New
readers start here... After Cheeky Weekly folded and was
incorporated into Whoopee as of February 1980 six strips that had
originated in the toothy funster's title survived the merge and
continued to appear in the amalgamated comic. Whoopee itself
foundered in March 1985 and was merged into Whizzer and Chips. Three
of the surviving Cheeky Weekly strips successfully negotiated this
second merge and went on to appear in the newly combined publication,
rather inelegantly titled 'Whizzer and Chips now including Whoopee'.
The survivors were Mustapha Million, Calculator Kid and (appearing
only twice) Stage School. Cheeky continued to appear, but as a member
of The Krazy Gang, who had moved into W&C when Krazy, the comic
in which the Gang originated, expired in April 1978.
Whizzer
and Chips had a long tradition of sending characters from the Chips
section into Whizzer and vice versa. These cross-comic forays were
known as 'raids'. In this series of posts I'm chronicling the raids
involving the ex-Cheeky Weekly characters who made the transition
into Whizzer and Chips, all of whom were allocated to the Chips
section. For the purposes of this series, although this particular
manifestation of the toothy funster didn't directly descend from
Cheeky Weekly, I'm including Cheeky's Krazy Gang appearances as those
of an 'ex-Cheeky Weekly character'.
Two weeks after the previous raid involving an ex-Cheeky Weekly character, Mustapha Million's adventure (in
which we meet his cousin Ahmed) was intruded upon by a rotten raider.
Can you spot the infiltrator? Scroll down for the answer.
 |
| Whizzer and Chips 27 July 1985 Art: Joe McCaffrey |
It's that pesky
Whizz-Kid prankster, Joker.
The Mustapha story
above reminds me of a joke that was often heard in the 1970s and
directed at a UK car manufacturer that underwent a series of
misfortunes during that troubled decade...
1st Man: I'm
getting my little boy a cowboy outfit for Christmas.
2nd Man:
Really?
1st Man:
Yes, I'm buying him British Leyland.
For the benefit of any mystified overseas readers, the joke plays on an alternate, informal use of 'cowboy', meaning incompetent, inefficient, dishonest.
No doubt there were
other versions of the joke aimed at British Rail, The Post Office etc. 'Mickey
Mouse outfit' was also often substituted.
This was the second time that Mustapha had been raided, but he had been a raider on two previous occasions. Ex-Cheeky Weekly characters had by this time perpetrated just 3 raids while suffering 7.
More raiding fun soon!
| Whizzer and Chips Cover Date | Raider | Raided | ||||
| 06 April 1985 | Mustapha Million | Super Steve | ||||
| 04 May 1985 | Bloggs (Store Wars) | Mustapha Million | ||||
| 11 May 1985 | Joker | The Krazy Gang (Cheeky) | ||||
| 18 May 1985 | Calculator Kid & Calc | Odd-Ball | ||||
| 01 June 1985 |
|
|
||||
| 08 June 1985 | Odd-Ball | Calculator Kid | ||||
| 06 July 1985 | Toy Boy | Calculator Kid | ||||
| 13 July 1985 | Pa Bumpkin | The Krazy Gang (Cheeky) | ||||
| 27 July 1985 | Joker | Mustapha Million |
