Girls’ Crystal

Girls’ Crystal (known as The Crystal for its first nine issues) was a weekly Amalgamated Press, later Fleetway, publication that debuted on 28 October 1935 as a story paper. On 21 March 1953 it was reconfigured as a comic, and it continued until 18 May 1963 when it was merged into School Friend. Strips included “Bruce the Circus Dog”.

The Girls’ Crystal was first published in October 1935 by the Amalgamated Press as the Crystal for issues 1-9, continuing as a story paper until the mid ’50’s when it was transformed into a comic. It usually had 4 or 5 varied stories rotating within which aimed at girls of various ages, one of the main attractions being the Merrymakers series by Daphne Grayson which ran for years. Another major attraction was the Noel Raymond series of detective stories written by “Peter Langley” (Ronald Fleming) which also ran for years albeit more sporadically. It was unusual on 3 points: first the lead character was a male in a girls paper full of girl heroines, secondly Fleming used a male pseudonym, almost unheard of in the girls papers, and thirdly – quite often the reader didn’t know who the guilty party was until the very end! Over the years from 1935 the youthful and debonair Noel solved a large number of baffling cases – about 475 plus many reprints, from 1945 (after Fleming had returned from wartime RAF duty) he was nearly always helped/hindered by his young niece June Gaynor. The tales were usually very short – “longer” tales were introduced after WW2, were never heavy and often with wildly implausible plots, stereotypes galore but usually made for entertaining and pleasant reading. In the course of a story stifled sobs, hoarse cries and Noel’s grim smile would be constantly mentioned – but anything less dramatic was not to be expected by the audience in Noel and June’s world. There was never much room for pictures and all the artists used remained anonymous, but apart from the first and the last artists the pictures nicely complemented the stories. Fleming had plenty of other irons in the AP fire and wrote for it until at least 1963 totalling 38 years service, but sadly the Noel Raymond saga came to an end in story form in May 1951.

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