And now for something completely different…

Posted on June 6, 2007 by Brigid Alverson

Check out my contribution to the I (heart) comics feature at Blog@Newsarama, where I write about something manga-like but not manga: British girls’ comics.

About Brigid Alverson

Brigid Alverson has been reading comics since she was 4. After earning an MFA in printmaking, she headed to New York to become a famous artist but ended up working with words instead of pictures, first as a book editor and later as a newspaper reporter. She started MangaBlog to keep track of her daughters’ reading habits and now covers manga, comics and graphic novels as a freelancer for School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Comic Book Resources, the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, and Robot 6. She also edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. Now settled in the outskirts of Boston, Brigid is married to a physicist and has two daughters.
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5 Responses to And now for something completely different…

  1. David Welsh says:
    June 6, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    I really enjoyed reading it! And here I thought my days of collecting back issues were over, but now I want to go out and hunt down lots of British girls’ comics.

  2. Dock says:
    June 6, 2007 at 2:18 pm

    British Girls’ comics?! You never cease to surprise me! We were just talking about Bunty the other day, in one of our discussions about british comics. ^_^ I never expected anyone to write about this.

  3. ChunHyang72 says:
    June 6, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    Your piece did such a wonderful job of capturing that special relationship we have with books when we’re kids!

  4. Brigid says:
    June 6, 2007 at 9:20 pm

    Thanks, everyone! I’m happy to be able to share yet another of my addictions with the world!

  5. JennyN says:
    June 7, 2007 at 8:23 am

    A terrific article which revived a lot of good memories… Though my own favourite was one which seems almost never to be mentioned, JUNE AND SCHOOL FRIEND. “Lan, the Girl from Tibet” (mystical yogic powers at an English boarding school), “Pepper’s Puppets” (three girls caught up in Ruritanian intrigue), “Serena from Outer Space” (science fiction on the moors of the West Country), “Kathy of Marvin Grange” (another boarding-school), “The Lucky Days” (family soap-opera), the story about an Italian orphan and her donkey, on a journey to find her uncle… does anyone else remember them?

    As for the enterprising young working women you mention, one of the most interesting was “Chairman Cherry” – not in J&SF; possibly BUNTY or JINTY? Every story had the same introduction: “When the chairman of the great firm of Harlands died, he left everything to office cleaner Cherry Chick. Now Cherry is CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD!” Cherry herself was shown as about 19, decked out in long blonde hair and minidresses – and with a down-to-earth intelligence which regularly confounded and impressed the moustachioed tycoons of British industry (not to mention her two Laurel-and-Hardy type subordinates, Coote and Moddle). *That’s* one I’d love to see reprinted…

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