Diana Annual 1976: The Man in Black - "Skeletons in the Cupboard" & more

Following on from the previous post, here's another Man in Black story, this time from the 1976 Diana annual. This one's "Skeletons in the Closet" and is the same quality - such a nice style. And talking of style, some real period fashions there! The Man in Black is again drawn by artist David Cuzik Matysiak.

In the same annual, there is another mystery story drawn by David Matysiak! Not a Man in Black tale this time, though, although it could have been. It's called "The Love Locket":

A nice little romance tale there. So, David Matysiak is the artist who drew these!

British Girls' Comics: Diana Annual 1975 - The Man in Black

Diana was a British girls' weekly comic published by DC Thomson from 23rd February 1963 through 4th December 1976. Hard cover annuals continued to be published beyond the date of the last weekly issue. Appearing to have been a regular Diana feature, the Man in Black was a version of the spooky storyteller host found in EC's horror comics of the 50s and Charlton's and DC's late 60s/early 70s horror titles. This 8 page story simply entitled "The Man in Black" is skillfully drawn, although the story is very simple with a rather weak plot. The artist, David Matysiak, was kindly identified by his daughter, Janet Matysiak.

I don't know exactly what to derive from this story in terms of lessons about 1970s Britain, except that, like some other British comics from the period, it seems to share some commonality with its American counterparts, in this case the storyteller being the regular feature in an otherwise varied horror story slot. It is true that the USA and Britain do really share a special relationship, one that has involved trans-Atlantic sharing of culture for quite some time, back to the roots of the USA as a nation, and this is just another small example of that.

British Girls' Romance Comics: Jackie Annual 1980

Jackie was a British girls' comic published by D.C. Thompson from the mid-1960s through the early 1990s. It had a mixed magazine and comic format, with comics interspersed with fashion, pop, horoscopes, and other features deemed interesting to young teenage girls. At its zenith it was selling over half a million copies a week - 1 in every 100 inhabitants of the UK was buying Jackie! Each year, as was typical for British comics, a hard cover annual was published for Christmas. Here's a selection of material from the 1980 Jackie Annual, including 21 of the 22 total pages of comics contained therein (the entire book including covers is 96 pages). The comics are mostly in black and white. The first is a humorous piece about a young couple, but like the other strips in this book, delves into relationships. The male protagonist has a French rival for his girl's affections, but prevails in the end. The first story is drawn by David Matysiak.

The next story is historical fiction set in Cornwall. It's the tale of a love between a gypsy girl and a wealthy young man, who ends up making a huge sacrifice to save her from harm born of prejudice.

There's a fashion section much like those discussed regularly by Jacque Nodell in her Sequential Crush blog. Despite 1980 being at the tail end of the first wave of British punk, there's little evidence of this in the book. About the punkiest people mentioned are Blondie and Bob Geldoff. 1980 was, however, early in the emergence of the New Romantic genre in music (Duran Duran, ABC, Human League, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, etc.), something that didn't really cross the Atlantic at the time, and the clothes on these fashion pages seem a little more in tune with that trend than anything else.

There are also advice sections, like in the American romance books. Jackie has a greater percentage of these kinds of features, in terms of the number of pages they occupy relative to the comics, when compared to its American counterparts.

The final story looks at sibling rivalry, something that many readers with sisters could probably relate to and perhaps be provoked into thinking about.

None of the art is signed, and I have little knowledge of British comics generally, girls' comics especially. Of course that makes it all the more interesting to me. Hopefully you'll also derive some enjoyment from this excellent art.

Jackie has acquired a kind of cult status in recent years, but has long been an object of popular as well as academic interest. An early analysis of the comic written during the peak years of its popularity is to be found in Angela McRobbie's book Feminism and Youth Culture: From 'Jackie' to 'Just Seventeen'.