From The Mists Of Time: Victor or Bunty?

Which comic was better, The Victor or the Bunty?

You might think that an answer would be gender based but I liked them both. A good story's a good story!

In fact I loved comics in general whether it was The Hornet; Hotspur; the Valiant, but also girls’ comics too which we got regularly in batches from the Blades family who lived two floors up from us. 

With six sisters they used to pass down to me copies of the Bunty, Judy, Diane and Jackie. 

Because there might be up to six weeks in between it was great to get a whole run on a good story and settle down for an hour on a wet summer afternoon.

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The art work was superb and the stories were excellent. In addition to the 'Four Marys' - always good, there was usually a story line about a girl from a poor background or from a gypsy family; invariably she was a good sprinter and had to overcome obstacles to win the county championships - county championships - gosh what were they? They sounded exciting.

The Blades sometimes gave me some Classics Illustrated'; I also recall some Gold Key comics too. The Blades also passed comics on to the Hanlons at 6/7 Oxgangs Avenue. Those were very thoughtful gestures.

Photograph Catherine Stevenson

I supplemented these comics with those which I bought myself paying occasional visits to Bobbies Bookshop at Dalry Road to buy DC Comics including 'Green Lantern'; 'The Flash'; 'Batman'; 'Superman'; and 'Green Arrow'.

The stories in the British weeklies were full of inspirational characters such as 'The Tough of the Track'  (Alf Tupper) and 'Wilson the Wonder Athlete'.

And so which one was better? 

On balance, the Bunty was better than The Victor but now that I think about it I guess it was actually between The Hornet or Valiant the latter with a range of extraordinarily imaginative characters such as 'The Steel Claw'; 'The House of Dollman' and 'Adam Eterno'.