About Tammy

Tammy

Tammy was a weekly British comic for girls, published in London by Fleetway Publications, part of IPC Magazines, from 6 February 1971 to 23 June 1984. It published 689 issues and was one of the most successful British girls' comics of its era: at its height it sold 250,000 copies a week, more than better-remembered IPC titles such as 2000 AD. Tammy was known for its bleak, emotionally intense stories — modern variations on Cinderella, in which working-class heroines endured cruelty, poverty and adversity — and it eventually absorbed its sister titles Misty and Jinty, whose characters joined its pages.

Tammy's first editor was Gerry Finley-Day, followed by Wilf Prigmore. Across thirteen years it incorporated six other titles — Sally, June, Sandie, Jinty, Misty and Princess — before itself merging into Girl in 1984. Christmas annuals were published alongside the weekly comic.

Publication history

Tammy's first issue was dated 6 February 1971, and offered readers a free ring and bracelet. The comic was an anthology: every issue was a collection of stories, usually serial instalments of three or four pages each, so that a single number might carry a dozen different heroines at different points in their stories. Weekly serial publication, with each instalment ending at a moment of tension, was the established format of British girls' comics, and Tammy used it to build an unusually loyal readership.

The comic ran without interruption for 689 issues. Its end came on 23 June 1984, when it merged into the second volume of Girl, the IPC girls' title that had been relaunched in the 1980s. By the standards of British girls' comics — a field in which titles frequently lasted only a few years before being merged away — a thirteen-year run with a circulation peak of a quarter of a million copies a week made Tammy one of the most durable publications in its market.

The hatch, match and dispatch system

Tammy's history is a textbook example of the system by which Fleetway and IPC managed their comics. New titles were launched, and those that succeeded were periodically refreshed by absorbing weaker titles, whose most popular characters were carried into the survivor. Tammy absorbed Sally; then Sandie, in 1973; June, in 1974; Misty, in 1980; Jinty, in 1981; and Princess, in its second volume. Each merger was announced in the merged comic's title for a period, and each brought Tammy new long-running regulars.

The system gave Tammy more long-running characters than most girls' comics. The merger with Sandie brought Wee Sue and Jeannie and her Uncle Meanie in 1973. The merger with June brought Bessie Bunter — the Cliff House schoolgirl created decades earlier in the story papers — together with Mam'selle X and the Storyteller, presenter of The Strangest Stories Ever Told, in 1974. The merger with Misty brought the witch Miss T and Misty herself in 1980, to join the Storyteller; and the merger with Jinty brought Pam of Pond Hill in 1981.

A darker kind of girls' comic

What distinguished Tammy from its competitors was tone. Where earlier British girls' comics such as Diana and Princess Tina were, in the words of Tammy sub-editor Pat Mills, nice and middle-class, Tammy specialised in stories of cruelty and adversity, built on the understanding that girls wanted stories that made them cry. Its characteristic form was the Cinderella variation: a poor or oppressed heroine, mistreated by authority figures or false friends, struggling to preserve her talent, her family or her self-respect.

The scholar Julia Round, discussing the serial Slaves of War Orphan Farm, identified the emblematic Tammy themes as a working-class heroine, constantly thwarted hope, and overt violence against girls, usually from an older authority figure. Serials such as No Tears for Molly and Slaves of War Orphan Farm remain the most notorious examples of the comic's dark streak, and the serial The Loneliest Girl in the World was singled out by several reviewers as a story that stood out even within Tammy. The respective mergers with Misty and Jinty softened and varied the formula, bringing darker horror tones from the first and more science fiction from the second.

Bella Barlow

Tammy's most enduring character was Bella Barlow, the gymnast heroine of the long-running serial usually known as Bella at the Bar. Bella was a working-class girl who worked as a window cleaner for her uncle's business and did the housework at home, on poor food and with occasional beatings, while snatching every moment she could to practise gymnastics. The first Bella story, Star Struck Sister, was written by Jenny McDade, and the later stories were written by Primrose Cumming; the strip was drawn throughout by John Armstrong.

Bella outlasted every change in the comic. When editorial changes in the 1980s brought Tammy towards a more traditional style, and the dark, cruel stories that had made it revolutionary in the 1970s disappeared, Bella Barlow was the exception that remained. Her story was chosen for revival decades later: Rebellion, the publishers of 2000 AD and owners of the Fleetway archive, published a collected edition, Bella at the Bar, in 2018, with McDade's writing and Armstrong's art — an acknowledgement of the character's central place in British girls' comics.

Stories and serials

Tammy's contents ranged far beyond its weepiest serials. Its stories covered school, sport, ballet, animals, historical adventure, science fiction and the supernatural. Benita Brown wrote the science fiction story Tomorrow Town. Maureen Spurgeon wrote the Molly Mills stories. Pat Mills contributed Granny's Town, Thursday's Child and Glenda's Glossy Pages, and Gerry Finley-Day, the comic's first editor, wrote The Camp on Candy Island, a serial in which a holiday camp progressively turns into a prison camp. Alison Christie specialised in heart-tugging stories such as A Gran for the Gregorys and Cassie's Coach, in which a wrongly imprisoned Victorian mother's children make a home in an old coach.

Humour and fantasy also had their places. The Cat Girl gave its heroine cat-like abilities from a mysterious costume; The Button Box used a family heirloom as a frame for weekly stories; and Bessie Bunter supplied broad comedy in the tradition of the old story papers. This mixture — misery serials beside comedy strips and adventure stories — was the anthology formula that allowed a weekly comic to offer something to every reader in every issue.

Creators and credits

Tammy's writers included Jenny McDade, Benita Brown, Gerry Finley-Day, Pat Mills, Malcolm Shaw, Ian Mennell, Alison Christie, Jay Over, Primrose Cumming, Anne Digby and Terence Magee. Its artists included John Armstrong, Mario Capaldi, José Casanovas, Tony Coleman, Diane Gabbott, Douglas Perry, Eduardo Feito, Giorgio Giorgetti, Juliana Buch, Miguel Quesada and Jaume Rumeu — a characteristically international team, in which British artists worked alongside the Spanish artists who supplied much of British comics production in the period.

In its last few years Tammy did something unusual for a girls' comic: it credited its writers and artists in its pages. British girls' comics had traditionally been anonymous, and the credits, although they came late in the comic's life, are one reason so many of Tammy's creators can now be identified and its stories attributed — a contrast with sister title Jinty, where no credits were printed and attribution depends on the creators' own testimony.

Editorial history

Tammy's first editor was Gerry Finley-Day, who went on to become one of the most important writers of British adventure comics, and he was followed by Wilf Prigmore. Prigmore was also a central figure in the Fleetway girls' comics group: he was group editor for IPC's girls' comics when Misty was created in 1978, and Tammy, Jinty and Misty remained closely linked editorially throughout their lives, sharing creators, practices and eventually their contents.

Under its later editorship in the 1980s, Tammy moved towards a more traditional mould of storytelling. The change reflected a wider shift in the girls' comics market, which was contracting as the decade progressed, and it left Bella Barlow as the principal survivor of the comic's distinctive 1970s approach.

Annuals and reprints

As well as the weekly comic, Tammy Christmas annuals were published, following the British convention by which a successful weekly comic issued a hardback annual for the Christmas market. The annuals extended the comic's characters into book form each year and are now collected alongside the weekly issues.

The modern revival of interest in Tammy has come through Rebellion's Treasury of British Comics programme, which has returned classic Fleetway material to print. The 2018 Bella at the Bar collection, and the joint Tammy and Jinty specials and collections that followed from the same archive, have introduced the comic to a new readership and confirmed its reputation: the downthetubes comics news site, announcing the Bella collection, described Tammy as one of the success stories of British girls' comics, a title that rivalled DC Thomson's Bunty in sales and whose history had been unjustly neglected beside the boys' titles.

Tammy among British girls' comics

Tammy's historical importance lies in its demonstration that girls' comics could be as emotionally serious, and as commercially powerful, as any other part of the British comics industry. Its peak circulation of 250,000 copies a week exceeded that of 2000 AD in the same publishing house, yet it is the boys' and science fiction titles that have dominated histories of the period. The scholarly and publishing revival of the past decade — Julia Round's academic work on girls' comics, Rebellion's reprints, and the attention given to Bella Barlow — has begun to correct that imbalance.

Within its own line, Tammy was the survivor: the comic into which Sally, Sandie, June, Misty and Jinty were all eventually folded, and the one whose characters — Bella, Wee Sue, Bessie Bunter, Pam of Pond Hill — carried the traditions of British girls' comics, from the story papers of 1919 to the 1980s, in a single weekly title.

Legacy

Tammy ceased publication on 23 June 1984, merging into Girl, but its reputation has grown since. It is remembered for proving that stories of hardship, injustice and endurance — told seriously, about working-class girls — could anchor a mass-market weekly for thirteen years and 689 issues. Its best stories, above all Bella Barlow's, are now available in modern collected editions, and its place in reference works on British comics is secure.

For the directory of British magazines, Tammy represents the high point of the IPC girls' comic: a London-published weekly that outsold famous contemporaries, absorbed five sister titles, introduced creator credits to its field, and left behind characters still in print more than forty years after its first issue offered readers a free ring and bracelet in February 1971.