By Keri O’Shea
What got you into horror as a child? Most of us can chart our love of the genre back to our early years, and we can probably identify one or two fundamental fandoms that set us along our own individual paths into darkness. While horror cinema almost inevitably takes centre stage, back in the days when it was tough to track down the movies which tantalised us so by reputation – or via equally tantalising stills in books and magazines – the hungry nascent horror fan had to make the most of the other resources available to him. Or indeed her… Comics offered just such an opportunity: they were cheap, easy to find, and – despite a general downturn starting in the 70s – still prolific, in a broad range of genres to suit most adolescent tastes. Not least, of course, horror. Yet it would still surprise many to learn that a British title existed, aimed at teen and pre-teen girls, which thrived by thrilling its readers with tales of mystery and horror. Welcome to the world of the Misty comic.
Misty first appeared back in 1978, brought to the stands by esteemed children’s publishing house Egmont. The comic ran weekly until 1980, when it underwent a merger with another girls’ comic, the more traditional Tammy, which meant a gradual decline in the horror focus over the following years. But there was enough of the Misty content to generate a series of dedicated holiday specials and annuals – which is how I first encountered the publication. The year was 1986, and I received the last Misty annual as a Christmas present. Needless to say, I was hooked. I can credit Misty with introducing me to the delights of scary fiction, the London Dungeon, Edgar Allan Poe, and Vincent Price, to name but a few. My early education in horror had begun, initiated by a comic which dealt nearly exclusively with female characters and female perspectives – albeit refracted through tales of the supernatural, some of which had the real potential to terrify…
‘Welcome To My Midnight World’
Misty wasn’t just the name of the publication, but also a character in the comic, with her own mythology and her own followers and fans. Reading something like an allegory, albeit one which wasn’t very strongly delineated, our timeless, ageless ‘gatherer of stories’ existed in a ‘Cavern of Dreams’ near to a ‘Pool of Life’. From time to time the publication featured letters in which readers asked questions about her domain, where and what she was (the 1982 annual featured a long Q&A with the character, for instance). Misty didn’t feature as a character in the stories, however, but operated more as a horror hostess – introducing the stories to follow, and sometimes commenting on their conclusions. Upon reflection, Misty’s appearance was at least as significant to the character’s impact upon her fans as anything she might have said or done in the comic. The Misty aesthetic was anything but conventional, particularly for a mainstream girls’ magazine of its day, and it must surely have had an influence on her readers. It definitely did on this writer.
With long, dark hair, alabaster skin, a flowing pale gown and even a pentacle necklace, Misty’s appearance recalls several possible influences. One of these must be classic horror (although in keeping with the medium and the target age group, Misty was more of a benevolent supernatural creature). You can see something of Carol Borland’s character Luna Mora in her looks, right down to the heavily-lined eyes and flowing hair. Borland played Luna opposite Bela Lugosi’s Count Mora in the 1934 film Mark of the Vampire, in the process becoming the prototypical Gothic vamp. There’s also something of the inimitable aesthetics of Hammer horror there too. Hammer’s period Gothic had become part of the fabric of British pop culture in the mid-20th century, and Misty no doubt owed something to the studio’s stable of glamorous Gothic leading ladies. The image of her ghostly figure, swathed in a shroud-white gown, beneath a full moon and the silhouette of a bat is pure Hammer. Also significant in establishing the look and atmosphere of both Misty and her comic were the Gothic Romance novels that had reached a peak in popularity in preceding decades. Seldom offering more than a hint of the supernatural, these pulp paperbacks aimed at a female readership featured damsels in distress in grandiose, if gloomy historical settings, with dark, Byronic anti-heroes ready to sweep the heroine off her feet against a backdrop of thrilling mystery. While the romance element took a backseat in Misty (boy-meets-girl storylines usually concluded with the ghostly twist that one partner was dead) the comic clearly took a few stylistic pointers from the Gothic Romances issued by publishers like the Paperback Library’s Gothic imprint in the 1960s and 70s.
Another possible influence on Misty from the same era might be the flood of lurid occult pulp paperbacks and magazines, themselves informed by the occult revival of the late sixties and the rage for all things weird and ‘witchy’. The interplay between the Age of Aquarius and the mainstream had generated a new and recognisable look for the modern witch – young, enigmatic and darkly beautiful – a sexy collision between hippy mysticism and creepy cuteness. This hip 20th century sorceress duly found her place on many of the covers of the countless books and periodicals which flooded the market. Right down to her necklace, Misty appears to owe a great deal to this phenomenon, as well as to the vogue for supernatural goings-on and their representations in pop culture, a well-established phenomenon by the time the comic appeared. Yet, as much as its heroine had an almost hip look, there was a strong streak of conservatism at the heart of the comic itself. Unlike the comic’s titular heroine, the sympathetic characters in the stories tended to be conventionally pretty ‘straights’, whilst most of Misty’s villainesses tended towards the witchy look.
The infamously bloodthirsty Countess Bathory herself even makes an appearance in one issue, looking incredibly proto-Gothic, all raven hair and kohl eyes, not unlike a certain singer named Siouxsie. Misty’s run coincides with the rise and fall of the original Gothic Punk movement in the UK. The term ‘Gothic’ was coined in reference to the bands Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bauhaus just a year after the first issue of Misty hit the news-stands. By the time the title was fully extinct in 1986, Goth had fallen out of favour with trendsetters. Of course, Misty catered to a very different audience than the fishnet-and-eyeliner aficionados buying Bauhaus records, but Goth drew from many of the same pop culture inspirations as the teen comic, exploiting perhaps similar dark and morbid fascinations. But if the Gothic Punks thought their music was selling subversion, Misty’s publishers certainly didn’t see their spooky stories in that light.
That conservatism suggested by the dress of the title’s heroines found expression in the stories. Misty offered a moralistic species of the supernatural: although the tales were fantastical, they were often fables which warned against selfish behaviour, and the inevitable punishment was made to fit the crime. While a million miles away from the infamous EC horror comics of the 1950s in terms of graphic gore and gleeful ghoulishness, Misty shared their relish for poetic justice. While they were being playfully spooked, Misty’s young readers were also being shown how to behave. In ‘The Green China Man’, a spoiled young girl called Tina Swanson finds herself drawn to a strange antique ceramic figure, one which seems to have the power to literally grant her every wish. She uses this to her own advantage, until she decides to condemn a school-friend to “get lost” and an unfortunate echo bounces this message back at her. Only the accidental destruction of the green china man allows her to return, and to atone for her behaviour, of course. Idols and strange artefacts usually spelled trouble, as did strange mirrors, which featured a lot in the comic. Such magic props were usually employed to demonstrate that you should be careful what you wish for, and that appearances can be deceptive. Too much vanity is inevitably rewarded with hardship.
Also frequently in the firing line in Misty stories are greed, duplicity and cruelty: ‘Mountain Girl’ tells the tale of a girl and her grandfather who have the uncanny ability to make abundant crops grow near their isolated woodland home, despite the relative poverty of their nearest neighbours. When residents of the nearby town find out about this, they demand their presence in the town so that they can benefit from their strange powers and generate wealth for themselves. However, their cruel treatment of their unwitting guests leads to the girl taking a violent revenge on the town, because her ability to control nature extends to causing earthquakes. Often, when strange, supernatural powers stem from the protagonists of the story, we witness the heroine having to decide whether to use her powers for good or for evil. The text story titled ‘The Takeover’ reads like a parable against envy. A girl called Louise has the ability to replicate the traits of others. When she employs it to supplant the talents of her kind-meaning sports mentor Miranda, it leads to a grisly comeuppance when Miranda falls ill. One of the most popular Misty stories was a lengthy serial called ‘Moonchild’. The main character in the series, Rosemary Black, discovers she has the powers of telekinesis, linked to a crescent-moon shaped birthmark underneath her hairline. She has inherited these powers from her maternal grandmother, but Rosemary’s mother has spent many years trying to keep her strange offspring as low and subdued as possible in an attempt to head off the arrival of any strange abilities. Yet, rather like in the classic horror movie Carrie, it proves to no avail, leaving Rosemary to decide how to use her telekinesis. Can she resist the temptation to use it against a group of school bullies who are making her life hell?…
Although many of Misty’s stories took place in contemporary Britain, the comic commissioned a significant number of stories which took place in the more distant past, usually, though not exclusively (and again, rather like many of Hammer’s horror films) at some point after the turn of the Nineteenth Century, though up until the first decades of the Twentieth. Often, these stories have obvious precedents in classic literature – and definitely show an awareness of sensation fiction, which was perhaps the comic’s equivalent in earlier times. For instance, ‘The Weird Sisters’ (1981) with its discussion of female insanity and treatment in Victorian England has echoes of the novels of Wilkie Collins, particularly The Woman in White. ‘Strange Heritage’, with its Yorkshire setting and themes of thwarted love, bears some resemblance to Wuthering Heights, albeit with a bang-up-to-date message about the importance of nature conservation (!) Yet as well as using period settings in its pages, Misty also devoted space to excerpts from classic literature itself.
One of the most ghastly of these – and perhaps most surprising, given the age of the readers – was an excerpt from M. G. Lewis’s notorious work of Gothic excess The Monk. (In a 1796 review, the poet Coleridge observed that ‘the Monk is a romance, which if a parent saw in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale’!) The excerpt included in Misty is a poem from the novel entitled ‘Alonzo the Brave and fair Imogene’. This tale of chivalric love between a Crusading knight and his lady gives way to horror, as Alonzo takes Imogene at her word when she declares that, should she ever love another, he must attend her wedding feast in ghostly form, and ‘bear [her] away to the grave’. The description of Alonzo’s unvizored visage riddled with worms has retained its power to disturb, and doubtlessly would have had an impact upon its young readers. Keeping company with the ghastly Alonzo and Imogene (or Imogine, as spelled in the original) through the course of Misty’s existence were diverse examples of literature by writers like Wordsworth and Poe, alongside tales of Ancient Greece, Arthurian legends, and suchlike. It’s an impressive introduction to writing which might not otherwise have found its way into the reading habits of pre-teens. In addition, many girls would have their first history lesson on subjects like the Borgias here, as well as finding articles about alleged real-life hauntings and other spooky locales.
Better than Bunty, eh?
For the second part of Keri’s feature, click here…