Something for the girls
Something for the girls |
|
Page 8 of 17  Cover, Bunty (BC Thomson, 1963). Art: Anon. A huge success with eight to twelve year olds which frequently included 'free gifts' such as the 'pretty party bracelet'. By way of a postscript, it is also interesting to note that despite the diversity of British titles from this period, they all had one thing in common: they were all written and drawn by men. Female creators did not have a place in the industry, and men hired by the bigger companies tended to work on two or three comics simultaneously, boys' and girls'. True, it is possible to identify one or two successful women artists: for example, Marie Duval on Ally Sloper's Half Holiday,(the wife of Sloper's creator, Charles Ross), Evelyn Flinders on School Friend and Pamela Chapeau at Diana. However, they were exceptions. In the late 1960s things started to improve, but it remained the case that women with creative talents were still much more able to 'get on' in other fields, such as children's book illustration and advertising. In the United States, the girls' comics industry was less well defined. It did not occupy such a major place in comics culture as in Britain, but nevertheless gave rise to some groundbreaking titles. From the earliest years of comic books, girls had been understood to make up part of the audience for certain genres. The early comedy titles, for example, attracted a wide female readership, while the Disney comics and other 'funny animal' titles were certainly unisex. There had also been a tradition of newspaper strips aimed at women and girls, and as these became comic books in their own right, so they took that audience with them. Having a female character as the star was an effective way of achieving this, and examples included, in the early years, Little Orphan Annie (McKay, 1937), Tillie the Toiler (Dell, 1941), and, undoubtedly the most popular of all, Little Lulu (Dell, 1945). |