British Girls' Comics: Diana Annual 1975 and 1974 - Fabulous Four by Enrique Badia Romero

With every little bit I learn about the Spanish artists who worked for British and American comics in the 1960s and 70s, the more I realize that I don't know. These artists were/are simultaneously often very expert and accomplished in terms of the work they produced, but remain relatively poorly known, except for one or two. Enrique Badia Romero is one of the better known, but understanding even his work is complicated by the fact that he had a brother who was also a comic artist with a very similar style. Out Of This World has previously featured examples of Romero's work on British girls' annuals, and here's a couple more. First is the Fabulous Four story from the 1975 Diana Annual. When I try to define what it is that makes it Romero, I gravitate to the bushy eyelashes, the wisps of out-of-control hair, the liberally-applied eye shadow, and the pouting lips. But as those of you who like the work of Spanish artists will know, Romero isn't the only one whose women are rendered in this fashion. We're sometimes down to very subtle differences in the 'Spanish' or 'Catalan' style. And with these artists often not signing their work, the problem can get complex. So I have to say that I think, I'm pretty sure, this is Enrique Badia Romero, but I can't be 100% sure unless David Roach agrees! One thing is for sure, 'Spanish' artists deserve wider recognition for the work they did in Britain and the USA.

Now here's the 1974 Diana Annual Fabulous Four story. Was it the first? I don't know. The art looks similar to the 1975 story, but different at the same time. Does it represent an earlier phase in the evolution of the same artist? Is it more restrained, deliberately, because the artist was attempting to test the water? The characters certainly look younger. Is it by Romero's brother? Different inker? What do you think?

I don't have any more Diana annuals, so I think that's the last we'll be looking at the Fabulous Four here on Out Of This World. But watch out for more work by Spanish artists in upcoming posts.

British Girls' Comics: Diana Annual 1976 - Fabulous Four by Enrique Badia Romero

This 1976 Fabulous Four story has an interesting story line that pits young males and females against each other. Each group is convinced that the other is going to be awful in some way, the boys believing that the girls are actually cats and the girls believing the boys are dogs. The evil, older scientist cooked up this little scenario. So it's kind of allegorical in a way, mirroring the way young girls might think that boys are nasty, but at a certain point they change their outlook, and vice-versa with boys' opinions of girls. When they actually start interacting with each other, they find that what they previously thought is erroneous, and they kind of like being together. Of course, this is my interpretation. On the face of it the story is actually about the evil scientist's plot to get rid of the Fabulous Four, who present an obstacle to his plans for galactic domination. Anyway, here it is, with Romero's ladies and their very bushy eyelashes and wild hair - maybe one way of identifying his artwork actually.

British Girls' Comics: Diana Annual 1977 - Fabulous Four by Enrique Badia Romero

Last year Out Of This World featured examples of stories and sequential art to be found in the excellent but now extinct British girls' comic, Diana. One of the stories featured in that post was "For Love of Leni", drawn by Enrique Badia Romero, better known for his work on the Modesty Blaise newspaper strip:

That Romero's celebrated style turns up in Diana is interesting in and of itself. I only have a few Diana annuals, none of the weekly comics, but in those annuals there is a regular feature called 'The Fabulous Four', a girls' sci-fi futuristic adventure story. Artistically it is probably the best piece in a book that is generally full of high quality art. Below is the Fabulous Four story from the 1977 Diana Annual - enjoy!

I think we lost a lot when romance comics and these girls' comics went by the wayside. What is interesting also, to me, is that there were comics (and such high quality comics at that), produced for girls in the UK. We'd still have them today if there was a market, but they're gone, presumably because girls stopped buying comics. We've talked about this before, but perhaps somehow the publishers lost their audience by being unable to go with them wherever it was that they went, in terms of what they were looking for in entertainment.

British Girls' Comics: Diana Annual 1979

I've selected three stories from the Diana Annual of 1979, that again illustrate the quality of British girls' comics of the 1950s through the 80s. This first story illustrates the hassle girls of (just???) the 1970s had to endure from being continuously hit on by guys. The story also made me think again of how just like animals people can be if they don't consciously transcend the biological urges of their bodies. The boys in this story are, typically, driven by their hormones and instincts to reproduce. They're trying to best each other at impressing the female on heat, although she's not fully receptive to their advances. Maybe there's a cool subject here for a David Attenborough documentary - the reproductive behavior of the human mammal, from the perspective of visiting alien scientists. Probably already been done. Anyway, some nice art that looks like it's by one of the Spanish artists.

This next story does a makeover on a popular topic in 1960s girls' comics - the beauty pageant and modeling. The artwork is a little different, and quite good in places. Interesting story line - the protagonist has been raised in a single parent household, but what happened to her father? Why wasn't he in the picture? Well the answer lies in one of those favorite soap opera devices, but you're gonna have to read it to find out which!

Finally, "For Love of Leni" is a girls' romantic sci-fi set in the future, with a kind of X-Men swipe in that it has some of the population having mutated to possess special powers. This art is nice, and is by an artist who drew a girls' sci-fi feature in Diana called The Fabulous Four, again a bit of a Marvel rip-off in terms of the title, but story-wise is more like a female version of the Flash Gordon sort of space adventure. I'll post a little collection of those soon. This love story here involves that age-old problem of cross-cultural or inter-racial (or in this case, inter sub-species) relationships.

If only we hadn't, as a society, been corrupted by media corporations and misguided concepts of so-called freedom such that stories like these wouldn't appear beneath the sexually over-exposed interest of today's youth! For me, the story of romance comics, including these girls' comics, illustrates the moral decline that in the end made society as a whole, as well as the younger generation's taste in entertainment, more degraded than the standards mainstream comic publishers were willing or able to sink to.