[cartoonjoe2004]

Jane's home newspaper, the Daily Mirror, was, for the first thirty years or so of its existence, a somewhat staid newspaper, although it did model itself after American periodicals like The New York Daily News and The New York Post, especially in regards to its treatment of the comic strip, of which it had several (in addition to Jane and the aforementioned Pip, Squeak and Wilfred, there was Beelzebub Jones, Buck Ryan, Ruggles, Belinda Blue Eyes {think "British Orphan Annie"}, and the American transplant Thimble Theatre, featuring Popeye the Sailor!).

Around the mid-to-late 1930s, the Mirror became a left-leaning liberal paper, and the headlines became more sensational as a result (it's no coincidence that Jane started losing more and more of her clothes at this time as a result). The change in attitude is best exemplified by the two Mirror pages reprinted below.

The first image (July 7, 1938) details a near riot at a Lady Godiva festival, where the young girl portraying Godiva is nearly accosted by an overly moral zealot, who gets clobbered by the attending crowd for his trouble; the next front page (April 22, 1939) has a swimsuit-clad starlet plastered next to a story about the coming war (although one can't help but think that the headline to the right of the pin-up was put there for a dual purpose...after all, wouldn't she cause your "Allied Front" to GROW, too?)

More about Jane soon1