Comments

'And finally, not everyone’s being doing topical. In fact, here’s the rather lovely 6 Oxgangs Avenue devoted to the history of the development of the area, this week highlighting how the block of flats came into being. Could have been prompted by Who do you think you are? Or just a timely reminder that not everything worth blogging about is in the here and now.'

Kate Higgins, Scottish Roundup 26/08/2012



Friday 14 September 2012

Victor or Bunty?


Which comic was better-The Victor or the Bunty?


You might think that an answer should be based on one's gender, but I loved them both. I loved comics in general-the Hornet; the Hotspur; the Valiant, but also girls’ comics too which we got regularly from the Blades family who lived two floors up from us. With six sisters they used to pass down to me copies of the Bunty, Judy, Diane and Jackie. Because there might be up to six weeks in between it was great to get a whole run on a good story.

My Four Marys badge. Cool badge, eh?
The art work was superb and the stories were excellent. In addition to the 'Four Marys'-always good, there was usually a story line about a girl from a poor background or from a gypsy family-invariably she was a good sprinter and had to overcome obstacles to win the county championships-county championships-gosh what were they? They sounded exciting.


The Blades sometimes gave me some Classics Illustrated; I also recall some  Gold Key comics too. The Blades also passed comics on to the Hanlons'. These were very thoughtful gestures.

I supplemented these comics with those which I bought myself and also paid very regular visits to Bobbies Bookshop at Dalry Road, to buy DC Comics-Green Lantern; The Flash; Batman; Superman; Green Arrow.

The stories in the British weeklies were absolutely first class-and characters such as The Tough of the Track-Alf Tupper and Wilson the Wonder Athlete from the Hornet and the Victor were to inspire me for years into the future.

In future I will do a number of blogs on the comics of the 1960s, but I'd like to hear first from followers of The Stair, what your memories are. 

And so which one was better? On balance, it might have been the Bunty-but then the girls might disagree! But now that I think about it, I guess it was actually the Hornet-see below a 1964 edition which features The Hoffster's logo.




2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

11Bunty, no contest. The four Elizabeths of course :)
Not to mention the boarding school environment. I could not understand the reluctance of the boarders. I would have been there in a flash. Only school and no home life, oh joy. I would have happily been the poor 'scholarship' girl :)
Elizabeth

Peter Hoffmann said...

Snap! I loved it too and wanted to be there-even when there was a ghost at St Elmos-In the Dandy I also followed Winker Watson-what kind of a name was that? (His wee brother was Wally-good Oz name!) Again it was because of the boarding school life-the house-master was Mr Creep-Dickens would have liked that one. If you give me your address I'll send you a 4 Marys badge!