By Keri O’Shea
(For the first part of this article, please click here.)
Signs of the Times
Although Misty focused on supernatural and fantastical goings-on in its stories, between the lines it was still very much a product of the late seventies and early eighties, with plenty of evidence of the social and political situation of the time. Indeed, the comic itself was stopped from being published at several points during its lifespan due to union strikes. Despite the fact that we are again, at the time of writing, undergoing financial upheaval and the threat of recession, the world at large is still tremendously changed, especially with regards to our attitudes to children. Looking back on the views and conventions unconsciously reflected in the Misty comics, some of these changes are particularly striking, such as the following…
In the story ‘Rag Doll’, not only has our heroine Rachel spent her life in an orphanage where she is expected to work in the kitchens as payment for her ungrateful ‘moping’, but she is also repeatedly caned by one of the workers simply for being miserable. Although this is evidently intended to make the readers feel pity for Rachel, the casual inclusion of the corporal punishment angle reminds us that when this story was printed, it was an accepted part of a child’s life, and remained as such for the whole of Misty’s tenure. Corporal punishment in state schools in England and Wales wasn’t officially banned until ’87. State involvement with childcare was altogether more hard-line in Misty’s day: in the story ‘Somewhere’ (printed in the same 1981 annual as Rag Doll) the female character is warned about wandering the streets while a ‘Borstal boy who’d escaped from a working party’ was still on the loose. It’s rather a different state of affairs to today’s increased emphasis on non-custodial punishments, ostensibly to avoid the shadow of institutionalisation. Yet the very name ‘Borstal’ once conjured up parental fear of the types of kids who might have ever been sent there.
Poverty, social alienation and strikes are also represented in Misty’s pages: for example, a bus strike means a girl has to cycle to a nearby town in ‘The Thing in Chains’, inconveniencing her and throwing her into the path of a spectral dancing bear, all at the same time. But perhaps most of all in Misty, the most sympathetic characters on offer were those having a distressing time on account of their difference to their peers, which usually took the form of an impoverished background. Threading through many of the stories are the girls’ feelings of frustration and sadness, often on behalf of their families as much as for themselves. In ‘Stranger in my Mirror’, Mary Mallory struggles to be a good girl, holding down a paper-round just to give the money to her mother. They’re in rent arrears, the landlord is harassing them, and their life isn’t easy. For most of the girls, school is definitely not a supportive environment, but a world of draconian punishments, bereft of sympathy and understanding. Bullying, though this takes place both in and out of school, is a common theme in Misty.
It’s also often the impetus behind the kind of desperation which frequently afflicts our heroines and thus drives the plot in the comic. One of the most poignant – and popular – Misty serials ran under the title ‘Winner Loses All!’ The story, basically the Faust myth updated to 70s England, featured some of the most macabre artwork the comic ever ran. Its protagonist, Sandy Morton, lives with her widower father, once a renowned show-jumper, but now a humble stable-hand battling alcoholism and poverty. Determined to restore him to his former glories, she accepts the offer of a Mr. Dayville (‘Devil’) who promises to do just that – in return for her soul – leading to a battle of wills between a teenage girl and Satan himself. For this troubled teen, the road to Hell really is paved with good intentions…
For the comic’s original readership, being able to identify with the protagonists in the stories was vital to making them engaging. Sharing aspirations, experiences and attitudes with their heroines doubtless made the stories seem more believable for Misty’s young fans, even when other supernatural aspects of the plot stretched plausibility. For the modern reader revisiting the stories today, this identification has inevitably largely changed to nostalgia – or perhaps more accurately, an interest in the time-capsule effect of exploring the publication anew and recognising the many changes. Of course, the stories themselves are still a lot of fun, but reading between the lines has also become a pleasure. At times, spotting the differences between life then and now moves into the foreground, ahead of the tales told: what was taken for granted when these were written is now noteworthy for us.
Of course, it wasn’t all peril and plight. There was some comic relief available in Misty: the comic strips which provided it were also the only strips to appear on a regular basis. These were: Miss T – a much more orthodox, pointed-hat-and-broomstick-crone who often fraternised with cartoon versions of the famous Universal monsters amongst others, and Cilla the Chiller, a schoolgirl ghost. These were much more in the vein of traditional British comics like the Dandy or Beano in their style of humour, and divided the Misty audience somewhat. Some readers felt that the lighter tone of these strips didn’t fit very well with the rest of the magazine.
There were also more practical activities and gifts for Misty fans: the first three issues came with free gifts which reflected the comic’s distinctive flavour, being a charm bracelet, an Egyptian Bast ring (as featured in ‘The Cult of the Cat’ in the very first Misty) and a fortune-telling wallet. There were also plenty of things to make and do. Perhaps one of the most fun sides to Misty were the horror-styled spins on what are considered more conventional feminine pastimes, like cooking and crafts. The popular BBC TV kids’ show Blue Peter, for all of its focus on making things at home, would only dare allow itself to cover the same ground at Halloween. At Misty, the distinction between Halloween and the rest of the year just wasn’t there. Enjoy baking? Misty could help you to make a Devil’s Cake, or if you had ‘a sweet fang’, a Dracula’s Dream Dessert, with raspberry purée for the blood and bananas for the fangs. The 1985 annual taught us how to make chocolate coffins, and the ’86 annual invited girls to use foodstuffs for a spooky touch-test; savoy cabbage leaves made convincing ‘bats’ wings’. Of course, if you preferred handicrafts you could be shown how to do anything from ‘monsterfying’ a margarine tub to creating masks to making your own shrunken heads with papier mâché (‘Why not make a whole bunch of them to hang by the hair on a hook on your bedroom wall?’) The types of stories and characters referenced in these activities evidenced the wealth of horror and New Age archetypes all happily co-existing in the pages of a girls’ comic. Alongside references to Dracula, Frankenstein and lycanthropy were how-to guides on herbalism, palmistry, ESP and ‘How To Make Your Own Priestess’s Jewels’. Under the Misty remit, a whole host of characters, phenomena and ideas from within the horror genre and beyond were used to pitch ideas for games and activities to an eager readership. And, if readers wanted to write their own ghost stories, or go on their own ghost hunts, Misty offered ideas there too.
Misty’s Legacy
Sadly, before Misty was really an established force majeure, the downturn in the comics industry struck and in a cost-cutting measure the publisher merged it with their more traditional Tammy. It proved a miserable arranged marriage that saw the Misty content and logo gradually shrink into the background. Because Misty had such a short tenure, and because its supernatural stylings were diminished so soon after the Tammy merger by unsympathetic editorial decisions, it’s difficult to judge whether this girls’ comic could have gone on to greater things. While many of the readers who loved it like to think so, this will always remain speculation. However, although Misty was no more, there were still talented British comics professionals who had seen a future for innovative titles with a darker edge that treated their readers with a little more respect than the tired, conventional titles lined up on UK news-stands. Not least, one Pat Mills.
Mills who illustrated for Misty – including the popular serial Moonchild – had also been involved with a seminal comic which we would all probably recognise. This title was 2000AD, a now-legendary title home to popular characters, like Judge Dredd. Despite the wavering market, 2000AD was a hit. Misty may have taken a final bow, but comics as a medium were not dead, only changing. Pat Mills had helped spearhead a new generation of comics writers and artists who pioneered a more mature tone and style, which in turn paved the way for comics which were cool for sophisticated teens, and ultimately legitimate entertainment for adults. Perhaps there’s a nice circularity here; it could be that the enduring legacy of a legend in the field, who once drew for Misty, once encouraged the recent interest in reprints and the rediscovery of old comics – not least Misty itself.
For a comic which lacked longevity, Misty has endured with great tenacity in the hearts of its original fans. This is borne out by its reappearance in recent years, thanks to the efforts of mistycomic.co.uk, a fan-based site who started by creating an online archive of the comic in 2002.. The popularity of the archive was such that, within a year of being live, the site owners were looking into publishing a Misty Special, featuring new stories and artwork. A Halloween Special did in fact appear in 2006, another Special hit the shelves in 2009, and now – who knows – perhaps the Child of the Mists may yet venture back again… As someone who can thank Misty for the understanding that creepy could be fun, I sincerely hope she will. Bela Lugosi once said, ‘It is women who love horror’; I think we can agree on that, and perhaps for many of us, it all starts when we are young, sometimes with something as simple as a comic.
