grudge against Jenny's mother get the better of her. Art by Barrie Mitchell.

[Tammyfan]

School of the future where school is dreich because discipline is draconian and no fun, sport, recreation or laughter is allowed. Pupils are miserable but are punished if they say so. Detention is a prison block where girls must solve one problem after another, and teachers' assistants are robots who are dead ringers for C3PO and R2D2. But then Trixie sleepwalks her way into the forbidden archives (hmm, I wonder why pupils are not allowed in there?), views tapes of what life was like for girls in the 20th century (playing games, sports and having fun) and things begin to change. This story was reprinted with the updated title Trixie of 2097.

[Marionette]

Wow. That robot really is a blatant steal. I know comics were bad for copying plots from movies - I'm a little perplexed at how proud Pat Mills is of his PG rated rewrite of Carrie - but this isn't even filing off the serial numbers.

[philcom55]

When it comes to bullying teachers I think it'd be hard to find one scarier than 'The Witch of Westwood High' in DC Thomson's Tops.



- Phil Rushton

[Tammyfan]

In the Ragsy story from Misty annual 1981 we have a harsh teacher with very unenlightened views on bullying. Her idea of helping the miserable, bullied Rachel is to beat her into stopping her 'moping'. Turn to the full story on the Lucky's Living Doll http://comicsuk.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.p ... 6&start=75 thread to find out what happens to the teacher!

Art by Eduardo Feito.

[Tammyfan]

Here we have another Robert MacGilivray story, which deals with another case of teacher tyranny leading to a haunting. This story was originally a Strange Story that appeared in the 1973 School Friend annual. It was reprinted in the 1981 Misty annual, substituting Misty for the Storyteller (hence the narrator's dialogue that you would not normally expect to hear coming from the mouth of Misty).

[Tammyfan]

The 1980 Misty annual had a text story, "The Cupboard", which is another case of teacher tyranny leaving ghosts. I am not sure how it clearly it would show up here as it is a text story, so I haven't scanned it. Essentially, a governess named Miss Jessup liked to punish her pupil by locking him in a cupboard. When he grew up he took revenge by locking her in the cupboard and left her to starve to death. URRGH! When a family moves in, weird things start happening with that cupboard....