Welcome to the Cheeky Weekly blog!


Welcome to the Cheeky Weekly blog!
Cheeky Weekly ™ REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, COPYRIGHT ©  REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED was a British children's comic with cover dates spanning 22 October 1977 to 02 February 1980.

Quick links...
Basic Stats
Cheeky Weekly Index - Cheeky Annuals and Specials Index
Cheeky Weekly Artist Index
Features by Number of Appearances
Cheeky Weekly Timeline
Major Characters from the Cheeky pages
Features Ordered by Date of Commencement

*** ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT ©  REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used with permission. ***
*** CHEEKY WEEKLY, KRAZY, WHOOPEE!, WHOOPEE, WOW!, WHIZZER AND CHIPS and BUSTER ARE ™ REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, COPYRIGHT ©  REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ***
Thanks for reading the blog.

Thursday 9 September 2010

The Features - Suddenly

2 Suddenlys sharing the same first panel
 Anyone unfamiliar with the intricacies of Cheeky's Week may have been puzzled by the references to the 'Suddenly' feature in my previous post.

The Suddenly feature is part of the framing device surrounding some of the James Bold tales in the comic.  In the first 11 issues, readers joined Cheeky as he read the original Bold tale, Fangs of Fear, in bed.  However, for the second Bold adventure, Cheeky regularly sneaked into the newsagents for a free read of the new James Bold novel, The Ghost Highwayman.  Each week Cheeky's reading was interrupted by the newsagent, who would snatch the book away and eject Cheeky from the shop (always at a moment of peak excitement in the novel, of course).

The first Suddenly page, in the issue dated 07 January 1978, was not named as such, but the equivalent page in the following week's comic was headed 'Suddenly, Cheeky's reading was interrupted…'.  I have adopted the name Suddenly for all pages in the comic where Cheeky's clandestine reading is cut short.  OK, I know that in the 25 February 1978 issue the page was titled 'Cheeky's reading came to an end', but I'm sticking to Suddenly….


In preparing the 28 January 1978 issue there must have been an artwork crisis. The first panel of the Suddenly page is a reprint of the first panel from the 07 January Suddenly, but with a different newsagent's speech balloon, and the majority of the rest of the page is taken up with 2 mazes. In the final panel of the same week's Monday page, before Cheeky began reading, Cheeky is seen sneaking into the newsagents in a false beard. In the issue dated 25 February 1978, the newsagent apprehends a bearded Cheeky, so this page is presumably the artwork that was originally intended for the 28 January issue.


On 11 March 1978 Cheeky is caught before he even starts reading, and consequently there is no James Bold feature that week (the previous story had finished the week before, and Bold's novelised adventures would resume with the first episode of Tower of Terror the following week).

Cheeky's sneaky newsagent-reading saw him peruse 3 Bold adventures. The final Bold story to be enjoyed by Cheeky in novel form, The Frightened Village, ended on 24 June 1978.  The Suddenly feature came to an end the same week, because Island of Fear, Bold's last adventure to appear in Cheeky Weekly, was presented as a film series which Cheeky and his pals watched on Saturdays.

How many newsagents have shelves of books, anyway?

Following tables REVISED 10 September 2010 'cos I had the Suddenly feature dated 07 January 1978 recorded as Monday in my data when I originally ran the figures.


Feature First Appearance Final Appearance Total Issues Total Issues Missed In Run Page History
Suddenly07-Jan-7824-Jun-7825010,11,12


Issues Missed In Run


Feature Artist Number of Issues First Appearance Final Appearance
Suddenly Frank McDiarmid pencils507-Jan-197803-Jun-1978
Suddenly Unknown Cheeky Artist 1314-Jan-197825-Mar-1978
Suddenly Frank McDiarmid1021-Jan-197813-May-1978
Suddenly Cut and Paste128-Jan-197828-Jan-1978
Suddenly Barrie Appleby408-Apr-197824-Jun-1978
Suddenly Dick Millington127-May-197827-May-1978
Suddenly Mike Lacey117-Jun-197817-Jun-1978


Preceding Page Count
James Bold24
Monday1


Pages per Issue Number of Issues
125

No comments:

Post a Comment