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By Charles EP Murphy Art by Shirley Bellwood, and also modelled after her In our discussion on girls’ comics – indeed, in anyone’s discussion of British girls’ comics – the gothic horror comic Misty came up. It lasted 101 issues, little under two years, with a few specials and annuals after, but its name still carries enough weight that Rebellion has resurrected it for yearly Halloween comics. It was one of the first titles to get reprints by Treasury of British Comics. It’s

By Charles EP Murphy Artist unknown Girls comics once dominated the UK market for almost three decades – and then died, for various reasons both unique to them and part of the general problems of the British industry. So: in another timeline, can this be averted? And for how long? A Format for Form 3B A noted problem for comics is that young girls turned to magazines, the new status symbols of being ‘mature’. These titles were very different in format to comics, which left th

By Charles EP Murphy Art by Jim Eldridge, cover from Amazon marketplace In the beginning, there were just “comics”. Then, from the 1950s onwards, British publishers decided girls might buy more of them if it was aimed specifically at them, as they had with numerous story papers in the olden days – and so “boys comics” and “girls comics” were produced (with “humour comics” and “nursery comics” counted as their own separate fiefdoms). The girls’ comics outsold the boys’ comics