Since local supplies of shoddy, cheap toys remain limited and undependable, I thought it might prove vaguely amusing to launch a new series on the blog formerly known as fustar.org.
Since its inception Fústar's subtitle has been (the uncatchy) "Recycling Cultural Waste Since 2005…" and while I've generally tried to make the blog live up (or down) to these words the slogan has gone through spells of lurking in the shadowed background. With the help of the the shiny new (or, better yet, dusty, musty & old) "Museum of Cultural Waste" I hope to shove the blog's subtitle centre stage and to the front of the class.
The practises and theoretical foundations of the "Museum" are simple…and no doubt readily familiar to regular readers of Manky Toy Monday. Every so often (hopefully once a week/fortnight) I'll traipse into Limerick city centre and scour the charity shops, market stalls, second-hand establishments (etc) for discarded items in need of a good home. Pottery, board games, books, items of clothing, ornaments, commemorative objects - none shall be denied a place on the museum's shelves (where they shall be celebrated and discussed). The only criterion for inclusion is that they "speak to me"…either figuratively or literally.
First up (courtesy of J. J. Secondhand's High St. Bookshop) is a battered (but lovely) Bunty Book for Girls 1983.
The first thing that should be noted (or admitted) is how instantly familiar all of the volume's stories are to me. Given a limited supply of pocket money, a voracious appetite for comics, and two comic-buying sisters, I (like many a young fella I'd imagine) routinely devoured the contents of Bunty, Misty et al. Not only did this pursuit enable me to sate my comics addiction, it also (so I thought) allowed me to gaze through a forbidden window into the female world. What I saw there confirmed that "they" valued the following: hockey, horses, ballet, dolls, animals, gothic romance etc. It was like being in drag and going undercover.
The focus today, however, will not be on such "jolly hockey sticks" Bunty staples as "The Four Marys"1 (captivating as that was), but rather on the more obscure, soft-Sci-Fi adventures of "Belle of the Ball". Here's how Bunty '83 sums up what Belle was all about:
Belle Brown owned a ball that had developed remarkable powers after being treated by space travellers from the planet Orbis.
The inhabitants of Orbis clearly seem to work in mysterious ways their wonders to perform. Their quest for knowledge of Earth ways shows little respect for the traditional Sunday lie-in.
The ball starts to glow. A sign, as Belle tells us, that "a message from the spacemen is coming through". Like many messages of extraterrestrial origin, it is disappointingly mundane…
Off goes bell to the river, where (as promised) there is much fishing and messing about in boats. One of these boats, however, contains a "business man", his wife, and a snotty, evil-minded son. Evil son tells father to splash fishermen on the bank. Father obliges. Son celebrates and topples into the water. Belle's Ball flies out of her hands and into the water where (after he grabs it in terror) it returns the brat to the safety of the river bank. Instead of being grateful the capitalist pig of a father sees an opportunity for a fast buck:
Capitalist Dad pays little heed to Belle's claims and promptly grabs the ball while Mrs. Capitalist opens the throttle and zooms off. From the safety of mid-river he demonstrates a time-honoured approach to things industry/science does not understand:
2 seconds later and Capitalist Dad is, predictably, humbled. His knife bends ("It's buckled the blade! It's as hard as a cannonball!) before the Orbisian ball forces his boat to run aground. "That's taught those river hogs a lesson!" exclaims a delighted fisherman. Hoorah!
Like many good aliens before them the Orbisians clearly have a penchant for exposing (and punishing) human greed, ignorance and folly. Sanctimonious bastards…
More from the museum soon.
- Mary Radleigh, Mary Cotter, Mary Simpson and Mary Field for those who need to know. [back]
jays lads, I remember the story of the ball well. my favourite one was the story of the tree, and every time a leaf fell, a baby died. awesome fodder for 11 year olds.
October 15th, 2007 at 9:39 pmI’ve no memory of that…and given the horrific subject matter you’d think I would! I must know more. Was there an intrepid young girl who tried to stop the leaves falling? Or an extraterrestrial gardener that made sure it was evergreen?
October 15th, 2007 at 9:46 pmthe tree was ailing n’ dyin’ n’ its fate was inextricibly related to the villagers. if a branch broke, the ‘postie’ broke his arm, if a branch fell, the ‘parky’ fell over, etc. I can’t remember how they fixed it - with love or something.
Also good was the story about the spaceship shaped like a rabbit and any tale involving hardship, cruel aunts and uncles and time travel back to the victorian era.
By the way I still have bunty annuals which is how I can remember all this.
October 15th, 2007 at 10:22 pmfustar.info
Now it’s coming back to me…somewhat. It all sounds soaked with that kind of romantic melancholy that seemed all the rage in (older) girls’ comics. In that they definitely had the edge on the boys’ varieties.
A quick glance through my Bunty Book of 1983 confirms that this was “The Flights of Flopear”. A mental concept! Listen:
Donnie Darko, how are ya? Here’s a pic:
greg bear has fuckin’ NOTHING on Bunty.
October 15th, 2007 at 10:34 pmNo male who grew up with a sister is entirely ignorant of the charms of girls comics. Obviously not as good as boys’ ones, but they had their moments. Though one rarely read them on purpose, of course. Like, a friend of mine once noted, “accidentally” watching girlfriend fodder like Sex And the City or Desperate Housewives from behind a newspaper.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:35 pmI used to hide them under the nearest cushion whenever footsteps drew near, for fear of being caught reading about (for example) the triumphs of a one-legged ballerina.
October 16th, 2007 at 9:13 pmfustar.info
Something that may surprise even devoted Bunty readers is who the previous owner of Belle’s magical ball actually was.
None other than Sylvia Plath:
What influence (if any) the Orbisians had on her poetry (or indeed The Bell Jar) is a question I’ll leave to the Plath experts out there.
October 16th, 2007 at 9:32 pmBunty provided me, in quiet times when nobody was around to see me reading my sister’s annuals (inherited from cousins [did nobody ever actually buy them themselves?]) with images from comics which have stayed with. There seemed to be a vein of supernatural horror that was absent in boys comics (who were better at gags).
Image number one: a pretty girl is snooty to an ugly woman (clearly a witch). Then for the rest of the comic, we see people reviling from the pretty girl from her p.o.v.
The final frame is the girl’s distorted, twisted face as she looks in the mirror and sees the horrible thing she’s become. Chilling.
Image Number two: The subtler, but perhaps more worrying, story of a girl who was a wonderful pianist. After a particularly good show, she’s visited by a Muse who offers to grant her a wish as a reward for her high end tinkling.
She maladroitly wishes for the opportunity to turn back the clock and relive the last hour, so lovely was the performance. She then finds herself living as a second unspeaking presence inside her own head, aware of the events but unable to change them. This is fun at first, as she gets to enjoy her own performance.
All comes to a bad end when it is clear that bad wording of her wish has led her to repeat the hour in a loop for all ‘eternity’.
Is this even a morality tale? It just seems like very bad luck or, at worst, a failure to seek legal advice at a delicate moment.
October 17th, 2007 at 9:03 amA more recent (and younger) owner of the ball appears to be Suri Cruise, daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes:
October 17th, 2007 at 3:13 pmI have always believed the Cruise-Holmes offspring to be animatronic in nature.
That probably explains the alien technology.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:54 pmSimon,
While I don’t recall either of the stories mentioned the “comeuppance” quality of the first is straight out of the EC comics style book. EC was a huge influence on all subsequent “horror” comic material, Bunty included.
I fully agree that the girls comics tended to have juicier and more unsettling horror stuff. Perhaps it was thought that they were more mature and could handle it better. Boys, on the other hand, were probably considered likely to go out and axe-murder the neighbours in a fit of possessed frenzy.
The second tale is from the “Be careful what you wish for” and “Nothing comes without a price” schools. In such narratives the victim appears to have been harshly punished, but they’re still guilty of messing with shit they didn’t understand.
Pretty lousy all the same…
October 18th, 2007 at 11:10 pmJess/copernicus,
L. Ron Hubbard (apparently) once tried to take possession of the ball but the Orbisians created it so its powers could only be wielded by earth females. There’s probably something in Battlefield Earth about it.
Looks like the Scientology community have gotten hold of it now though.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:18 pmmoviemorlocks.com
Incidentally, the archetype of a young girl and an uncanny ball has a long-ish cinematic history.
Follow the bouncing ball
October 18th, 2007 at 11:22 pmMore Flopear content! More Flopear content!
October 21st, 2007 at 11:46 amfustar.info
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:20 pmgraylien, Don’t say I never give you nothin’…
http://www.fustar.info/2007/10/22/flights-of-flopear/
The final frame is the girl’s distorted, twisted face as she looks in the mirror and sees the horrible thing she’s become. Chilling.
And the most f*cked-up thing about that story (which was called ‘I am Margaret!’) was the fact that her voice had changed too, so no one would believe it was her! That’s an attention to detail that really freaked me out when I was a kid. In fact, so did lots of scary stories in girls’ comics. They’re seriously among the most disturbing things I’ve ever read.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:16 amStellanova,
Even the title is disturbing! A desperate plea for recognition, repeated endlessly till madness sets in…
“I am Margaret!”
“No really, I AM Margaret!!”
“Oh God….please believe me!!”
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:19 pm