From Bunty for Girls 1983 (the contents of which this blog milked dry) we move on by moving back – ten years that is, to Mandy for Girls 1973.

While none of this volume's stories manage to scale the bonkers heights of Bunty's classic "Flights of Flopear", they do demonstrate the persistence/popularity of certain themes & scenarios – Girl with magical object ("Carol's Cauldron"), Girl with exotic animal companion ("Elsie's Elephant", "Mona's Monkey") etc.

Also present and correct is the kind of single concept tale that Viz once routinely parodied – "Late Kate"…a high-larious narrative about the girl who's "Never on Time!" (plenty of scope for development there).

None of the above, however, are to be the main focus of today. Instead I'd like to record for posterity a story so spectacularly ill-conceived (and offensive) that it simply leaps from the page demanding to be critiqued. Here's a portion of panel one:

A young (somewhat overweight) girl arrives at a new boarding school with all the usual anxieties and concerns about fitting in or standing out. Are we to see a sensitively-handled yarn about bigotry and (ultimate) acceptance? Any confidence one might have about the progressiveness of the writer's agenda must be tempered by the fact that the story's title is (rather unbelievably) "Tessa Pulls Her Weight". On we go:

I think you can guess where this is leading (hint: not to hand-shakes and pledges of undying friendship)…

And so it goes. Constant bullying. Constant ridicule. Until, though she can scarcely believe it, Tessa is picked for a school sport's team. The sucker punch is duly delivered however, as a mortified Tessa realises she's been lined up to "pull her weight" in the Tug-of-War. The results are (predictably) calamitous, with Tessa's eagerness to please costing the school the competition. Cue universal scorn and derision.

Then, when all hope of acceptance seems long gone, a sea-side outing riding ponies (beside a cliff!) lurches suddenly towards tragedy. A pony bolts. Young Christine (the 4th form captain) can't control it and off it goes on a mad dash for the cliff edge. Tessa springs into action, grabbing the reins before…being dragged, sickeningly, over rocky ground. Christine is saved, but Tessa is horribly wounded, as a disturbing panel gruesomely reveals:

So what's the moral here? Well, since it is (presumably) Tessa's weight that prevents the pony from flinging itself (and Christine) into the sea, one might imagine that it's a muddled message about how everyone can make a difference (using those "talents" peculiar to themselves). Or how "Bravery and selflessness are not the preserve of the conventionally good-looking".

At the very least you'd expect Tessa's bullying class-mates to be whistling a different tune. As she arrives back from a five-month stay in hospital it seems that a new attitude is, indeed, in the air:

The ambulance door opens to reveal…a denouement of flabbergasting nastiness!

Splutter! A cynical and cowardly retreat by the Mandy hacks. The solution to bullying by body fascists is, it seems, to get dragged behind a horse, suffer terrible injuries, and spend 5 months at death's door in hospital. It might sound drastic girls, but at least you'll be skinny and popular!