British Update: School Friend 1951-1965 – Wot, No June?
*Girls’ Comics: Having just brought you a mammoth June update last week, the natural follow-on is School Friend, as the two are inextricably mingled in the public mind, to the point where many people don’t realise School Friend was ever a separate periodical – one which, moreover, preceded June by a decade! (As a comic; it had a long prior history as a story-paper). When School Friend reinvented itself in 1951 as a comic, it also launched the career of the Silent Three, definitive cowled crusaders of boarding-school society, and many of our new arrivals, feature Betty, Joan and Peggy in their costumed identities, but there’s a plethora of other well-remembered features to be seen. This selection of close to 70 new copies to our lists opens in 1951, is quite heavy in 1956 and 1957, then blips to 1962, 1964 and 1965, very shortly before School Friend entered a forced marriage with the upstart June. Along the way at various points, we meet ‘Anita – Beloved Princess’, ‘Yasmin and the Golden Pyramid’, loveable duffer ‘Dilly Dreem’, ‘Gwen and the Gay Highwayman’, ‘My Friend Sara’, ‘Cherry and the Children’, ‘Bessie Bunter’, and scores more plucky young maidens defending Queen and Empire. In very affordable mid-grades, averaging Good, this is an appealing selection of options to fill those pesky gaps!