British Girls' Comics: Diana Annual 1979

I've selected three stories from the Diana Annual of 1979, that again illustrate the quality of British girls' comics of the 1950s through the 80s. This first story illustrates the hassle girls of (just???) the 1970s had to endure from being continuously hit on by guys. The story also made me think again of how just like animals people can be if they don't consciously transcend the biological urges of their bodies. The boys in this story are, typically, driven by their hormones and instincts to reproduce. They're trying to best each other at impressing the female on heat, although she's not fully receptive to their advances. Maybe there's a cool subject here for a David Attenborough documentary - the reproductive behavior of the human mammal, from the perspective of visiting alien scientists. Probably already been done. Anyway, some nice art that looks like it's by one of the Spanish artists.

This next story does a makeover on a popular topic in 1960s girls' comics - the beauty pageant and modeling. The artwork is a little different, and quite good in places. Interesting story line - the protagonist has been raised in a single parent household, but what happened to her father? Why wasn't he in the picture? Well the answer lies in one of those favorite soap opera devices, but you're gonna have to read it to find out which!

Finally, "For Love of Leni" is a girls' romantic sci-fi set in the future, with a kind of X-Men swipe in that it has some of the population having mutated to possess special powers. This art is nice, and is by an artist who drew a girls' sci-fi feature in Diana called The Fabulous Four, again a bit of a Marvel rip-off in terms of the title, but story-wise is more like a female version of the Flash Gordon sort of space adventure. I'll post a little collection of those soon. This love story here involves that age-old problem of cross-cultural or inter-racial (or in this case, inter sub-species) relationships.

If only we hadn't, as a society, been corrupted by media corporations and misguided concepts of so-called freedom such that stories like these wouldn't appear beneath the sexually over-exposed interest of today's youth! For me, the story of romance comics, including these girls' comics, illustrates the moral decline that in the end made society as a whole, as well as the younger generation's taste in entertainment, more degraded than the standards mainstream comic publishers were willing or able to sink to.

Diana: The Fine Line Between Adventure & Romance

This schoolgirl ghost story is drawn in very fine-line art by an artist I can't identify. "Sadly the Olives Grow" is from the Diana annual of 1977. This little adventure takes place on a residential school trip to Spain for this English girl and her class. If this had been an early 60s girls' comic they probably would have gone skiing in Switzerland or the Austrian Alps, but by the 1970s Spain was the popular overseas destination for British vacationers. I have to say the supervision is a little slack, enough for the protagonist to wander off up the hill, using the freedom gained by feigning illness and being left alone in the hotel all day!

This second story, "The Friday Rocking Horse", is a charming tale of two lost souls who finally find their way, by finding each other. It's by the same artist, this time from the 1976 Diana annual. I really like the splash panel on this one. That's the kind of country cottage with a dry stone wall around a beautiful garden that I've always wanted to live in with my wife. Very unlikely to happen, so I'll have to be content with the occasional daydream prompted by pictures like this!

Diana Annual 1976: The Man in Black - "Skeletons in the Cupboard" & more

Following on from the previous post, here's another Man in Black story, this time from the 1976 Diana annual. This one's "Skeletons in the Closet" and is the same quality - such a nice style. And talking of style, some real period fashions there!

In the same annual, there is another mystery story drawn by this mystery artist! Not a Man in Black tale this time, though, although it could have been. It's called "The Love Locket":

A nice little romance tale there. I'd like to know who that artist is.