One might have expected the toothy funster himself to have kicked off the promotional foray into WCK since his pages dominated Cheeky Weekly, but in fact the strip chosen to represent the title in WCK's inaugural Star Guest strip of the 1979 run was Calculator Kid. What this says about IPC's view of the relative popularities of Cheeky and Calculator Kid, if anything, is open to conjecture.
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| Whizzer and Chips 31 March 1979 Art: Terry Bave I love how the cat goes from sublime serenity in one panel to sheer terror in the next |
This particular Calculator Kid tale never appeared in Cheeky Weekly and it would seem that, rather than being a page produced for Cheeky Weekly which was then appropriated for the Star Guest series, the set was specially prepared with a view to being used in WCK - the area covered by the artwork was slightly smaller than a usual Cheeky Weekly strip to allow space for the promotional caption at the foot of the page. It was evidently felt that the premise for the strip was simple enough to require no introduction for the benefit of those unfamiliar with it (unlike certain of the strips featured in Star Guest in Cheeky weekly - see link in first paragraph above).
Calculator Kid appeared in Cheeky Weekly as normal in the same week that he made this appearance in WCK.
In the same way that the Star Guest run in Cheeky Weekly saw characters from Whoopee! alternating each week with characters normally to be found in WCK, Star Guest in WCK was comprised of Cheeky Weekly regulars alternating with a selection of their counterparts from Whoopee! The week after the strip shown above, the Star Guests in WCK were affluent agrarians the Bumpkin Billionaires.
The 1979 WCK run of Star Guest came to an end in the issue dated 28 July 1979 (with a return appearance by the Bumpkins), the same week in which Cheeky Weekly's Star Guest run came to a conclusion.
More from the Cheeky Weekly Star Guests in WCK soon.
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