The Further Adventures Of Grappling Gertie.

  A while back I did a post on one of the most unusual characters in British comics - Gertrude Williams, the staid English teacher who moonlighted as masked lady wrestler Leopard Lily. (READ IT HERE) 
 Well, ever since I've been keeping an eye out for the prequel "Grappling Gertie's Schooldays" and in the process stumbled across an intriguing thread on the Comics UK Forum, which revealed that Gertie had a story in the 1992 Bunty Annual.
"This I have to see" I thought and immediately trotted over to Ebay. The result was a charmingly old-fashioned story of blackmail and plucky schoolgirls that could have been written at any point between 1992 and 1971.

 Rather than just post the action pics, I'm going to post the entire story in two easily-digestible installments.  Hope you like it.

 The story opens with Ms. Williams , now gone up in the world as headmistress to a girls boarding school, pulling two rowdy pupils into her office for a wee chat...

 

 How does that move even work?

 

Having dealt with her wannabe blackmailer, Gertie now has a much bigger problem to sort out.
Can Gertie and her gals rescue Clare, put the mockers on Sam Roper and still win the championship match?  Check out Part 2 tomorrow and find out. 

So, a few thoughts:
 1. Whoever designed the outfits seems to have put some serious effort into making them as unflattering as possible. Or they hadn't seen a wrestling match since 1965 and thought that was what women wrestlers still wore.
2. It seems to be compulsory for wrestling stories to revolve around gangsters and/or bent promoters trying to fix the match. Even back in the 1960s that probably made wrestlers laugh their heads off.
3. Seriously, how the hell did Gertie pull off that "Face into the turnbuckle" move? Rey Misterio Jr.couldn't do that.
 Anyway, see y'all tomorrow grapple fans.
Part Two may be found here