One
of the benefits of being a comic collector is that Christmas fun can
be enjoyed at any time of year. Just select a festive issue from the
nearest available pile of funny papers and you'll soon be
experiencing the echoes of excitement from Santa's visits of long
ago.
At the time of writing, Christmas 2015 is still a couple of months in the future,
but I've just emerged from wallowing in the seasonal slapstick and holiday humour which comprised the Christmas 1987 issue of Whizzer
and Chips (while doing the research for my Whizzer and Chips – The Cheeky Raids series of posts).
As
of Christmas '87 Whizzer and Chips stars the Bumpkin Billionaires were as ever engaged in
their futile quest to return to their former impoverished state, and
their bank manager was continuing to thwart every money-losing scheme
that the wealthy wurzel-munchers would devise. The manager, who was
never named in the strips as far as I know, had an assistant named
Miss Wobblethrope. I like Miss Wobblethrope – she could have been
depicted as a glam secretary, but she's pleasingly ordinary. But mainly
I like her for her name. A lesser imagination would have conjured an
obvious, Bond-referencing name and called her Miss Moneypudding or
similar. She could have been called Miss Wobblethorpe, which would
have been funny enough, but someone had the genius idea to call her
Wobblethrope, which must be one of the great comedy names in comics.
So
I'm always pleased to see the divine Miss W (she's not in every
strip), and it was great to see her delivering a few, plot-driving lines with typical aplomb during this Christmas tale...
 | ||
| Whizzer and Chips 26 December 1987 Art: Jimmy Hansen |
..I don't know if someone on the W&C payroll had partaken of a few too many mince pies before committing this festive fable to paper, but they got their 'thropes' and 'thorpes' a bit confused.
lovely!
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