Women's Wrestling Comics: Grappling Gertie's Schooldays (1992)

The best women's wrestling comic cover ever? Could be. 

  Back in 2012 I did a post about Gertrude Williams aka Leopard Lily, prim teacher turned lady wrestler and star of the only British comics ever to feature women's wrestling.  (Read it HERE) 

 I said at the time that there was a later prequel and if I ever got my hands on a copy, I'd post some scans. 

Well, it took a while but I finally have a copy of "Grappling Gertie's Schooldays" - a a tale of plucky schoolgirls, Arab princesses, nefarious villains and large, scary women with alliterative names. 

The Further Adventures Of Grappling Gertie (Continued)

The story so far

 Gertrude Williams is the headmistress at a boarding school for girls. But in the evenings she dons a mask and fetching bodysuit to become the wrestler Leopard Lily. 

  After receiving a blackmail threat , Gertie asked the two pupils who already knew her secret to discover the culprit. This they did and locked the girl in an abandoned shed to await Gertie's displeasure. But when Ms. Williams and her sidekicks went back for a little chat, their prisoner had gone.

 That night Gertie received a phone call from local villain Sam Roper, who revealed that he had the missing girl and not-so-politely suggested that Gertie take a dive in her upcoming championship bout. If you ahven't read it yet, Part One is HERE

Now read on.

Girls comics really love alliterative names, don't they?

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...

Womens Wrestling Comics - Grappling Gertie

 Since posts about wrestling are consistently my most popular, I think it's time I did another one. 
So this is the first of three posts where  I shall  introduce you to three different comics about lady wrestlers, each with a different art style and tone. I will also post a few sample pics from each.
(I was originally going to do all three in one post but for the sake of bandwidth and sanity, I split it up.)

Grappling Gertie - UK - 1989

More pics and info after the break