*Girls’ Comics: Following our recent Bunty Bonanza, we have a – Judy Jamboree? – for Bunty’s stablemate who debuted in 1960. This selection begins with issue #4, and lasts until the close of 1967. While not a complete run by any means, it is a substantial one, and incorporates three first appearances of key, long-running characters (plus one oddball novelty). Issue #164 in 1963 sees the debut of ‘First-Aid Fay’, a young girl determined to become a nurse against her wealthy parents’ wishes; after her first story, Fay reappeared many times up to the 1980s as ‘Fay Farrell, (fillintheblank) Nurse’, her subtitle changing with each adventure – Student, District, Army, Island, what have you. (Oddly, ‘Flying Squad Nurse’, a Judy strip which was right in the middle of Fay’s era, was another young lady entirely – to mis-quote Shaggy: ‘It wasn’t Fay!’ Issue #249 in 1964 brought us ‘Wee Slavey, a.k.a. Nellie Perks, maid-of-all work to the pretentious but good-hearted Shelby-Smythe family. Although the title promised drudgery and gloom, Nellie’s quick wits and ready humour meant that the series was a light-hearted read, even when the Shelby-Smythes lost their fortune and were playing a desperate game of Keeping Up Appearances, with Nellie as their only servant! ‘Wee Slavey’ ran intermittently until Judy’s demise in the 1990s, as did the other Judy juggernaut, ‘Bobby Dazzler’, which premiered in 1965’s #263. Roberta ‘Bobby’ Dazzler was the only girl at Westbury Boarding School For Boys, owing to her mother being the Matron-In-Residence. The other third-formers, particularly Mike Norton, believed boys were superior to girls, and Bobby inevitably proved them wrong. This slender concept, with the lively art of Giorgio Lettari, kept proto-feminist Bobby going strong for decades. The final debut didn’t last long, but it’s a wierdie: 1967, at the height of the spy craze, brought us, in Judy #398, ‘The Girl From DORSET’, as Maid Marian, a junior Emma Peel, crushes adult villains and international agents with somewhat startling levels of violence (for a girls’ comic) before reporting back to her department head, ‘Mother’. What did D.O.R.S.E.T. stand for? Buy the comic and find out! This massive update of Judy also includes Christmas, Easter and other ‘special’ issues galore, as well as several with promotional flyers for other publications. Pictured are issue #4 FA/GD £7; #164 VG £18; #249 FN £30 and #263 GD £30. For prices and conditions on the literally hundreds of other issues new in, including the previously entirely unrepresented 1966, see our online catalogue. And join us again soon as we move on up from 1968 into the 1970s!