Profile - Charlie Counter and Calculator

Calculator Kid (real name Charlie Counter) and his talking calculator (real name Calculator) were, like The Skateboard Squad, privileged to appear in their own strip and to occasionally cross over into Cheeky's Week.*

The Calculator Kid feature made its debut in the 01 July 1978 issue of Cheeky Weekly, but Charlie Counter and his calculating compadre made the first of their Cheeky's Week appearances in the comic dated 08 July 1978, when Cheeky met them and introduced their story.

Charlie and Calculator's next appearance during Cheeky's Week was in the 19 August 1978 comic, which was the issue in which Cheeky was projected 60 years into his future.  In this case, the framing device for the Calculator Kid strip explained that Calculator would calculate what Charlie had done 60 years earlier and show the results on the following page.

On 16 September 1978 we see only Charlie in Cheeky's Week, as just his face is seen as a reflection in a car's wing mirror.

On the Monday page in the 06 January 1979 issue, Calculator predicts that in exactly fourteen and a quarter days (i.e. Tuesday in the 20 January issue) Granny Gumdrop will knit him a calculator cosy.  However, Calculator and Charlie are absent from the Tuesday page in the issue in question so we have no proof, but as we know Calculator is never wrong.

We do eventually get to see Calculator in a cosy, in the 'Cheeky's Jersey pattern' issue dated 31 March 1979.

Charlie and Calc were among the guests at Pete and Pauline Potts' party in the 6 Million Dollar Gran strip in Cheeky Weekly issue number 100 dated 06 October 1979.

The longest span between appearances of Charlie and Calculator in Cheeky's Week was the 25 issues which elapsed between 30 June 1979 and 22 December 1979.  This break was due to the introduction of a 'new look' to the comic as from 07 July 1979.  The resulting changes meant that the Calculator Kid feature moved nearer the front of the comic, and the device whereby Charlie and Calculator would appear in Cheeky's Week to introduce their strip was dropped.  Why then did the introduction re-appear in the 22 December issue?  Because pages that had originally been prepared for the 2 Christmas-themed issues of Cheeky Weekly which were among the 3 issues that failed to appear in December 1978 due to industrial action, were used in the 22 December 1979 and 29 December 1979 issues.  These pages retained the Calculator Kid intro panel, but with modifications.  In the 22 December 1979 issue, the Calculator Kid feature appears on page 3, yet Charlie and Calculator's 'introduction' appears on page 5.  Cheeky's speech balloon has been altered, presumably to remove the original reference to their adventure on the next page that would have followed had the page been published a year earlier as originally intended.  In the 29 December 1979 issue, the Calculator Kid feature appears on page 3, but the modified 'introduction' is included on page 15.

Charlie and Calculator made their final appearance on a Cheeky's Week page in the final issue of Cheeky Weekly, where they were featured among the characters who would survive the merge, meeting their new Whoopee! fun pals.

The Calculator Kid Strip appeared in 78 issues, while Charlie and Calculator appeared during Cheeky's Week in 38 issues.

*The situation of Snail and Baby Burpo, who also had their own strip as well as making appearances in Cheeky's Week, was slightly different as they were established characters in Cheeky's Week before securing their respective features.

Character	Total Issues	First Appearance	Final Appearance
Calculator Kid	38	08-Jul-1978	02-Feb-1980

Count of elements by artist

Character	Artist	Total Elements
Calculator Kid	Frank McDiarmid	23
Calculator Kid	Frank McDiarmid pencils	7
Calculator Kid	Mike Lacey	5
Calculator Kid	Barrie Appleby	2
Calculator Kid	Dick Millington	1