‘little gothics’: Misty and the ‘Strange Stories’ of British Girls’ Comics

This article uses a critical framework that draws on the Gothic carnival, children’s Gothic, and Female Gothic to analyse the understudied spooky stories of British comics. It begins by surveying the emergence of short-form horror in American and British comics from the 1950s onwards, which evolved into a particular type of girls’ weekly tale: the ‘Strange Story.’ It then examines the way that the British mystery title Misty (IPC, 1978–80) developed this template in its single stories. This focuses on four key attributes: the directive role of a host character, an oral tone, content that includes two-dimensional characters and an ironic or unexpected plot reversal, and a narrative structure that drives exclusively towards this final point. The article argues that the repetition of this formula and the tales’ short format draw attention to their combination of subversion/conservatism and horror/humour: foregrounding a central paradox of Gothic.

White Matter Correlates of Theory of Mind in Patients With First-Episode Psychosis

Deficits in theory of mind (ToM) are considered as a distinctive feature of schizophrenia. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have suggested that aberrant activity among the regions comprising the mentalizing network is related to observed ToM deficits. However, the white matter structures underlying the ToM functional network in schizophrenia remain unclear. To investigate the relationship between white matter integrity and ToM impairment, 35 patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP) and 29 matched healthy controls (HCs) underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS), fractional anisotropy (FA) values of the two regions of interest (ROI)–the cingulum and superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF)–were acquired, and correlational analysis with ToM task scores was performed. Among the patients with FEP, ToM strange story scores were positively correlated with the FA values of the left cingulum and left SLF. There was no significant correlation between FA and ToM task scores in HCs. These results suggest that the left cingulum and SLF constitute a possible neural basis for ToM deficits in schizophrenia. Our study is the first to demonstrate the white matter connectivity underlying the mentalizing network, as well as its relation to ToM ability in patients with FEP.

Happy Photocatalysts and Unhappy Photocatalysts: Electron Trap-distribution Analysis for Metal Oxide-sample Identification

A strange story, including a new concept of identification of inorganic solid materials and of photocatalyst design, is told here. Why is it that solid materials have not been identified,...

Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fin-de-Siècle Vampire “Olalla” (1885) as ‘Aesthetic Fantastic’

“Olalla” (1885) by Robert Louis Stevenson has usually been neglected by critics interested in late-Victorian culture. Preceding of just a few weeks the publication of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), this novella has been judged as a derivative work, a story whose interest lies in its different sources, ranging from Edward Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story to E.A. Poe’s tales. My analysis aims to prove that in writing this work, Stevenson is probably drawing inspiration from the imagery exploited by some members of the Aesthetic Movement, among them Walter Pater and Edward Burne-Jones.

“Blue Steak, Red Peas”: Science, Marketing, and the Making of a Culinary Myth

For more than four decades, a strange story has circulated both inside and outside of the academy concerning a 1970s experiment in which foods dyed strange colors were served under “special” lighting that made them appear normal. When the true colors of the meal were revealed, the experimental subjects became agitated and ill. This article explores the origins of the story and its proliferation in prominent newspapers, magazines, and peer-reviewed journals, and speculates as to the nature of its appeal and endurance.