[2] Examples include Judy, Diana, Jackie, June, Penelope, Mandy, Tina, Sally, Tammy, Sandie, Debbie, Misty, Emma, Penny, Tracy, Suzy, and Nikki.
[3] By the end of World War II, story papers were phasing out in favor of comic books and television.
[5] In the period 1958 to 1968, a series of mergers and acquisitions led to the girls' comics industry consolidating into two main publishers: DC Thomson and the newly created IPC.
In January 1959 Cecil Harmsworth King, chairman of the Daily Mirror newspaper group, acquired Amalgamated Press.
King saw an opportunity in this to rationalise the overcrowded women's magazine market, in which Fleetway and Newnes/Pearson were the major competitors, and acquired Odhams.
DC Thomson's Bunty, Judy, Jackie, and Mandy (as well as the "little girls'" comic Twinkle) continued strong through the decade.
IPC, on the other hand, changed gears editorially — as writer/editor Terence Magee details, "Pat Mills and John Wagner [were brought in] to shake things up.
[b] By 1974, DC Thomson's girls' comics had fallen off somewhat — Bunty, Judy, Mandy, and Debbie had a combined circulation of 750,000 that year — but remained the market leader.
The Fleetway/IPC back-catalog is now owned by Rebellion Developments, which since 2016 has reprinted a number of Tammy, Jinty, and Misty serials,[10][17] and is due to republish further series as part of The Treasury of British Comics.
[19] The stories were generally moralistic in tone, with long-suffering heroines finally achieving happiness, while villainous relatives or girls who were liars, cheats, and bullies received their comeuppance.
Marcus Morris (with the close participation of fellow clergyman Chad Varah), was very much an educational magazine whose heroines, including those who got into scrapes, became involved in tales that had a moral substance.
Bunty's The Four Marys, drawn by Barrie Mitchell, was the longest serial in girls' comics, running from the magazine's creation in 1958 to its end in 2001.
It centered on four young teens — each named Mary — in a girls-only boarding school in the fictional location of Elmbury, who often had problems with studying, staying alert, or helping the other girls and teachers.
Misty concentrated on supernatural and horror stories, featuring plots such as "pacts with the devil, schoolgirl sacrifice, the ghosts of hanged girls, sinister cults, evil scientists experimenting on the innocent and terrifying parallel worlds where the Nazis won the Second World War.
[10] One notable exception was Marion Turner, who wrote hundreds of strips for DC Thomson's line, especially for Mandy, Judy, and M&J.
Artists can sometimes be identified by their work in Tammy (which moved to a system of crediting creators in the early 1980s)[11] or in boys' comics such as 2000AD, which brought in such a policy from earlier on.