Bunty

Bunty was a British comics magazine for girls published by D. C. Thomson & Co. from 1958 to 2001. It consisted of a collection of many small strips, the stories typically being three to five pages long. As well as the weekly comic, Christmas and summer annuals were published. Bunty published 2,249 issues, and went monthly in 2001 before ceasing publication after a further 5 months. In contrast to earlier and contemporary comics, it was aimed primarily at working class readers under the age of 14, and contained mostly fictional stories.

Layout and features

The average issue of Bunty contained several short comic-strip stories, broken up by letters pages, competitions, featured readers, puzzle pages, promotions, next-week previews or advertisements. The back page initially featured a cut-out doll and paper clothes, which eventually gave way to a wall poster.

Regular stories

The Four Marys

"The Four Marys" was the longest story the comic ran—drawn by artist Barrie Mitchell, it appeared from its creation in 1958 to its end in 2001. When the strip started, public boarding schools like St. Elmo's, the girls' boarding school, were common, but as time went on, they became less accessible to Bunty's general audience. It centred on four young teenagers who lived in a girls-only boarding school in Elmbury, and often had problems with studying, being bored, or helping (and being hindered by) the other girls or teachers within the school. Of the four main characters, two were middle class, one was the aristocratic daughter of an Earl, and one was a working class girl, attending the school on a scholarship. This representation of the working class was a reflection of changing class experiences in the 1950s.