Mandy (comics)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Mandy is a British weekly girls’ comic published by DC Thomson from 21 January 1967 to 11 May 1991. Most stories were serialized over several issues, with Mandy’s distinctive cover image of Mandy with bobbed dark hair and her red-and-white dog Patch.

In 1983 Mandy absorbed Debbie (which had absorbed Spellbound). In 1991 Mandy merged with Judy to form Mandy & Judy (M&J), which ran from 18 May 1991 to 24 May 1997, after which it merged with Bunty. Bunty stopped publication in 2001. Mandy annuals were published from 1972 to 2007.

Mandy followed a common practice of the time: when a comic declined in sales, it would merge into another title, with a few stories continuing in the surviving comic and both names appearing on the cover for a while.

The magazine featured long-running picture stories such as Angel and Valda. Angel follows Angela Hamilton, a wealthy Victorian girl who learns she has only a year to live and spends it helping orphans in London’s East End. Valda is a girl with extraordinary abilities and a long life who draws power from a Crystal of Life and travels the world to aid the oppressed, often facing dark or supernatural threats.

There were also serialized text stories, including The Guardian Tree, about the Shaw siblings who are orphaned and live under a magical tree in Victorian times. Many popular text stories were later turned into picture stories, such as The Guardian Tree and The Sad Star.

Penny’s Place was Mandy & Judy’s most famous strip, about Penny, her cafe-owning parents, and her three friends. After Mandy & Judy ended, Bunty continued Penny’s Place in its Christmas annuals and, later, in its pages.