28 April 1979: Jinty

Here’s a colourful edition of Jinty from 45 years ago. The cover by Audrey Fawley trails a two-page beauty tips feature inside this week’s issue.

In fact the feature was not about fashion as the cover illustration seemed to suggest, but more about good hair and skincare.

Jinty was primarily about the comic strips however, and this week’s issue offered a great mix of mystery, fantasy, real-life dramas and humour stories.

Alice in a Strange Land, drawn by Terry Aspin, is the adventure of a group of schoolgirls who discover – and are enslaved by – the lost Golden City of the Incas.

Bizzie Bet and the Easies appears to be the lighthearted story of a go-for-it young woman who befriends (and harangues) a family of easygoing simpletons. Art by Richard Neillands.

The Forbidden Garden is set in a dark future in which humanity has poisoned the soil of its planet. Artist Jim Baikie draws the adventures of Laika Severn who seeks survival and a better way.

Prisoner of the Bell was an adventure serial in which a girl is hypnotised by her grandmother to turn her into a top gymnast. But other adventures ensue, including the dramatic bus crash in this week’s episode. Art by Phil Gascoine.

In I’ll Make Up for Mary, written by Alison Christie and drawn by Guy Peeters, quiet Ann Ridley seeks to change her personality and become more popular in memory of her twin sister who died saving Ann from drowning.

Daughter of Dreams is a fun tale about a girl with an imaginary friend. Creators unknown.

The Four-Footed Friends was a cute story about an unlikely couple of canine pals: Pekingese Winston, and, from the wrong side of the doggie tracks, ‘rollicking mongrol’ Riley. Writer Alison Christie, artist Peter Wilkes.

In Children of Edenford, two girls investigate the mystery of a picturesque village in which everything and everyone is just too perfect, drawn by Phil Townsend.

This issue of Jinty carried ads for two new comics to be launched by IPC at the start of May: Penny, aimed at slightly younger girls, and exciting new humour title Jackpot.

Finally, the back cover showed readers how to make dolls’ house furniture out of old matchboxes. My issue carries a scribbled message from one reader to another – a moment of lost communication captured in time.

There’s a much more descriptive review of this issue of Jinty on the ‘Resource on Jinty’ website, to whom I am very grateful – as always – for supplying the creator credits https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/jinty-28-april-1979/