I rarely talk about this, because it is mildly embarrassing, but one of my hobbies is collecting girls' comics. I liked boys' comics when I was a boy, and I read them, but I was fascinated by girls' comics. I didn't like all the army stuff in the boys' comics (though I lapped up laser beams and monsters). I found the girls' comics gentler. And I suppose my contrarianism came into play. My collection started through holding onto my sisters' old issues.
I now have hundreds of issues of Mandy, Bunty, Jackie, My Little Pony, Care Bears, and other titles. They can be picked up very cheaply at car booth sales and similar places. It's not like I've spent hundreds of euro on them, or anything like that.
A friend who knows about this mentioned it to a radio researcher and the upshot was that I was invited to speak about it on the Newstalk radio light entertainment show, Freaky Friday. I recorded it last week and it's going to be broadcast next Friday. I'll give a link when it appears. Apparently it's only going to be a short segment.
I actually used the occasion to argue for the validity of gender roles, but I'm half-expecting that to be cut. The interviewer didn't seem terribly interested.
A journalist named Corrine Barraclough managed to write a column in our(only) Sunday paper here, published today, critical of one state government(Victoria) using $3•4 million au of taxpayers money to educate 4000 educators to "identity children who ' enact sexist values, beliefs and attitudes' from the age of four" (honest!)
ReplyDeleteGood on Corinne, pointing out that some Four year olds aren't toilet trained yet.
Back to the main subject I never liked war comics either but was always partial to Beano,Dandy and Banana-man; not readily available here, but a young fellow from Singapore once told me that Beano was popular over there. In my case it was the opposite-I had older sisters who wanted them after me
The funny thing is that the people who see racism and sexism prevailing amongst small children are usually the very same people who would denounce the Christian idea that babies can inherit original sin as ridiculous and evil.
DeleteI only really like girls' comics on April the first, but I might actually write a serious post about comics eventually. I read Eagle, Roy of the Rovers, Transformers, and a few others. Thursday was comic day and the best day of the week. I never really read the Beano or the Dandy, except the occasional annual. One Beano annual had one of my favourite jokes ever; a short piece about the extinction of the dinosaurs began: "Sixty-five million years ago this Thursday"...
Didn't really realize it was a joke, largely because I really do know of a few adults who are mad into comic stuff-although I did wonder at a married man being allowed to fill his room with comics
ReplyDeleteHa! My wife made me stop wearing a cheap pink watch which I'd bought by accident (I was pointing at a different watch in the carousel, and was too diffident to point out the shop assistant's mistake), and which I wore for some time out of a mixture of bravado and irony. My father also thoroughly disapproved.
DeleteMy comic reading days are long over.