The Best of Cat Girl

 This Sissy Gurl blog has always prided itself in being different than most in that it is more centred around the everyday life and interests  of being one, not least an age dysphoric one so we do talk about stuff like comics which is where we are today.

Girls comics tended to suit us better whatever the boys said about them and actually many a cartoon strip series could easily rival the very best boys comics and  so from the pages of classic 1960s girls' comic Sally comes the first ever collection of beloved British superheroine The Cat Girl! 

Cathy Carter is not your average teen. She can jump further, fight longer and climb higher than anyone she knows - with the aid of a magic suit, she is Cat Girl! 

Facing off in glamorous, globetrotting adventures against supervillains and master criminals, Cathy often finds the hardest fight comes from her bumbling detective father, who doesn't believe Cathy can fend for herself. Can Cathy save the world when the person trying to hold her back - is her dad?

This collection contains Cat Girl's latest adventure, Cat Girl Returns from the Tammy & Jinty special, as well as a purrfect selection of the best classic Cat Girl stories from Sally, and a brand new cover from Elkys Nova.

Summer Specials rebooted

Summer for most British boys and girls growing up in the nineteen seventies and eighties meant going away and the ritual of buying Summer Specials of our favourite comics to  read and laugh at during that six weeks or so of school hols.

While I had mainly boys and co-ed comics I did manage to see some girls comics despite the very rigid gender code enforced restrictions of that era and how that affected feminine boys like me so comics such as Jinty were not unknown even if we couldn't possess them.

The market for comics for older girls as with boys declined during the nineteen nineties as glossy tween and teen lifestyle magazines such as Bliss! and More! took hold but this year Rebellion Publications who own the rights to a number of now deceased comics and comic strip series made a new Summer Jinty and Tammy summer special with all new content.

These were stories set in schools that talked of friendship and tricks with the one more modern take added being Rocky of the Rovers, that rectified  an injustice of the era I grew up in that girls were not allowed to play football in the we as boys even feminine boys did.

In the rebooted world of Roy of the Rovers following on from the acclaim given to Jamie Johnson novels for the new series of Roy of the Rovers, the Roy we knew and loved was rebooted as modern teen wanting to be signed up Rocky has been born as his sister and like modern girls plays football too

I'm glad Rebellion care to bring back a quality comic for Summer Special that is relevant to todays girls (and feminine boys).

Jinty: Volume 1

I had spoke of the forbidden comics of my boyhood and how that left minus an important side of my life because of the extreme gender policing of that era but it is possible to recap on those things you missed out upon. 

 Rebellion Publishing own the rights to many of those Fleetway/IPC comic titles of our era and that does include such comics as Jinty which did feature girls science fiction stories and tomorrow they will release this specially compiled volume of two favourites from 1979, Land of No Tears and The Human Zoo.

Whilst undergoing surgery on her lame leg, Cassy Shaw is transported into a dystopian future in which people with genetic defects are regarded as second class citizens. Unable to accept such objectionable discrimination, Cassy attempts to rally her peers (the Gamma girls) into beating the Alpha girls in several sporting events. Can she win the Golden Girl award and prove herself an equal?

Twin sisters Shona and Jenny are kidnapped along with their classmates by a superior race of telepathic aliens. Brought back to the aliens' home planet, Shona and some other human captives are kept in cages where they are treated and displayed like animals, while Jenny is sold to another owner. Will the twins ever be able to reunite and escape by to Earth?

They have been carefully restored from they days they were printed on newsprint to be consumed and soon disposed of so the story telling and drawing genius can be appreciated today.

I'm so looking forward to getting this.

Diana!

 Comics have always interested me from childhood and girls comics were the "forbidden fruit" for more feminine boys such as sissies like me so whenever I had the chance to read them secretly I did even if they may of been a good few years old in with stuff for table top sales deemed surplus to requirements by a girl or her parents.

Diana was a high quality tabloid sized girls' comic published by D.C. Thomson and was very successful.

 A slick 24 page glossy comic with 16 of its pages in full colour at a time when most comics were on newsprint with black and white interiors. 

This is Diana, No.149, dated 25th December 1965, published on the 18th December of that year which has  classy high quality seasonal cover.

Unfortunately, the stories inside the comic don't have a Christmas theme, but they do feature excellent artwork. Here's the penultimate episode of sci-fi strip The Pink Peril

 

This edition featured a chapter of a serialised adaptation of Ivanhoe showing the quality of the story telling and drawing abilities this title had.

Most girls comics had a higher proportion of "makes" with arts and crafts compared with boys comics and so this edition had some festive ones. 

Like most British comics there was a 1965 Annual rather like the Beano had one that had 128 full colour pages and cost 8/6d.

Interestingly D C Thomson in an advertisement that their Dennis The Menace annual was aimed specifically at boys unlike the main Beano one.

This looks to me to be fine comic aimed at Junior Girls and those in the first few years of High School I'd of love to had read at the time.

Jinty

When we talk about the past such as we did last month inevitably it is whole past we are considering and not just one aspect which was  something I recall discussing with a careworker as a boy at the time. 

The world of the Children was very much divided into things for girls and things for boys and that took in comics beyond the humour comics such as The Dandy and Beano so the likelihood of seeing a girls comic for me was slim.

Generally the only boy who may was one who had a sister or two and even then he'd need to careful that wasn't to become knowledge with his mates which wasn't much use  to me as much as I'd of willing traded my younger brother in for one.

Jinty in nineteen seventy nine might well of been one I'd of loved given the front cover of this edition given a choice with mystery and intrigue in the comic strips.

Society was starting to change, heck we had the first Woman Prime Minister that year which I even had afternoon tea with so Jinty had a sports section in much the way Tiger had been sports centred so it had become a "got it all" girls comic.

And it still had a place for dolls.

It is sad comics of such quality are no more being replaced by celebrity culture magazines, teen fashion and the stories Jinty would of published left to the Comic Books or important Manga.