 |
| Art: Nick Baker |
This issue of Whoopee!, the Christmas 1981 edition despite its Boxing Day cover date, features a Yuletastic cover by the great Nick Baker. Nick, who's probably most well known for drawing the ever-grinning little lad Smiler, endows the entire Whoopee! line-up of fun pals with Smiler-like 'beams' (well, apart from Frankie Stein). Mercifully, we are spared the full horror of Cheeky, whose gob could hardly accommodate a more fearsome set of gnashers than his own, with a mouthful of Smiler-alike dinner manglers, since the toothy funster is only seen in profile. However, Calculator Kid, Mustapha Million, Teacher and kids from Stage School and 6 Million Dollar Gran (survivors all from Cheeky Weekly which merged into Whoopee! when the toothy funster's comic ceased publication in February 1980) all get a dental upgrade.
Not seen on this cover is Paddywack, the other Cheeky Weekly survivor who continued to appear in Whoopee! at this stage.
Let's see what our mate Mustapha was up to as Christmas 1981 approached...
 |
| Art: Joe McCaffrey |
Pity we don't get to see a slap-up feed at the end.
I'll be examining the 1981 festive doings of our other Cheeky Weekly pals soon.
Look forward to it SMILE! BEAM!
ReplyDeleteI think this was reused as the cover for Best of Whoopee Monthly in 1989; good choice as there's something of the classic about it, even if all those gnashers are a bit … eerie. Another reason it sticks in my mind is because by '89 Whoopee stories from W&C had started to appear in BOWM, although BOW&CM never incorporated Whoopee characters. Were they trying to forget the '85 merger ever happened, or was it an acknowledgement of Whoopee’s superior status?
ReplyDeleteMaybe IPC felt that including Whoopee characters in BOW&CM (even though they had transferred into W&C post-merge) would have been confusing/annoying for those kids who had no knowledge of the history of the strips and only knew them from Best Of Whoopee (I would guess that category made up most of the readership by 1989).
DeleteLogical assessment: I'd still prefer to think that the two titles, W&C and Whoopee (RIP), were deemed to be wholly divisible even after the merger as against, say, Cor's merger with Buster in 1974 whose only real legacy was Ivor, Tony and Chalky's weekly continuations. It doesn’t matter that there were 23 Holiday Specials and Annuals after Cor’s closure.
ReplyDelete