‘Read Misty for Me’: Research trip to British Library

misty cover

Long gone, but not forgotten, Misty was a British anthology comic for pre-teen and teenage girls which was published weekly in by IPC (now Fleetway) between 1978 and 1980, running for 101 issues.  Misty and DC Thomson’s Spellbound were some of the first British horror comics since the 1950s and featured work by many writers and artists who dominated the British comics market at the time, such as Pat Mills (2000AD).  Mills has described Misty as ‘the female 2000AD’ and critics such as James Chapman have made similar comparisons, noting the “superior storytelling and characterization” of these titles (British Comics 2011: 110).

Misty is long out of print and (despite a dedicated website, Facebook page and a vocal fan community) there are currently no confirmed plans to reprint it. This makes researching this title extremely difficult. This summer, the CsJCC supported me by providing funding for a research trip to the British Library where I was able to view the original 101 issues. I was able to make notes on content of a typical issue (forming the start of an overall content analysis) which turned up several interesting initial discoveries:

  • Misty stories fall into some distinct ‘types’ – including ‘magical item tales’ (e.g. a magic box of paints in ‘Paint it Black’); ‘twisted fairytales’ (retellings of dark fairytales such as ‘The Red Shoes’ which becomes ‘Danse Macabre’); ‘parallel universe’ tales (such as a universe where the Nazis won the Second World War in ‘The Sentinels’), to name but a few.
  • There are no serialised stories that continue over the comic’s entire run.
  • There are no recurring characters that continue over the comic’s entire run except Miss T (a comedy witch).
  • The endings of Misty’s stories are frequently offbeat and not at all reassuring – the story ends with the protagonist in a distinctly dangerous situation.
  • The comic’s host figure, Misty herself, appears on every inside cover with a direct message for the reader. However she seldom introduces individual stories (thus far I have found only two examples) and when she does so she raises questions rather than providing answers/reflection on the tale (this is very unusual for host figures in comics).

During my trip I also spoke with Pat Mills himself as part of a series of programmed events within Comica Festival, also held at the British Library, which was fantastic. I had also arranged to interview Misty cover artist Shirley Bellwood at this event (in a public talk entitled ‘Draw Misty for Me’) but unfortunately she was taken ill and unable to appear.

I hope to continue my content analysis of Misty with a second trip to the British Library later this year and use my notes to build up a complete critical content analysis of Misty that considers its language, page layouts, and story content.

Julia Round

Misty comic page

 

 

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