Judy | |
---|---|
Publication information | |
Publisher | DC Thomson |
Schedule | Weekly |
Format | Newsprint magazine |
Genre | School, Romance, Drama, Humour |
Publication date | 16 January 1960 – 11 May 1991 |
No. of issues | 1,635 |
Main character(s) | Bobby Dazzler Judy Emma (from 1979) Tracy (from 1985) |
Creative team | |
Written by | Marion Turner [1] |
Judy was a British pre-teen and teen girl's magazine, primarily in comic book form. Judy was extant from 1960 to 1991. [2] From 1991 to 1997 it was combined with another title in Mandy and Judy magazine. [3] Judy was published by DC Thomson.
DC Thomson had published its first girls' magazine, Bunty , in 1958. The success of this title led DC Thomson to publish Judy, which was also successful: between them, Bunty and Judy achieved a circulation of over one million. [4] DC Thomson went on to publish other similar titles: Diana (published 1965–1976), Mandy (published 1967–1991), Debbie (published 1973–1983), and Suzy (published 1982–1987). [4]
By 1974, DC Thomson's girls' imprints had fallen off somewhat (Bunty, Judy, Mandy, and Debbie had a combined circulation of 750,000 that year) but remained the market leader. [5] Whether in imitation or not, British girls' magazines of this era typically bore a single female given name as title; besides the DC Thomson titles, other magazines were Tracy, Nikki , Sandie , Diana, Sally, June , Tammy , Lindy, and Penny. [6]
As was common in British comics of the period, it was standard practice to merge a comic into another one when it declined in sales. Typically, three stories or strips from the cancelled comic would continue for a while in the surviving comic, and both titles would appear on the cover (one in a smaller font than the other) until the title of the cancelled comic was eventually dropped. Judy was emblematic of this practice. It absorbed Emma in 1979 and Tracy in 1985; as a consequence, the title was known as Judy and Emma from issue #1027 (15 September 1979) to issue #1049 (16 February 1980), and Judy and Tracy from issue #1306 (19 January 1985) to some time before issue #1443.
Even though Judy had debuted earlier than Mandy , when the two titles merged in 1991, Mandy was listed first in the new merged publication. Mandy & Judy, also known as M&J, merged with Bunty in 1997.
Judy offered a mix of romance, pathos, school, and girl-next-door stories, thriving well into the era when consumer, fashion, and teen idol fare became popular in girls' magazines. [7] The insouciant Bobby Dazzler was a recurring character. [6]
Among the fare offered by Judy was stories of girls confronting adversity and overcoming it — for instance, Nobody Loves Dixie (1964) tells of a shunned girl who wins a trophy and rises from her wheelchair to collect it [8] — or succumbing to it — for instance, in the harrowing Nothing Ever Goes Right (1981), the heroine, beset with poverty, orphanhood, and health problems, dies [9] of heart failure while rescuing children from an abandoned house. [10]
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