The first and more well-known volume was published from 1951 to 1964. It was launched by
Hulton Press on 2 November 1951 as a sister paper to the EagleGirl was very much an educational magazine whose heroines, including those who got into scrapes, became involved in tales that had a moral substance. A considerable number of pages were also dedicated to real-life tales of heroic women in various fields.
A second volume of the series was published by IPC from 1981 to 1990, during which time Dreamer and Tammy were merged into it.[1]
Original series
Like the Eagle, Girl was founded by the Rev.
Marcus Morris, with the close participation of Morris' fellow clergyman
Chad Varah. The lead strip was originally Kitty Hawke and her All-Girl Air Crew, drawn in full colour by
Ray Bailey, about a group of women running a charter airline. The strip was not very popular — it was apparently felt to be too masculine — and it was moved to the black-and-white interior pages, replaced on the cover by the schoolgirl strip Wendy and Jinx, written by
Michael and
Valerie Hastings and drawn by Bailey.[2][3][4]
According to
Jacqueline Rayner, writing about girls' comics in The Guardian, the second volume of Girl "was a stepping stone between the traditional 'picture-story papers' and . . . teen mags such as Jackie and Blue Jeans." It "had photo-stories, boyfriends, pop stars and
problem pages, alongside its occasional illustrated story."[22]
The IPC title Dreamer, which debuted on September 19, 1981, merged into Girl after Dreamer's May 15, 1982, issue. The merged publication carried the title Girl and Dreamer in the period 1982–1983 (issues 89 to 110 at least).[23]
The fellow IPC title Tammy (launched 1971) was intended to merge with Girl in the summer of 1984, but, according to the
Grand Comics Database, "a printer's dispute in June 1984 prevented the final issues being published and it was simply canceled. Girl did carry the Tammy masthead for several issues from 25th August 1984 but these issues contain no material from Tammy."[24]
In March 1990, Girl was merged into its fellow IPC title My Guy, which became My Guy and Girl for a period.[25]Girl volume 2 published 478 issues.
^Shu-fen Tsai,
[1]Girlhood Modified in Susan of St. Brides in Girl magazine (1954-1961) (pdf), Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies 2, July 2000, pp. 259-272