June (also known as June and Poppet, June and School Friend and June and Pixie at various points) was a British weekly girls' comic anthology published by Fleetway Publications and IPC Magazines from 18 March 1961 to 15 June 1974. Designed as a response to DC Thomson's hit Bunty, June never quite eclipsed its Scottish rival but was nevertheless a success on its own terms, reaching 631 issues before being merged into Tammy in 1974.
Creation
As Amalgamated Press, Fleetway Publications had effectively created the British girls' comic with the million-selling School Friend in 1950, and the likes of Hulton Press' Girl and AP's own revamped Girls' Crystal soon cashed in on the market. However, the area turned out to be fast-moving and when Dundee publisher DC Thomson finally entered the market in 1958 with Bunty, its fusion of girls staples with a healthy contingent of relatable waifs and strays saw it chime better with young female readers. After the Mirror Group rebranded AP as Fleetway they set about modernising their girls' comics in response, while Leonard Matthews launched the more aspirational Princess in 1960. The following year Fleetway launched their direct response to Bunty in the shape of June, edited by Jack Hunt (who had been behind the modernisation of Girls' Crystal).
The opening line-up included domestic comedy-drama "Diana's Diary", using a similar premise to the successful Princess story "The Happy Days"; riding stable story "Against All Odds", orphan-at-boarding-school staple "Kathy at Marvin Grange School", which would be a firm readers' favourite and run for the rest of the sixties; treasure hunt thriller "The Black Pearls of Taboo Island"; and historical civil war story "When Did You Last See Your Father?". The strips were joined by a trio of text stories — serialisations of Enid Blyton's "The Mystery of Banshee Towers" and author-cum-showjumper Pat Smythe's latest Three Jays adventure, as well as an adaptation of Felix Salten's Bambi's Children, partly designed to cash in on the box office success of Disney's animated film of Bambi, while humour was provided by cartoons "Cloris and Claire - The Sporting Pair", "My Dog Cuddles" and "Jenny". Gerald Durrell meanwhile provided a column on his "Zoo Friends". The comic was 32 pages, and priced at 4½d, with a colour photographic cover and black-and-white interiors.
Publishing history
June
To ensure a strong launch, Fleetway provided free gifts for the first four issues - a floral bracelet (not unlike the one provided with Princess the previous year); an album containing information about the Royal Family's pets, and two weeks containing free gift cards to paste into said album. In September 1961 the comic dropped the photographic covers - which generally reproduced poorly on the newsprint stock - in favour of full-page art and went down to 24 pages, while the initial line-up went through the usual changes. "Tennis Star Tina" was drawn by Italian artist Giorgio Giorgetti and written by Anne Digby, who had written columns for Girl and School Friend and would find greater fame in the late 1970s authoring the Trebizon novels, had debuted in June 1961, while in October "Nurse Valiant" would be the first of several stories in June to revolve around nursing.
8 September 1962 saw the magazine have another makeover as a namesake character was devised to take over the front page in a single-frame Cecil Orr cartoon showing June and her dog Jiffy in a succession of humorous scenes, while the back page was devoted to a pin-up photo of hunks such as Adam Faith, TV's Ben Casey Vince Edwards, Bill Simpson and Ken Dodd. Meanwhile comic's feature pages saw the arrival of Angela Barrie, who would dispense fashion tips and gentle advice for the rest of June's life. At this point, the comic's circulation was 287,000 copies a week. Another long-running feature, "Vanessa from Venus", debuted in March 1963; while a variation on the person genie genre, it was the first of several June stories to feature fantastical elements rare for girls' comics of the time.
June and Poppet
The 18 July 1964 edition saw June absorb the short-lived sister title Poppet. The merger brought with it slice-of-life strip "The Family at Surprise Corner", which would continue in June until but otherwise brought little else beyond the conclusion of "Rosita and Her Puppets" (a redrawn version of "Pepita and Her Puppets" from School Friend), though the first combined issue boasted a colour photo of Cilla Black as a free gift. However, the Poppet title would only appear for five editions before disappearing, after which the title returned to simply June. The 31 October 1964 edition saw June move to 28 pages.