Jinty (comics)

Jinty

Cover from issue of Jinty, 19 August 1978. Art by Guy Peeters.
Publication information
Publisher IPC Magazines, Fleetway Publications
Schedule Weekly
Genre
    Publication date 11.05.1974 - 21.11.1981
    Number of issues 393

    Jinty was a weekly British comic for girls published by Fleetway in London from 1974 to 1981, at which point it merged with Tammy. It had previously merged with Penny [1] in a similar fashion, illustrating the 'hatch-match-dispatch' process practiced by editorial staff in the London comics publisher.

    As well as the weekly comic, Christmas annuals were also published. While there were similarities with its Fleetway stablemates Tammy and Misty, each comic had its own focus, with Jinty concentrating on science fiction or otherwise fantastical stories.

    Publishing format

    As with other girls' comics of the time, Jinty consisted of a collection of many small strips. A typical weekly issue would publish six or seven serial stories, each consisting of around three or four pages of story ending in a cliff-hanger. The first page of the story included a text-box briefly summarizing the story so far, while the final page included a teaser line of text for the next week's episode.

    In addition to the serial stories, a small number of standalone strips were normally published. Usually these were humorous and featured the same lead character week after week. Alley Cat, Penny Crayon, and others were a single page long, while Sue's Fantastic Fun-Bag! ran to two pages each week. A lead strip in the early days, often taking the cover slot, was The Jinx From St Jonah's, which normally featured a standalone story but occasionally continued it in a subsequent week. An exception to the humour format was the storyteller format, in which the same narrator would each week tell a different spooky or eerie story. In Jinty, that narrator was the character Gypsy Rose.

    Other features includes a letters page, horoscopes, occasional text stories, feature articles on pop or media stars, and various articles on creative things to make and do.

    Jinty was printed on newsprint using at most two colours on internal pages and a four-colour process on the external cover pages.

    Jinty also merged with Lindy during 1976 and carried in to 1977.

    Themes and key stories

    While a large number of the stories published in Jinty were realistically based in everyday life (such as 'Pam of Pond Hill', an episodic tale of a young girl at a Comprehensive school), it differentiated itself from other comics in printing more stories with a science fictional or fantastical focus.

    Some of the published stories show a strong environmental concern.

    Some stories focused on disabilities.

    Other stories covered ground seen in many traditional girls' comics. Humour stories included:

    Historical stories included:

    More traditional stories included:

    Granny has a pram called Old Peg, which has a reputation in the community for possessing curative powers for infants - any sick infant rocked in Old Peg seems to recover immediately. When Granny dies, Corrie finds a note in Old Peg saying “Push it to Peter”, and the pram is equipped for a long journey. So Corrie begins a long journey of pushing Old Peg all the way from Scotland to Peter in London, sleeping in her at night, and having all sorts of adventures, mishaps and dangers on the way. She also has to keep ahead of the law, as she has been reported missing in Drumloan.

    LINDY

    Creators featured in Jinty

    THE EDITOR: Mavis Miller was the one and only Editor(ex-Radio Times and one of the best Editors of all at Fleetway Publications and IPC Magazines).

    Problems of attribution

    Artists and writers were not credited in Jinty. Artists can be identified by their work in other comics, whether girls comics such as Tammy (which moved to a system of crediting creators in the early 1980s) or in boys' comics such as 2000AD which had such a policy from earlier on. In other cases, it is possible to identify the artists from signatures on the comics page.

    Identification of writers in Jinty is currently dependent on information given by the writers themselves.

    Artists

    Artists featured in the pages of Jinty included Phil Gascoine (who was in each issue from the very first until the last, from Gail's Indian Necklace to Badgered Belinda). Gascoine was the artist for No Cheers for Cherry and Fran of the Floods; Guy Peeters, artist for Land of No Tears, Black Sheep of the Bartons, I'll Make up for Mary, Slave of the Swan, The Human Zoo, Worlds Apart and Pandora's Box; Jim Baikie, artist for Left-Out Linda, Face The Music, Flo!, Ping-Pong Paula, Miss No-Name, Willa on Wheels, Rose Among the Thornes, Spell of the Spinning Wheel, Two Mothers for Maggie, Wild Rose and The Forbidden Garden; José Casanovas, Trine Tinture, Rodrigo Comos, and many other Spanish artists. Jinty also had less well-known British comics artists such as Audrey Fawley,[2] Made Up Mandy; Philip Townsend Somewhere over the Rainbow, Mark of the Witch!, Children of Stepford and Song of the Fir Tree; and Keith Robson.

    Writers

    Writers featured included Pat Mills (Land of No Tears, Girl in a Bubble, Concrete Surfer), Malcolm Shaw (The Robot Who Cried), and Jay Over (Pam of Pond Hill), Terence Magee(Merry At Misery House).

    Notes

    1. ↑ Comics UK Family Tree for Jinty and Penny
    2. ↑ Audrey Fawley interviewed by Steve Holland