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SCIENCE FICTION IN GIRLS' COMICS

By Briony M. Coote

briony.coote@zeta.co.nz

Acknowledgements to:

Denis Gifford, Encyclopedia of Comic Book Characters, Longman Press,UK, 1987

Misty www.mistycomic.co.uk

David Roach

Jenni Scott

Science fiction (SF) stories are curiously lacking in girls’ comics. Whenever a SF story appeared in Tammy or Jinty, it was a wonderful treat because SF stories were so infrequent. The frequency in which SF stories appear is miniscule compared to stories which deal with the traditional dancing, horse-riding, animals, school, friendship/family problems and sports. One reason may be that SF was not in respectable vogue until the advent of major SF movies like Star Wars, Planet of the Apes and E.T. The influence of Star Wars and E.T. did crop up in girls’ comics. For example, Trixie of 2087 (Debbie Library 107) featured robots which looked undeniably like R2D2, C3PO and Stormtroopers. Nonetheless, the rate of SF serials has remained comparatively low.

When SF serials, or serials with SF elements did occur, they usually dealt with:

1.      Time travel (using a scientific mode, not magical or freak of nature)

2.      Robots

3.      Mad/dotty scientists or kooky brothers/cousins

4.      Adventure with teams/super-girls

5.      Bizarre effects after a freak accident in a laboratory

6.      Gadgets with strange powers, usually with chaotic, beneficial or hilarious results

7.      Encounters with aliens with results ranging from mind control to mentor

8.      Alien invasions

9.      Visits to alien worlds

10.  Girls from the future, robots or aliens finding themselves latter-day Pinocchios when they try to adapt to the ways of Earth.

11.  Crazy computers

12.  Brainwashing

13.  Clones

The stories were played for laughs, to tell an adventure or suspense story, or to make a serious statement.

ACTION, ADVENTURE AND FRIENDSHIP

A common way for SF to appear more regularly was through adventure stories with a regular SF character or characters. Aliens who look entirely like Earth girls but have strange powers were very popular. A classic example was Vanessa from Venus (June). Vanessa looks like any other girl, except that she comes from Venus. Vanessa can do magic with one twirl of her finger. Vanessa uses her powers for good and so goes the blurb: “The most amazing friend an Earth girl ever had!” when Vanessa arrived in her spacechip. The first Earth girl to have Vanessa as an amazing friend was Sally Prentice. Sally was ill-treated by her only relatives, Mrs Gribble and Alison, and sought escape through reading SF books. Life imitates art, so they say.

Mind you, sometimes things don’t work out the way Vanessa intends. In one episode Vanessa overhears the headmistress of another school looking for the “school crocodile”. Vanessa decides to help, but without understanding what the lady means by “school crocodile”. So she conjures up a live crocodile in school uniform and uses her powers to have the whole school fall in love with it! When Vanessa finds out that the headmistress was only looking for a line of schoolgirls, she has to do a very fast time-reversal spell to wipe out her well-meaning mistake.

There are the times when Vanessa uses her powers to fight evil, such as when her arch-rival Velda shows up. Velda also comes from Venus, but she is mean and spiteful and can’t bear to watch other people having fun. Velda uses her powers to turn a Christmas party into a nightmare before Vanessa finally gets the better of her. Velda’s punishment is to be turned into a decoration for the Christmas tree and watch everyone having fun.

SF action teams are also frequent regulars. The stars of Spellbound were the Supercats, an all-girl team consisting of: Hercula (super-strong), Electra (generates electricity), Fauna (shape-shifter) and Helen Millar (team captain despite her lack of super-powers). The Supercats pilot the Spaceship Lynx which operates out of Moonbase 4. It is worth noting that the Supercats were portrayed as young women rather than the usual teenage heroines, and wore tight-fitting suits that exhibited their shapeliness more than girls’ comics usually did. The Supercats enjoyed a brief spell in Debbie after she swallowed Spellbound.

James Bond/spy themes also make for popular SF material. The Men from U.N.C.L.E. inspired the Girls from N.O.O.D.L.E.S. in Diana.Gale Price and Nicola Main are special agents who represent National Organisation for Order, Discipline and Law Enforcement in Schools (N.O.O.D.L.E.S.), with Miss Z as their boss. Miss Z operates a secret HQ hidden in a ruined abbey and dispatches Gale and Nicola on secret missions. Such missions included foiling Tengali the sinister ballet master and his face-changing masks, and investigating the death of a pupil who was electrocuted by guitar at Alexander’sPop School.

Sometimes machines are the stars of the show. Such is the case with the Flights of Flopear (Bunty). Flopear is to all appearaces an enormous, cuddly toy bunny. The transparent window in his stomach may suggest something odder about this great big toy bunny. Flopear is in fact a vehicle which like the TARDIS, is larger on the inside than the outside. Like the TARDIS, Flopear can transport his passenger to anywhere in the universe. Unlike the TARDIS, Flopear can talk, has a mind of his own, and a real character. Flopear can be vain to the point of absurdity and has a little trouble understanding what Christmas is about. Still, if you are short of a Christmas tree, Flopear is only too happy to whisk you away to find a Christmas tree on some planet that has one to spare.

Once it would have been a total surprise to meet the Boyfriend from Blupo (Bunty). Traditionally, boys remained on the periphery and stories dealing with boyfriends/dating were unheard of in the world of girls’ comics. However, by late 1980s-1990s, such stories were standard in the remaining girls’ titles, so the boyfriend in this story is unusual for being an alien, not for merely being there at all.

Lee wishes upon a shooting star to have a boyfriend to go with the disco with that night. The shooting star turns out to be a spaceship with a new boyfriend for Lee – Morgan from planet Blupo, and an absolute hunk of a boy! A little too improbable for an alien, you might think? Actually, Morgan is ugly by his peoples’ standards while his cousin Fil is a hunk by Blupo standards but ugly by Earth standards. Sometimes Morgan doesn’t get things quite right, such as waltzing at the disco, but “we aliens learn fast!” and within minutes he is the best disco-dancer on the floor. “He’s cosmic!” thinks Lee and all readers wish they could have a boyfriend like Morgan.

LABORATORY DISASTERS

Other SF regulars are products of the laboratory. In Superbabe (Judy) Professor Greycells of Masterbrain Laboratories is proud to unveil his top secret project – a being that looks like any other baby. But it is no ordinary baby – it is SUPERBABE, with the strength of ten babies! The “peril of the playpen” who soon demonstrates that he can throw his blocks like ballistic missiles at the scientists whenever he throws a tantrum - oops! The only person who Superbabe responds to is the laboratory assistant, Sue West. So Sue becomes the constant nanny and companion to “Soopy”, along with the aid of gadgets like the special safety harness and the cap that can pop a parachute to keep Soopy’s super-jinks strictly within the funny zone.

The laboratory produces strange effects upon our heroines if they become victims to an unfortunate mishap. They may develop strange powers like The Girl with the Power (Debbie?). Or weird things start happening to their bodies. Tammy Thumb in Tiny Tammy (Mandy) finds herself shrinking at awkward moments after an accident with her scientific brother Bobby’s chemical formulas. (Like all our other “shrinking” heroines, Tammy’s clothes always modestly shrink down with her). Tammy suffers so many misadventures, including being abducted by foreign spies who want the formula, before their indigenous water restores her to normal. But Tammy isn’t normal for long. In the immediate follow-up, Where’s Tammy?, another mishap with Bobby’s formulas has Tammy becoming invisible! Well, at least Tammy isn’t invisible all the time, unlike Invisible Isla (Bunty) who will remain permanently invisible unless her father finds an antidote. Again Tammy is restored to normal, but there is no peace for the wicked. In Be Your Age, Tammy! Tammy acts babyish after an overdose of yet another formula. She bawls, throws tantrums and holds dollies’ tea parties. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, Bobby’s first attempt at an antidote has Tammy behaving too old as well. In one episode Tammy goes to a job interview dressed up and behaving like an old lady! Poor Tammy alternates between too young and too old before Bobby finally comes up with the right antidote.

Mrs Todd has a similar ageing problem in the Bunty classic, My School Chum Mum, except that she looks too young after trying her husband’s anti-ageing cream. Mum now looks like a school-girl and has to attend her daughter’s school. It is That’ll Teach ‘Em in reverse as Mum discovers how education has changed since her time. Poor Mum is a duffer in the computer class, yet shows up the Domestic Science teacher when she demonstrates that her knowledge of cooking a microwave cake is superior to the teacher’s. To add to Mum’s problems, the welfare services are snooping and concerned that there is no adult in charge of these two girls. And there seems to be no cure to the ageing cream – until Dad returns from overseas and tells Mum that there was an antidote the whole time. He always makes one as a precaution. Now he tells us!

EVIL SCIENTISTS

As we have seen from the likes of Superbabe, life can be chaotic enough with a dotty scientist. So what about a scientist who is downright evil, and probably utterly insane to boot? We open this question with Danger Dog from Tammy.

In Danger Dog Beth Anderson’s dog Sammy goes missing. Like all the other unfortunate strays of the town, Sammy is rounded up and taken to White Fells Research Station for experimentation. Naturally Beth will not have them using Sammy for “their lousy experiments”, so she breaks into White Fells to rescue him. Beth’s father insists that Sammy be returned, in case he is contaminated with something. Beth won’t have any of it and runs away with Sammy. In so doing, Beth sparks a manhunt, with the whole district searching for the “danger dog”.

We all observe with deep suspicion that the sinister-looking White Fells director refuses to comment about the nature of the experiments they performed on Sammy. It’s no wonder when we see what happens to Beth and any other human who comes into contact with Sammy. The most common effect is their muscles going flaccid, but Beth is also going deaf, blind, seeing in the dark, her voice goes wonky, she becomes super-strong and her face breaks out in hideous wrinkles…

At first Beth thinks that she herself is contaminated with something from the laboratory, but then she realises that her father is right after all. Whatever those scientists have done to Sammy affects any human who comes into contact with him. In the final episode, Beth is to conclude that they were trying to develop some secret weapon. Right now, however, Beth faces a terrible dilemma as she is torn between her love of Sammy and human safety.

Beth leaves Sammy tied up while she returns alone to fetch help. But the chemical effects have gotten so bad that Beth collapses at her parents’ house and she is sick for three days. During this time, Sammy was deprived of food and water. Fortunately he is rescued in time. Even more fortunately for Sammy, the deprivation has caused the chemicals to wear off and he can return home. White Fells is closed down because of the “danger dog” scandal, but Beth generously hopes it will be re-opened for more savoury scientific research.

Throughout the serial the White Fells scientists remain abstract, shadowy and nameless. We never find out exactly why they carried out such experiments on Sammy in the first place (or what happens to them beyond getting closed down). Are they doing it for world domination? Is it the money? The glory? Are they doing it on behalf of a client who has ulterior motives? Are they insane? Or are they doing it purely for the love of experimentation?

Any of these of these motives can drive evil scientists in girls’ comics. Revenge often underlines their primary objectives. The scientist is disgruntled because a) the scientific establishment scorned his/her achievements, b) was wrongly accused, or c) was scarred by some tragedy, though it is doubtful they will arouse any sympathy.

Let us examine the cases of Mrs Webb and Dr. Bracken, both of whom appeared in Misty, an off-beat girls’ comic which specialised in horror. It is worthwhile comparing these two villains because they have similar motives, the roots of their methodology are similar, and both come to ends that mirror their evil.

Mrs Webb was first introduced in The Black Widow. Mrs Webb is seeking to avenge her husband who died as the result of a military experiment. She does so by using the creatures she feels affinity with: spiders. Mrs Webb had genetically engineered spiders to be her soldiers. She brainwashes two girls to secretly unleash the spiders on the military establishment which caused her husband’s death. However, the lust for power soon outstrips the thirst for revenge. The husband is forgotten as Mrs Webb becomes a full-blown terrorist out for world domination.

In the sequel, Spider Woman, (published in the Tammy & Misty merger) Mrs Webb makes another bid for world domination. She is going to rule the world together with her beloved spiders! (That’s awfully unselfish of her; most would-be world conquerors don’t want to share).

Mrs Webb has developed man-eating spiders which can strip a live human to the very bones while leaving the clothes and hair intact. Mrs Webb unleashes her spiders on an unsuspecting ship as a sample of her power, and threatens to unleash the man-eating spiders on the entire world if the nations don’t capitulate to her. The Navy will have none of it. After all it’s not that great a threat when all you have to do is bring out hoses or insecticide.

Meanwhile, Mrs Webb unveils what has to be her most bizarre invention yet – a serum that can transform a human being into a spider! Mrs Webb is about to inject the serum into one of her captives when her base is rocked by a naval attack. This skews Mrs Webb’s aim and the needle hits her own arm instead.

Mrs Webb is fleeing in her helicopter when the serum starts to take effect. Mrs Webb’s arms turn into spider’s legs! Mrs Webb is delighted she is going to enter the spider-kingdom. On the other hand, she can’t fly her helicopter in this state. Mrs Webb is pitched out of her helicopter and into the ocean. Mrs Webb is never seen again, so she either perished or she survived to live out her days as a spider.

We now turn to Dr. Bracken of The Body Snatchers. Nancy returns to boarding-school and immediately notices strange things happening. Her taxi is crossed by a teacher, looking scared out of his wits; later she sees him at school, looking perfectly normal. Certain pupils and teachers act out of character - as if they were imposters. A pupil disappears without explanation.Nancy sees a procession of pupils and teachers heading off to Broughty Manor in the dead of night, although the headmistress put that place strictly out of bounds. Nancy is noticing too much, so Bracken kidnaps her and brings her to his lair at Broughty Manor.

Bracken explains that the Government and scientific community refused to believe his claim that he could heal people by combining plant serum to human flesh to re-grow body parts. Desperate to prove his theory, Bracken tested it on himself. But the attempt was premature - or so Bracken believes anyway. As a result, the entire left-hand side of Bracken’s body is plant (why does it have to be the left side?). Bracken blames the Government for his condition, so he is seeking revenge by overthrowing the Government and establishing himself asBritain’s ruler. The first stage of his plan is replacing everyone in the community with special plants that are grown as human clones. The clones are equipped with the brain-patterns of their human counterparts. What happens to the real people? They get fed to his man-eating plant, of course!Nancy nearly becomes its latest meal, but she escapes by realising that sudden movement attracts the man-eater, so slow movements will get her out. Together with her friend Laura, they flee the district, for Bracken has almost taken it over completely. What’s more, the plant-people can control all other plants. For example, they are capable of ordering ivy creepers to squeeze10 Downing Street, the White House orFort Knox to smithereens, given half the chance. They haven’t got there yet but “I’m beginning to believe he might actually take over the country someday.”

That’s assuming Bracken will stop with the country. His sort is never satisfied until they have taken over the entire world. After all, what’s to stop him if he virtually has every single plant on Earth at his command?

Nancy discovers that Bracken has abducted her parents. He is about to feed them to his man-eater whenNancy bursts in. Bracken tries to shootNancy, but forgets that sudden movement attracts the man-eater. Bracken is devoured by his own monster, but talk about your last meal!Nancy accidentally started a fire when she destroyed her own plant clone and the blaze destroys Broughty Manor, man-eater and all. As for the remaining plant-people, they wither and die like normal plants without Bracken to control them.

To sum up, revenge inspired both Mrs Webb and Dr. Bracken to use their scientific genius for world conquest. Both drew upon their particular interest in Mother Nature (spiders and plants) to scientifically engineer minions to do their bidding. But in the end, their obsession becomes their downfall. The old axiom that evil shall be destroyed by evil is proved once again. It also fits in Misty’s speciality for “punishment fitting the crime” stories. Unsavoury girls meet their downfall by the very thing they were obsessed about, despised, exploited or even tormented. An act of spite goes too far. If the girl is a tyrant, it is her own tyranny that destroys her. Or the girl is punished for simply not listening. A girl turns into a jelly-baby because she is addicted to them. A girl is turned into a cry-baby because she bullies her foster-sister for being one. A shoplifter is turned into a shop dummy, to model the very dress she tried to steal. A spoilt Roman girl tortures an enslaved leopard; it gets her enslaved in turn while it is rewarded with freedom. A jealous woman unwittingly causes her cousin’s death when she cuts off her beautiful golden hair; golden hair erupts from the cousin’s grave and throttles the woman. An arrogant queen orders all old women to be banished from her city because they say she is too young to rule. When an overdose of an aging potion turns the queen into an old woman, she is likewise banished. The queen refuses to heed the warnings of the other banished women to seek shelter with them before the wolves arrive, so…

Yet these two villains not only meet befitting ends, but they both suffer grotesque, irrevocable damage to their own bodies as a result of their insane experiments. Their bodies partly become what they were so obsessed about. Bracken becomes half-plant and Webb becomes half-spider (we never see if she becomes a full spider). As with the jelly-baby addict, is this some bizarre warning about what can happen when you become too obsessed with something? That would be one reason, but this is not really why this happened to them. They became this way because they tampered with Mother Nature. Misty is punishing them for messing with Mother Nature in her typical “punishment fits the crime” manner.

Sometimes you do not even need to be evil, insane or amoral to pay the price for tampering with Nature. In Moira and the Moonflowers (Tracy) Moira Penrose’s botanist father conducts an experiment that goes horribly wrong. He creates the “Moonflowers” a species which have the power to make people bad-tempered. When Dad goes into hospital, it is down to Moira to destroy the Moonflowers. However, the Moonflowers are exerting an evil influence over Moira that keeps getting her – and others – into trouble.

Alan Barker of Tammy’s The Fairground of Fear is as obsessed with revenge as Bracken and Webb. However, Barker is not an outright evil or insane character – or for that matter, the true villain. In fact, Barker is one of the few revenge-driven scientists who do attract sympathy, perhaps even sneaking applause, from readers.

Barker’s problem is that he was imprisoned on a trumped-up charge at the behest of his father-in-law, Sir Edgar Whitland. And all just because the ultra-snobby Sir Edgar deemed Barker unfit to marry his daughter! Added to that, Barker’s baby daughter and wife died shortly after he was imprisoned. So, all Barker lives for now are revenge and clearing his name, and this has turned him into a driven, ruthless and dangerous man. Barker uses a fairground as a front to terrorise the innocent villagers, and almost kills a man in the process, with the aid of machines which cast holograms, make people behave irrationally and hypnotise them into doing his bidding. This is meant to scare Sir Edgar into clearing his name. However, Sir Edgar stubbornly refuses, since confessing will mean destroying the “good name of Whitland”.  The village, and even Whitland’s own family, can go hang for all the heartless snob cares. There is nothing he will not destroy just to preserve his own pride. In other words, Sir Edgar is the real villain although Barker commits wrong in the name of revenge.

Sadly, there is no exoneration for Barker – but he does find something that is equally satisfying. Julie Whitland, Sir Edgar’s adopted daughter, discovers that she is really Barker’s baby daughter; Sir Edgar had faked her death to prevent Barker from claiming her. Upon learning this, the overjoyed Barker changes his ways and promises Julie that he will now use his machines to help people. They depart together with the fairground to start a new life.

Greed for money can do just as nicely as the lust for revenge or world domination. In The Silver Racer-Back (Misty), Dr. Salter has invented a prototype swimsuit that forces the wearer to swim at breakneck speed by terrorising them with hallucinations of hideous monsters in the pool. Salter intends to sell his prototype to foreign powers. Just imagine the increased speed of armies if they were equipped with such suits. (There could be other potentials as well, such as scaring your enemies to death). Salter recruits the tyrannical coach of the ‘Dolphins’ Swimming Club to help him find a suitable test for the suit. However, Salter is in for a shock when his guinea-pig, Kerry Houghton, turns out to be a latent psychic, and the suit unleashes her powers against him. Knowing Misty, these villains should thank their lucky stars that they only end up in prison!

There are the scientists who are interested in neither money nor power – only the experiment. They are the ultimate clinical scientists, devoid of any human feeling. Their experiments are impassively evil rather than actively evil. Such is the case in Girl in a Bubble (Jinty). Miss Vaal keeps Helen Ryan imprisoned in a special plastic bubble tent. Ostensibly this is because Helen has no resistance to germs, so she must stay in a sterilised environment. But we begin to have our doubts when the lure of the outside world gets too strong for Helen. She takes secret trips outside the bubble and doesn’t have any ill-effects. Eventually Helen’s parents begin to wonder as well when they realise that she is spending time outside the bubble and not dropped dead from even a simple cold. Miss Vaal imprisons Helen in the bubble once more and tells her the truth: This is all an experiment to see how being shut off from the outside affects a human being. When Helen tries to scare Miss Vaal into releasing her, Miss Vaal panics and turns off the air intake. The bubble begins to collapse and Helen will suffocate unless she does something fast. In the nick of time, Helen slashes her way out with a sharpening knife she acquired from her excursions. Miss Vaal is arrested but Helen is sorry for her because she knows what it will be like for Miss Vaal – to be locked up.

Although she commits no outright villainy, Dr. Morrison from Jinty’s Battle of the Wills turns out to be as cold-hearted and insane as Miss Vaal. Morrison has invented a machine that can make clones of living beings. However, nobody believes Morrison except for Kate Wills. Kate demands that Morrison make a clone of her so she can pursue gymnastics instead of the ballet her grandmother keeps forcing upon her. This would have been the ultimate proof that the machine works, but there are no independent witnesses to see it.

To make matters worse, Kate finds that the clone is bringing a whole heap of trouble. The clone believes she is the original Kate and there is no way to tell them apart. The two Kates declare war with eachother over the desired gymnastics and the unwanted ballet. And the Kate cannot get rid of the clone since the reversal process has not yet been developed. Then one of the Kates discovers that Morrison is lying. She can tell them apart and she has already developed the machine that reverses the cloning process. Morrison could have got rid of the clone at any time – so why didn’t she? Simple - Morrison plans to use the counter-machine to get rid of the Kate clone in front of witnesses and prove once and for all that her machine works.

The moment the counter-machine gets rid of the clone at a scientific convention, Morrison crows: “You see! It works! It works!” However, the scientists are outraged. They ban her machine and have her arrested. Well, did Morrison not think that she was destroying a living, breathing, being, clone though she might be? Of course not: “Neither of us is very real to Dr. Morrison…just an interesting experiment. She’s completely heartless!”

AUTOMATONS

Robots, computers and machines may be used for laughs, suspense stories, be tools in some evil plot, or to tell more meaningful stories about what defines humanity or deliver warnings about dependency and abuses of technology.

Robots are extremely popular SF plot material - especially if they are designed to look like humans. In Rita, My Robot Friend (Tammy) Jenny James hopes she will never be lonely again when she goes to live with her scientist grandfather, Professor James. The Professor is kind enough, but he is so engrossed with his work that he forgets to take care of himself and his house. The neighbours despise the Professor because of the deplorable state of his house, and it is for this reason that next-door Angelina turns all the girls against Jenny at her new school.

It looks like Jenny will be lonely after all – until she acquires her grandfather’s robot which is designed to look like a human girl. Jenny dubs the robot “Rita” and uses her as an ‘instant friend’ which she can assemble, and then disassemble back into her bag at will. This is lucky because Angelina is determined to find out who this mysterious ‘friend’ is. The story rollicks in comic/suspenseful misadventures and close shaves as Jenny assembles Rita to be her ‘friend’, and then has to find quick, resourceful ways to keep ahead of Angelina when she gets too close. Eventually Angelina discovers Jenny’s secret when she sneaks into the Professor’s house. She laughs at Jenny for using a robot as a doll! (When you think about it, Angelina is right).

However, the matter becomes academic when Angelina’s parents’ barbeque carelessly sets the Professor’s house on fire. All three are trapped in a raging inferno and all they can do is take refuge in the rocket capsule the Professor has just completed. Unfortunately there is no room for Rita. So there is a heart-wrenching scene as Jenny watches Rita’s outward human shell being burned away to expose the actual automaton underneath, before she is crushed beneath falling debris. The Professor’s house burns to the ground, but they are all safe thanks to the rocket capsule. Angelina’s parents make amends by paying for a new house, along with staff to help maintain the property as well as the Professor’s laboratory. And Jenny is not lonely because she has a real friend now – Angelina.

In The Robot Who Cried (Jinty) KT5 is a robot who wants to have real friends. The Professor designed KT5 to be a near-perfect copy of a human girl – but he made her too near perfect. KT5 has human emotions and she doesn’t understand them. However, what KT5 does understand is that she does not want to remain at the laboratory. She wants to be a real human girl. So KT5 (later adapted to “Katy”) runs away, throwing herself out into the big wide world she knows nothing about and learning to comprehend her emotions. But the Professor is out to get Katy back, and Katy cannot escape him entirely; after all, who’s going to fix her if she breaks down? Ultimately, Katy returns to the Professor and asks to be put back under his control, saying that the human life cannot be for her. However, the Professor surprises her and the readers. He tells Katy that by convincing everyone that she is human, she has proved that human life can be for her, and that she has justified all the work and planning he put into her. Well, he had designed her to be near-perfect copy of a human girl, after all. The Professor gives Katy his blessing to be adopted into the foster family she has found during her travels. They have now been informed that Katy is a robot, and they don’t mind. On the very last panel, the robot who cried now smiles for the very first time as she embraces her foster-sister, Susan.

KT5 is one of countless robots which try to pass themselves off as humans in girls’ comics. But the reverse occurs as well. In I-am-a-Robot! (Mandy) we meet a girl who pretends to be a robot. Jackie Johnson pretends to be S.H.E.N.A. (Stimulated-Humanoid-Electro-Newtronic-Automaton) to save her scientist father from ruin. Jackie wires herself with her father’s gadgets to turn herself into a robotic bodyguard for wealthy Daphne Richmond. The gadgets are convincing enough: They make Jackie’s hair stick up on end, give her a mechanised walk and voice, and enable her to produce electro-shockers. Very handy devices for saving Daphne when she is abducted! Afterwards the pretence can no longer be maintained, but there is no further need for it. Daphne’s father is so impressed with the gadgets that he gives Jackie’s father his full financial backing, and Jackie and Daphne become friends.

There are the serials which preach warnings about what can happen when our lives become dominated by machines. One is Town without Telly (Tammy). Satire is very unusual in girls’ comics but here we have a most peculiar parody about TV addiction. The people of Boxless have no reception and don’t even know what television is. Then Mr. Jones arrives to get them hooked on television. The formerly energetic Boxless is reduced to idleness and fantasy once the people become TV addicts. Mr. Jones’ daughter, Recepta, hits upon the antidote – fill TV up with so much trash that the Boxless viewers get bored stiff!

And there is the Tammy classic,Tomorrow Town, written by Benita Brown. The Roberts’ redundancy problems seem over when Tomaya Electronics opens “Tomorrow Town”, a futuristic-looking town with all the latest in electronic and computer technology. All Tomorrow Town needs is the people to live in it and it has “jobs, jobs, jobs!” waiting for them. Linda Roberts and her parents soon move toTomorrow Town along with virtually everyone in their run-down town.Tomorrow Town has everything the computer world can offer. Shopping can be done by simply clicking on everything you want and it comes out packaged at the other end. Boring lessons are are thing of the past with the latest in audio-visual aids, calculators and computers in every classroom. You can order your dinner to be cooked at home with a simple phone call and at home you can enjoy home movies with video players.

Then Linda begins to notice another side toTomorrow Town. It seems that since everything is run by computer technology, there is no scope for the human touch or old-fashioned ways of doing things. For example, there are no books in the library because everything is on microfilm. Sorry, but curling up with microfilm is not quite the same as curling up with a book. Linda is even more disturbed to find that the town seems to be deliberately getting everyone hooked on computers and computer games, even at the gymnasium. At the daytime nursery, children have eschewed toys in favour of computer games. The computers seem to have taken over from Mrs. Roberts as the nanny. Most unnerving of all, nobody has even met the people who run the town. Instead, there is an intercom in all the streets and buildings that seems to butt in on everything they do, order them around and even stop them in the street to demand identification. This “spy system” makes you feel there are eyes watching you all the time. To make it all the worse, you don’t even know whose eyes they are.

Finally, malfunctions start to occur. It is utter calamity because everything inTomorrow Town depends on computers and technology. Linda realises that the design ofTomorrow Town is such that the people are becoming so dependent on machines that they are forgetting how to do anything for themselves. She decides it is time to find out who the mysterious voice is behind the “spy system” and who exactly is running the town. After yet another malfunction, the townspeople realise they agree with Linda, who has just found the Control Centre.

What do they find inside the Control Centre? You guessed it – a giant computer!Tomorrow Town has been designed as an enormous computer network, to be run by computer, and think like a computer. It’s no wonder that nothing can be run the human way inTomorrow Town; the entire town has been designed to run the computer’s way! The people are on the verge of smashing the computer that has been bossing them around when Mr. Roberts suggests they use the computer to air their grievances to the Tomaya Company. Fortunately, Tomaya listens. They dismantle the “spy system” and allow the people to form a committee to run the town as they see fit.

Linda’s last word sums sums up everything: “There’s nothing wrong with living in a town from tomorrow – so long as they remember to design it for people from today!”

Looking back atTomorrow Town, it looks all the more impressive when one considers that the serial was published in 1982. Back then the VCR age was in its infancy. Desktop computers were not widespread and operated on the old MS-DOS programming. There was still a way to go before computers, computer games and computer literacy became as commonplace in the library, classroom, workplace, nursery, or recreation area as they are inTomorrow Town. This serial is to be commended for how close it came in anticipating how far computers would permeate daily life. It would be interesting to come back to this serial in another five years and see how close it came to anticipating, say, telephoning your home computer to have a cooked meal waiting for you when you get home.

Finally, there are the automatons built for sinister purposes. In Goode Neighbours (Bunty), twins Jill and Jo Davis suspect that there is something very odd about their new neighbours, the Goodes. As they observe the Goodes further, there is definitely something odd about them, such as displays of super-strength. They don’t seem to act like normal people (raw eggs for breakfast?) and they are annoying too. When Tammy Goode becomes prefect she is unbearably bossy and her motto is: “whatever I do, it’s for your own good. I will look after you.” It’s the same with the Goode parents, who have become local councillors. And what’s with this sinister-looking man who goes into the Goodes’ house?

Finally, there is no denying that things are weird when the twins meet doubles of themselves! These doubles are soon exposed as robots. Ditto the Goodes, of course. The twins believe that this strange man is after power and domination since the Goodes are seeking positions of power in the district. The Goodes’ motto must be the man’s motive (in his own mind, at least).

Fortunately, these robots are utter pushovers to tackle. Just one blast of the stereo, (not even at a loud volume!) and they collapse in a heap. TheDavis parents get a terrible shock when the twins turn the stereo on the Goodes and they see for themselves that the Goodes are robots! Not knowing what to do, the family shove them back next door for the night. The man collects them the next day. Since the robots’ masquerade is proven to be too clumsy to last for long, the parents believe that the man will give up. But they are in for a shock when they find that Mr. Goode has now replaced the Prime Minister! The new Prime Minister addresses the nation: “…and whatever I do, it’ll be for your own good. I will look after you…”

PINOCCHIO

The Robot Who Cried is one example of the difficulties robots can face when they try to assimilate into human society. Similar problems also face time-travellers like Freda Who? (Mandy); girls reared in the laboratory like Lona the Wonder Girl (Bunty); and of course, aliens. They don’t have the background or preparation to blend unobtrusively into human society. They face a horrible culture shock and encounter many difficulties, including countless misunderstandings. If they have strange powers, these can also cause complications if they backfire or work too blatantly and arouse suspicion. Sometimes they acquire a friend who helps them along. Other times they have to play it by ear, and having super-powers can help (such as when Vanessa used her powers to make everyone forget her school crocodile). In some cases, there is a further difficulty which impedes their assimilation even further. In Almost Human (Jinty), the alien,Xenia, looks entirely like an Earth girl – but her touch is deadly to all Earth creatures! In Mina Mindreader (Bunty) Mina hails from planet Septimo. Mina can read minds, but she also has to tell the truth at all times. This causes problems in a world where the circumstances sometimes call for stretching the truth a little, if not a little downright fibbing.

In Sleeping Beauty from the Stars (Mandy) the alien, Stella, has a more straightforward problem – she is a fugitive. Stella’s crime is being a mischief-maker and practical joker - a grave offense on the stern, rigid planet of Xerox. The Elders banish Stella to the penal Planet Peutridd, but her convict ship goes awry and she lands up on Earth, where she is awakened from sleep by a kiss from Percy. Stella is such a beauty that she soon scores a job as a model and beauty queen. But Stella’s problems are not over. There are difficulties with Earth culture and environment (it makes Stella sleepy sometimes) and there are close shaves with Stella’s powers. In one episode a thief is taken aback when Stella rides a bicycle at supers-speed to catch him. In another, bath foam floods a house and turns Percy into a foamy snowman when Stella puts some Xeroxonic tonic beams into her bath. This was an accident, but Stella has not lost her mischievous streak and in some episodes she uses her powers to play practical jokes on people.

Percy makes persistent attempts to prove that Stella is an alien, but she keeps outwitting him with her powers. At one point Percy erupts in horrible boils and can only talk in gobbletygook. Eventually Percy gives up and throws in his lot with Stella’s other friend, Joy. Indeed, Stella needs all the friends she can get, for there is the constant fear that the Elders will discover she has escaped. For all their stern ways, the Xeroxians have one indulgence – they watch Earth television! Sure enough, the Elders spot Stella on TV and send the Collectors to recapture her. Now Stella, Joy and Percy are on the run. The Collectors even brainwash Percy into becoming a Collector but it backfires when Stella and Percy get trapped in a lions’ den. After this Stella decides to give herself up to the Collectors to protect her friends from further harm. But now the Collectors have undergone a complete change of heart. They tasted the forbidden fruit while working undercover at a holiday camp and “we LIKE it here!” They want to stay on Earth and help protect Stella from the Elders. Which just goes to show: If you are a strict, authoritarian planet which ruthlessly squelches all forms of independent thoughts, fun, love and tenderness – stay away from planet Earth!

Sometimes it is the companion who is the alien’s problem. In My Shining Sister (Tammy) Marnie Greig’s father is an astronomer, but the only stars that Marnie cares about are pop stars. One day Marnie’s horoscope says that her dearest wish will come true, but since her dearest wish is for a sister, Marnie is scornful. Then, the constellation of Pleiades disappears after a meteorite shower, and that same night seven girls who glow in the dark appear on Earth. Marnie finds one of them, a complete amnesic who can only remember her name is Stella. Stella stays with the Greigs for the time being, and Marnie realises that this is her sister! Unfortunately, Marnie becomes too possessive about keeping Stella for her sister, and does everything she can to forestall Stella returning to her fellow sisters. At one point Marnie’s possessiveness drives Stella to run away in order to meet her sisters. The return of the Pleiades is written in the stars. However, Marnie finds she has not lost her sister after all – all she has to do is take a peek through her father’s telescope to look at her “shining sister.”

ALIEN WORLDS

Alien worlds are as imperfect as planet Earth. Even with worlds that seem paradise, there is always some serpent or drawback waiting to strike. Most alien worlds, however, are a straight-out nightmare. Such is the case in The Human Zoo (Jinty). Twin sisters Jenny and Shona Lewis, along with other people, are abducted by aliens and taken to their planet. The aliens think humans are animals, no different from any others. So they treat the humans, both the ones they abducted and a native Stone Age people called the Outlanders, as if they were animals. The humans suffer the indignities of: Collars which double as pain inflictors; trophy hunting; cattle-markets; zoos; chimps’ tea parties; pets; slaughter-houses; circuses; bloodsports; beasts of burden and vivisection. Shona (separated from Jenny on arrival) becomes a pet to an alien girl, Tamsha, who is sympathetic to her plight. Shona’s suffering even inspires Tamsha to join an animal rights organisation. But Tamsha is in the minority, and her people frown upon emotions as “primitive”. Tamsha’s father berates her for crying and showing “regrettable traces of the savage emotion of sentiment”.

The worst problem of all is that the humans have no way of communicating with the aliens, who are telepathic. They cannot convey the message that they are sentient people, not animals. Not even the sympathetic Tamsha can be made to understand. She only sees Shona as a poor, suffering animal. Unless they can bridge the communication gap, the aliens will continue to treat them like animals, and in the case of the Outlanders, be driven to extinction. The aliens use the Outlander men as beasts of burden and the women as bloodsport.

Matters come to a head when the aliens’ weather technology goes awry and the city faces a catastrophe of flash-flooding. Now it is the humans who have the upper hand. The aliens are terrified of water, so they cannot swim and have no background in water navigation. At Shona’s urging, the Outlanders help the aliens through their crisis, for this is their only chance to convince the aliens that they are not aliens, and end the aliens’ oppression. Jenny (now reunited with Shona) can help too, because she has become telepathic as the result of an alien experiment. In the end they save the aliens, but at the cost of one Outlander girl, Likuda.

Did Likuda die in vain or not?

It seems that Likuda died for nothing when the aliens round them up and put them in cages once more. Then, the city ruler welcomes them to a feast. The message has got through at last. The Outlanders can now live in peace while Tamsha now proudly sheds tears and says they have a lot to learn from humans about showing emotions. As for Shona, Jenny and the abducted humans, they are sent home through a time warp to avoid awkward questions about their disappearance. Their memories are wiped clean as well. Yet when Shona gazes upon a caged gorilla at the zoo, she says that she somehow seems to know what it feels like for him…

For all their cruelties towards humans, we cannot condemn the aliens entirely for it. Aren’t we guilty of the same atrocities towards our animals? It would be the pot calling the kettle black. One reader wrote in to say that she would stop laughing at chimps’ tea parties after reading this serial.

In The Loneliest Girl in the World (Tammy & Misty) Karen is also brought to an alien world, but neither she nor the readers find this out until the last episode. The entire human race wiped itself out in global nuclear warfare. Karen is the very last human because aliens rescued her in the nick of time. The aliens try to shield Karen from the truth by creating a patch of planet Earth on their own world for her to live in. But the substitution is too clumsy. For one thing, the aliens can’t possibly get all the details right. Using synthetic materials and robot doubles doesn’t work either. Throughout the entire story poor Karen is terrified, confused and doesn’t know if the whole world is going mad or she is. What are these robot “parents”? Where are her real parents? Are they alive or did they die in that terrible blaze (started by a nuclear assault) that Karen keeps having nightmares about? The trees are made of plastic? All the birds and animals as well as all the people, are robots? Different vegetables all have the same taste and different flowers all have the same smell?

Whenever Karen starts to discover too much, the aliens resort to elaborate cover-ups to forestall her, but thesy do not last for long. When Karen discovers her parents are robots, she is locked up in a mental asylum. When Karen escapes, the aliens put up a “madman” who claims that the robots are part of his plan for world domination. It seems a satisfying explanation, but it unravels upon Karen’s return to the village. The whole village seems to go haywire; Karen discovers that everyone is a robot, even the wildlife. The parents that Karen thought she had rescued from the madman are only another pair of robots. The whole village and countryside are all shown to be one big artificial fake. But the madman is in custody. Besides, what point would it serve in his quest for world domination? The last straw comes when Karen flees the village, and is shocked to find an alien landscape and city lying beyond, not the English countryside!

Sounds like a horrible, garbled mess, enough to drive anyone mad with confusion? It should be…

The aliens now have no choice but to come clean. They reveal themselves to poor, confused Karen (not to mention the poor, confused readers) and tell her the truth. The aliens now understand that Karen can’t live like this and would have been far better off to die with all the others. So they send Karen back to Earth through a time warp to spend as much time with her parents before the end.

What’s the moral of this story? There are three. First, well-intentioned interference can be disastrous. Think very carefully before interfering. Second, trying to shield the truth from people only makes it worse for them than the truth itself. Besides, you can’t keep shielding them forever. Sooner or later they will find out, and be hurt all the more for being deceived in this way. The third, but most important lesson of all - there is room for only one planet Earth!

Imaginary worlds can be as adventurous, nightmarish and sobering as alien worlds, as the heroines in the Jinty classic, Worlds Apart, find out. We are introduced to six girls who are defined by a particular characteristic: Sarah (gluttonous), Ann (sporty), Samantha (vain), Mo (delinquent), Clare (brainy) and Jilly (timid). The girls are knocked unconscious by a mysterious gas when a chemical truck crashes into their school. The girls find themselves passing through a series of strange worlds. These are their dream worlds becoming reality, with each world governed by the girl’s own characteristic. This makes it a living nightmare for the other girls. For each creator it seems their ideal world, for they are given full rein to indulge in their particular characteristic; something they don’t get so much in the real world. But then, as each characteristic goes to its logical conclusion, each creator meets her downfall at the hands of her own world:

In gluttonous Sarah’s world, everything is ruled by gluttony. The people only think about food and being as fat as they can possibly be; 20 stone is “such a trim figure”. The girls are emaciated by the standards of this world, even fat Sarah. So the girls are force-fed in hospital until they are so grotequesly obese that they can hardly walk. Sarah is the only one to enjoy this world because she can stuff herself with as much food as she likes and nobody can call her “fatty”. Then Sarah gets a horrible shock when sporty Ann dies from running half a mile because she is too fat. Sarah sees the fatty world in a whole new light. Afterwards she accidentally drowns because she can’t swim and is too heavy anyway.

In sporty Ann’s world, everything is ruled by sport. The girls find that education, clothes, foodstuffs, food consumption, architecture, city planning, transport, politics, war, and even the death penalty are all linked to sport. In fact, everythin revolves around sport and keeping fit at all costs, even if you are old and infirm. Ann simply loves her world because she can indulge in sport at every waking moment. But like the others, Ann’s indulgence becomes her undoing. It begins when the Soviet Union declares war onBritain. War is played with a sports match; the losing team is executed and the invading country just walks in if its team wins. Ann is honoured to be in the British team, but doesn’t know that the Russians are cheating by taking drugs. WhenBritain loses, Ann meets her downfall by the very thing she loves - sport. The method used to execute her is to be tied to an exercise bicycle until she dies from exhaustion. When Ann wakes up in the real world she says: “Now I see that sport isn’t everything.”

In vain Samantha’s world, she rules a fairytale land as Sleeping Beauty. But Samantha is no fairytale princess. She is cruel, tyrannical, power mad, and indulges in admiring her beauty at every waking moment. Her castle is known as theCastle ofMirrors because there are mirrors everywhere for Samantha to admire her beautiful face. As for the other girls, they are her downtrodden servants and threatened with torture if they displease her. Then, when Samantha jilts Prince Charming, he gets revenge by hiring the witch who originally put Samantha to sleep. The canny witch turns Samantha’s vanity against her with a spell that causes Samantha’s face to appear as a pig when reflected in the mirrors. Samantha becomes hysterical when she realises that she can never see her beautiful face again. “How can I live without admiring myself? I can’t stand it!” Samantha shrieks like a maniac, shattering all the mirrors and herself in the process. Eat your heart out, Narcissus!

In delinquent Mo’s world crime, violence and anarchy are the rule. The only crime in this world is to do a good deed, which is punishable by lynching. It seems the perfect world for the delinquent Mo to flourish – until she is kidnapped by gangsters and given a pair of concrete shoes. The shock has Mo begging to turn over a new leaf when she wakes up.

In brainy Clare’s world, the size of your IQ determines your standing in society. At the top of society are the “swots” and at the bottom are the “dullards” – a dimwitted subhuman species who are classed as animals and are treated as such (experimentation, slaughter houses, etc). The other girls are dullards because Clare always considered them stupid, “so in her world, we are stupid”. Clare is an arrogant, clinical scientist ready to perform experiments on her “dullard” classmates. But she doesn’t get the chance because dullard liberationists break into the laboratory and set them free. When Clare comes after them, she quarrels bitterly with her co-worker who wants to make a dullard wildlife film. Clare protests that this is cruel to the dullards because they cannot survive in the wild. The man retorts that she was cruel herself, for experimenting on them and what’s more, the law states that his word overrules hers because his IQ is higher than hers. Well, these were the rules Clare made for this world. Then the helicopter crashes. Clare is unhurt but she cannot survive in the wild herself; she runs away and dies in an unknown accident

Incidentally, this whole dullard business is sharply reminiscent of The Human Zoo. Were these serials were written by the same person?

In timid Jilly’s world, everything serves only one purpose – to terrify! It is a horror-movie world. At school there is only one lesson – to be terrified with lessons like mouth-to-neck rescucitation i.e. be turned into a vampire! Now this poses a particular problem. The only escape from these dream worlds is for the creator to die, which ends her dream world. So if the vampire carries out its threat to turn Jilly into one of the Undead, this means Jilly will never die and her world will never end. The girls must act fast to save her. Jilly is the only one not to learn anything from her world at the end of the story. The other girls merely pity her for living in such a terrifying world.

When the girls wake up, they express very sober comments about what they learned from their dream worlds. But why did the dream worlds turn out to be such a nightmare? Clare says that “it seems that given a free rein, the worst comes out in us.” This is true, but there is more to it than that. The worlds were horrible because they were ruled by selfishness - in six different forms. The worlds were created for each girl to indulge in her particular characteristic. Each world existed only for herself; there was never any thought for others, or what the consequences of each indulgence might be. At least, there was none until Mo got the concrete shoes, Ann died on the exercise bicycle, and Samantha lost the power to indulge in her beauty, and so on with the other girls.

After the lessons the girls have learned, what will the effects be on their dream worlds? Will the worlds be modified to accommodate the lessons the girls have learned? Or will they be completely different worlds? If the gas had the girls revisiting their worlds, what would they look like now? We will never know, of course. There can be no second round with the mysterious gas.

ALIEN INVASION

When aliens invade in girls’ comics, outright assault is not a popular method. Instead, the aliens go for more subtle, insidious means. Mad scientists out for world domination tend to find suchlike methods popular as well. Most likely this is because such serials are “David and Goliath” situations, with the heroine defeating the aliens single-handed, or sometimes with the help of a companion.

The aliens generally tend to favour two methods of invasion. The first is mind-control. Usually one alien is sent as a mole, posing as a human girl, to pave the way for invasion using mind-control capabilities. This starts off on a small scale and gradually works its way into an outpost. At the climax of the story, the invasion itself is about to be launched. The only person who can stop it is the heroine of the story. She alone realises what the alien is and has been fighting her enemy’s mind-control throughout the story. But she failed to stop the alien, so can she now stop the attack? Examples include Starla’s Spell, and Sister of Hate (Suzie).

Sometimes it is the mole herself who stops the invasion. Oriel (Bunty) is dispatched to a boarding school to find out what she can about human nature. Oriel can also manipulate peoples’ minds, but uses it to experiment on them rather than turning them into slaves. In one episode Oriel uses her powers to try and break up a friendship, to see what the results are. In the end she is forced to report back to her people that true friendship cannot be broken. Sometimes Oriel’s experiments prove beneficial, such as when the whole class is being bullied by the dreaded Miss Strickland. In particular, Miss Strickland likes to bully and humiliate Shirley right in front of the class because shy Shirley makes an easy target. Then Oriel decides that removing Shirley’s fear might be “an interesting experiment”. Both Miss Strickland and the whole class are flabbergasted when Shirley suddenly stands up to Miss Strickland and refuses to be humiliated any further. Unfortunately the headmistress will not listen and suspends Shirley. The class won’t have Shirley being suspended for standing up to a bully and they go on strike to support her. The strike turns into a riot, with the headmistress getting food thrown in her face and worse, having the Press on her doorstep! Oriel reports back to her people that removing people’s fear of authority leads to rebellion and anarchy. Shirley wins out in the end, but totally baffled as to how she came to stand up to Miss Strickland.

Finally, the invasion is about to begin. But Oriel has undergone a complete change of heart. She loves her friends and is really enjoying Earth now. When her people won’t listen, Oriel enlists the aid of her friends to repel them. This means that in effect, Oriel has banished herself from her people, but her new world is her home now.

The second method is to establish an outpost by replacing people with doubles until their forces are consolidated enough to launch the full invasion. Sometimes this is used in conjunction with the first method, as in Suzie’s Sister of Hate.

E.T. Estate (Tammy), written by Jake Adams, is one of the grimmest examples of the second method. Genocide is not something you normally expect to see in a girls’ comic, but in this serial, both sides must resort to genocide in order to preserve their own.

Keats Estate is dubbed “E.T. Estate” when it is devastated by a meteorite shower. But these are no ordinary meteorites. Each meteorite contains a crystal which is home to a gaseous life form. The name of this species is never given in the story, so they will be referred to as “gas aliens”.

In order to survive outside their crystals, the gas aliens create a synthetic body around themselves which looks exactly like the corporeal life form that finds their crystal. What happens to the real life form? He/she/it is imprisoned in the crystal and the gas alien feeds off his/her/its life force until death. The gas alien then moves on to another corporeal life form. The gas aliens show themselves to have extraordinary powers (telekinesis and planting illusions in people’s minds), which are also fuelled by the life forms imprisoned in their crystals. Good thing they don’t appear to be telepathic as well; at one point they communicate by walkie-talkies! A gas alien’s only weakness is that if its crystal is removed, this will break the link to the life form within the crystal. Without it, the gas alien collapses and its synthetic body dissolves into nothing. But if another life form is in the vicinity of the crystal, it becomes the new host. To really kill a gas alien, its crystal has to be destroyed.

The residents of E.T. Estate are steadily replaced with gas aliens until the only people left are Jenny Holmes and “Mad” Dora. Unfortunately the authorities think they are crazy, so Jenny and Dora have to fight the gas aliens on their own. But it looks like they have lost the battle when the gas aliens capture them and tie them up. The gas aliens then show Dora and Jenny an ominous-looking pod and explain how it works:

Gas Alien: This [pod] will grow life the fungus you call a puff ball. It will grow higher and bigger. The shell of the building will act like a cannon. For the growth will explode – releasing all its spores. They will fall over every part of your planet, each a spore, a crystal like you’ve seen. In one of your Earth days, it will be all over - the planet will be ours – living off every creature here! When this planet has been exhaustedl our spores will be projected into space to drift for thousands of years until they find another suitable planet.

Jenny: That’s monstrous!

Gas Alien: But we cannot exist without a host body to duplicate and live off. Your energy is our food, as the plants and animals here are yours. Are you going to stop eathing them?

Jenny: But that’s not the same thing!

Gas Alien: Ask a cow. I’m sure its opinion will be different from yours.

Comment: The gas aliens have the perfect right to survive – but so do humans. So does everything else on this planet, and everything on other worlds. The gas aliens made it clear that they exterminate the life on every planet they land upon in order to feed themselves. This means there could be no quarter: It is either us or them. What’s more, this race has to be exterminating, or they will go on exterminating world after world. Anyway, what would the gas alien care about the cow? It would feed off the cow just as casually as it would a human!

Back to the story:

In order to grow their pod, the gas aliens must sacrifice their own crystals (excepting the guards) and let their own synthetic bodies dissolve. “But my mum and dad are trapped in those crystals – they’ll die!” So will everyone else trapped in the crystals. However, Jenny and Dora seize their chance to free themselves while the gas aliens are distracted and already weakened from using their hypnotic powers to repel a police raid. Jenny goes into the crystals to retrieve the crystals. Like the synthetic bodies, the pod dissolves without the hosts’ life force. The crystals dissolve as well, so there is no more danger of being duplicated by the gas aliens. Unless there is another swarm of gas aliens somewhere in space, there is no danger of any other planet falling victim to them, either. The people are rushed to hospital, where a doctor announces they will be fine, but it was a near thing.

Sometimes the alien has a different motive, but the methodology is the same. Such is the case with Wendy Forbes in Wendy’s Web (Bunty). Wendy poses as a pupil atCastlefield Boarding School whilst preparing to kidnap seven girls for research aboard her spaceship (for what purpose is never revealed). By using mind control techniques, Wendy eventually brings six girls under her control (marked by a strange spider mark on their left arms) and the seventh victim is Hannah Matthews, the one girl who has rumbled Wendy. Hannah overhears a communication and learns that Wendy must bring her seven subjects to the spaceship bymidnight. Otherwise the spaceship will simply leave and Wendy will revert to her true form. Hannah pulls all sorts of stalling tactics to foil the rendevouz until Wendy has her immobilised while they make ready. Hannah is given sufficient mobility to walk to the spaceship – but also enough to shove one of the girls into the fire alarm. With the whole school evacuating, Wendy has no chance of meeting the rendevouz. Hannah sees the ship depart, leaving a blazing fire in the garden where their aerial had been hidden. Just as well, for it makes the perfect excuse for the fire alarm. Hannah looks on as Wendy returns to her true form - a spider. The girls’ spider marks disappear and nobody except Hannah has any memory of Wendy. However, in the last panel there is a close-up of a spider looking on as Hannah goes into classes (Wendy?).

Sometimes we get the hoaxers and frauds as well. In Slave to the Space Princess (Mandy), Karen Smith finds herself a slave to Princess Zita, a cinematic villainess who seems to have come straight to life from a SF movie Karen has just watched. In fact, this “Princess Zita” is really Brenda Marks, a girl who has run away from a bullying home. Brenda now proves bully herself by passing herself off as the evil Princess Zita to get anything she wants out of Karen, including a place to hide (a palace, no less!).

DYSTOPIA

Dystopian SF serials explore nightmare worlds of the future, especially ones that are of mankind’s own making. It would be fascinating to look back on such serials now to see how close they came, or how close they may be in the future.

In Fran of the Floods (Jinty) there is present-day global catastrophe as warmer-than-usual temperatures trigger worldwide flooding. As well as facing the struggle to survive and finding her separated parents, Fran Scott is astonished to find the British landscape becoming subtropical because of the climate changes. Such things probably sounded outlandish when the serial was published in 1976. But in a world of global warming, rising sea levels and imminent climate change, Fran of the Floods sounds a generation ahead of its time! And this was years before there was any awareness about global warming.

In The Forbidden Garden (Jinty), we explore a Dystopia brought about by pollution. Mankind has polluted Earth’s atmosphere so badly that no plants can grow. People have to make do with plastic flowers and trees - but not Valli Severn. Valli is a sickly girl who will eventually die just because hospital treatment is only for the rich. Valli yearns to see and touch a real flower, but there is no chance of that with all remaining genuine plants protected in laboratories.

Then one day, Valli’s sister Laika sneaks into the Forbidden Zone, and she is flabbergasted to find a patch of ground that can grow real grass! This used to be a garden before the atmospheric pollution and for some reason it can support plants again. Laika finds some flower seed packets saved in the shed and starts to grow a garden of her own so Valli will have her flower. Unfortunately Laika is breaking the law in both entering the Forbidden Zone and stealing water for her plants. A garden is established, but the authorities have discovered that Likuda has been entering the Forbidden Zone. Worse still, Valli is now fading fast and Laika’s dream of her receiving a real flower is fading with her. Then Laika discovers a notebook which explains why this particular patch of ground can support plants. A devoted gardener experimented on his garden to reverse the pollution damage, but it had a delayed effect. Only now can it support plants. Laika uses the notebook as a bargaining chip to get the best hospital treatment for Valli. When Valli recovers, she not only receives her flower, but a butterfly to go with it.  

Another type of Dystopia that appears frequently is a future world that has become cold-hearted, authoritarian and suppresses all forms of levity as ruthlessly as the planet Xerox. In Trixie of 2087 (Debbie Library 107) school is stern, rigorously controlled and miserable - but woe betide you if you say so! Sobriety is such the rule that it is strictly forbidden to criticise, laugh, or even to smile, and it is punishable by Detention or the Trembler Room. Yet the pupils are taught to believe that they are the happy ones while the 20^th century pupils were miserable. But as always, there is a dissenter. Trixie does not believe that their instruction is correct. One day Trixie slips into the Archives and starts playing tapes which show pupils having pillow fights, playing sports and sneaking out in the middle of the night to play – in other words, having fun. It is no wonder that the tapes label such activities as “childish” “a disgraceful example of stupidity fortunately not indugled in today”, etc, etc. Trixie and her friends secretly try out these activities for themselves, and are amazed to find that having fun is so good for them. They feel much healthier and function even better than before. Of course, it doesn’t take long for the school to discover what is going on. Fortunately, they also understand the benefits in the end, and decide to revise and update these “old customs.” Trixie sums it all up: “We’ve rediscovered fun, that’s what!”

Jinty’s Land of No Tears (written by Pat Mills) not only bans fun, but all forms of emotion. Tears, especially, are “bad, bad!” You are severely punished for crying. Things like affection and physical contact are forbidden because they encourage emotion. So when girls turn four, they are separated from their parents and taken to special homes known as “Hives”, to be conditioned by the Hive Mother. This begins with the Hive Mother locking the little girls in cupboards to teach them self control. Contact with birth parents is limited to two visits a year. These resemble prison visits, with parents and children partitioned to prevent physical contact and a stern guard on the lookout for any form of affection. If you are caught having secret contact with your parents outside the visits you are “taken away” and never return. The sexes are segregated as well; the Hive we see is an all-girls’ institution, with no boys visible.

No explanation is ever given as to why people are reared to believe that emotion is “bad, bad!” Most likely it is intended to keep people rigorously controlled. This is an authoritarian world based on perfection. This world is obsessed with perfection, and this extends into eugenics. We have the Alpha Girls who are ‘perfect in every way’ and the Gamma Girls, the ‘rejects’ who are used as slave labour. However, the Alphas and Gammas are not scientifically engineered a lá Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Rather, these Gammas are labelled rejects if they wear glasses, have small scars, small chins, beaky noses or even clumsy thumbs and the like; in other words, for cosmetic reasons.

But, you ask, shouldn’t they be able to rectify such minor problems in a future world? Yes, they should be capable of doing so in a world where disease itself has been eradicated – but they do not. Perhaps they couldn’t care less in a world where all feelings are forbidden. Or maybe it is because they despise “hospitals”, surgery, and medicine because they associate it with imperfection, “dirtiness” and worst of all, the 20^th century. These people constantly speak of the 20^th century in terms that are not only disparaging, but bizarre and twisted (this implies that this future world is set in the 21^st century, although no time period is ever given). At any rate, any excuses for labelling someone “inferior” and slave labour are always always welcome in any oppressive society.

Enter Cassy Shaw from the much-maligned 20^th century. Cassy is a selfish girl who used her short leg to play on people’s sympathy, so she did not want the operation that would correct the problem. But during the operation Cassie falls into a strange coma and her consciousness is mysteriously transported to theLand ofNo Tears. The first lesson Cassy learns is that there is no sympathy for her to exploit. Instead, she is lumped with the Gamma girls at the Hive to a life of drudgery, constant bullying from the arrogant, ruthless Alpha girls, and the only food they receive is the scraps left over from the Alpha girls’ meals.

Cassy decides that the only way for the Gammas to receive better treatment is for them to win the “Golden Girl Award” – a trophy awarded to the Hive with the best sports performance. So Cassy persuades the Gamma girls to secretly train for the event. Already a risky undertaking, this becomes downright dangerous when the oddly disguised mother of Miranda, one of the Gamma girls becomes their coach. As already stated, this will mean Miranda and her mother being “taken away” if they are discovered. Getting through the preliminaries is fraught with difficulties. There are the hostile, jeering spectators, taunts from the Alphas, shaky starts and one disqualification (fortunately there is a grudging reinstatement) because the computer has no record of Cassy Shaw. Despite everything, the Gamma girls get through to the finals.

However, the authorities have sent in the dreaded Hive Inspector and here the worst threat arises. Perfecta, Cassy’s worst enemy, discovers Miranda’s secret and threatens to tell the Hive Inspector. To win Perfecta’s silence Cassy agrees to let Perfecta beat her in the finals. Cassy won’t break her word. So it looks like the Gamma team will lose after coming so close to winning – until Perfecta damages her spine through reckless over-exertion and has to drop out of the race. With Perfecta gone, Cassy is free to win but she has a lot of ground to make up first.

Now there is as foreshadowing of things to come in theLand ofNo Tears. To the Hive Inspector’s chagrin, the hitherto jeering crowd starts cheering Cassy on! “Stop this unseemly display of emotion! Remember your conditioning!” But nobody is taking him or “emotions – bad, bad!” seriously anymore. When Cassy wins, the spectators knock the Inspector into the pool in over-excitement, and nobody punishes Cassy as she openly sheds tears of joy when her team receives the Golden Girl award.

The cruelty towards the Gamma girls ceases and the authorities dare not punish Miranda and her mother. It is revealed that Miranda’s disguised mother was in fact the Hive Mother (she got the job to be close to Miranda and protect her as much as she could). The following days also bring in “a lot of changes…it seems people were pretty fed up with things. When a bunch of ‘reject’ girls won a top sports award, they realised they’d had enough of being bullied”. Of course, the world will not change overnight, “but a start’s been made”. One can only hope that the start will not be crushed by backlash and oppression from the authorities, bigots and the other parts of the world still held in thraldom.

Cassy’s mysterious transportation to the future world now goes into reverse and she wakes up in the hospital ward. The operation which she had spurned before was a complete success. Mrs Shaw’s remark, “you’re a perfectly normal girl now,” sounds painfully ironic after a nightmare future world obsessed with perfection. It seems to have been all a dream – except that Cassy is holding her Golden Girl medallion. Wonder what the Inspector, Perfecta or the Gamma girls would say if they could see Cassy’s new leg?

Land ofNo Tears has been hailed as Jinty’s finest statement about the disabled; indeed, the serial was reprinted in 1981, the Year of the Disabled. However, the only disabled Gamma in the story is Cassy herself. All the other Gammas are labelled ‘rejects’ for minor blemishes that should be correctable in that day and age, not for true disabilities. Nonetheless, Land of No Tears must surely deliver the most explicit and shocking portrayal of the prejudice against disability. One reader was on the mark with this comment: “I think this story shows us that just because someone has something wrong with them, it doesn’t mean they are not worth anything”.

The very fact thatLand ofNo Tears portrays such prejudice is in itself a bold measure in girls’ comics. This portrayal is made all the more shocking and unforgettable because it touches upon eugenics - a subject that is not only repugnant, but a most extraordinary thing to see in a girls’ comic. Most “disabled” serials deal with: Self-pity and making comebacks; over-protective guardians wrapping the disabled girl in cotton wool; greedy guardians exploiting the girl’s disability; finding a cure for a disability; concealing a disability; faking disability to attract sympathy or as a cover for an underhand purpose. It is unusual to see a serial that combats prejudice towards the disabled, except where the serial deals with an era or culture that is not charitable to disabled people.

The ulterior lesson ofLand ofNo Tears is that “perfection” is fallacy. These Alpha girls might be perfect by the standards of their time – but what happens if they find themselves up against mysoginists, oppressively patriarchal countries like Pakistan, Victorian times, or ancient China where “perfect” girls were ones with bound feet? Alphas might be perfect by the standards of their time, but not in societies like these, where the standards for a “perfect” female are very, very different. Furthermore, being “perfect in every way” will be of no asset to them in a patriarchal society where all females are considered inferior. This would be a shock to the Alpha girls who have been reared to consider themselves “superior” and the highest pinnacle in the evolution of girls. Where would all their perfection be in burqas, veils or corsets?

Land ofNo Tears is a brilliant, sterling warning about what can happen to society when it becomes obsessed with perfection – or rather, its own particular standards of perfection – and what can happen when it weighs up people by those standards. This not only applies to the people judged wanting, but to the people who measure up. The Alpha girls are judged “perfect in every way” but what happens if they are injured? Miranda would have been an Alpha girl if not for an accident she received as a baby that left her with a burn scar on her head. It is hinted that Perfecta may end up crippled because of the damage she inflicted on her spine. This is not very likely, but it does sound like Perfecta’s back may never be the same. Either way, Perfecta will become Gamma (but at least she won’t receive the cruel treatment hitherto meted out to Gammas). Under their standards of perfection an Alpha girl would automatically be demoted to Gamma if she so much ends up with a minor scar or injury – let alone a disability.

CONCLUSION

Throughout this exploration of science fiction in girls’ comics, three threads remain undercurrent. The first is the use and abuse of science. Even when played to a hilarious level, we are given stark warnings of what the consequences can be if we are careless around the laboratory, or don’t fully consider the consequences of our actions. When darker serials explore the abuses of science and the reasons the science is being abused, we are presented with vivid and intriguing explorations of the darker side of scientific and criminal minds, and what emerges when the two are brought together.

The second is the human spirit. This shines through and ultimately triumphs over alien invasions that should be complete walkovers, a future ravaged by human abuse or oppressive rule that squelches not only human freedom but human feelings with the boot that stamps on the human face. Such is the power of the human spirit that stifling, oppressive, alien worlds that never feel or allow anything in the least loving or fun, immediately feel their rule crumble if their people so much as get a whiff of the human spirit. Aliens and human-like robots who try to assimilate into our world instantly want to live as humans once they receive a taste of the human spirit. In the girls’ comics, the Orwellian boot definitely does not stamp on the human face forever!

The third is refusing the human spirit to be corrupted by selfishness, obessions, greed over-indulgence and cravings for power. The aliens and robots who try to assimilate into human culture are so often more than capable of turning to crime or conquering the world with the powers they possess – but never once do they think of doing so. Meanwhile crazy scientists and selfish people show us what can happen when we allow ourselves to indulge in selfish desires, be consumed with obsessions like revenge or for tampering with nature before we meet our our ultimate downfall.

Image credits

Note: Egmont UK Limited now owns the copyright, and all associated intellectual rights, that were originally held by IPC Magazines Limited and Fleetway Publications Limited.

Artist unknown, Vanessa from Venus, June annual 1969 © Egmont UK Ltd

Andrew Wilson, Be Your Age, Tammy! Mandy 1990 © D.C. Thomson

Honiera Romeu and Mario Capaldi, Spider-Woman, Tammy & Misty 1980 © Egmont UK Ltd

Barrera Gesali, The Body Snatchers, Misty 1979 © Egmont UK Ltd

Trini, The Battle of the Wills, Jinty 1977 © Egmont UK Ltd

Comos, The Robot Who Cried, Jinty 1977 © Egmont UK Ltd

José Casanovas,Tomorrow Town, Tammy 1982 © Egmont UK Ltd

Artist unknown, Sleeping Beauty from the Stars, Mandy 1985 © D. C. Thomson

Douglas Perry, My Shining Sister, Tammy 1980 © Egmont UK Ltd

Guy Peeters, The Human Zoo, Jinty 1978 © Egmont UK Ltd

Guy Peeters, Worlds Apart, Jinty 1981, © Egmont UK Ltd

Guy Peeters, E.T. Estate, Tammy 1983 © Egmont UK Ltd

Carlos Freixas, Wendy’s Web, Bunty 1997 © D.C. Thomson

Jim Baikie, The Forbidden Garden, Jinty 1979 © Egmont UK Ltd

Guy Peeters, Land of No Tears, Jinty 1977, © Egmont UK Ltd