Whizzer and Chips - The Cheeky Raids part 47

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. However, the Krazy Gang's Whizzer and Chips run ended in the issue dated 08 February 1986. Calculator Kid survived a little longer, his run of reprints coming to an end in the 26 July 1986 edition and leaving Mustapha Million as the sole Cheeky Weekly survivor.

After falling victim to a raid in Whizzer and Chips dated 23 April 1988, our middle eastern mate wasn't involved in a cross-comic incursion as either victim or perpetrator until the following June. However, before I examine that next Mustapha-related raid, I shall respectfully direct you here to read about a historic conciliatory interlude in the long running antagonistic relationship between Whizz-kids and Chip-ites, which occurred in the 28 May 1988 edition. I wanted to mention that occasion here so that it's referenced in the correct chronological sequence in this series of posts, as I believe it has relevance to subsequent developments in the history of Whizzer and Chips raids. But more on that in future posts.

Whizzer and Chips dated 11 June 1988 - Mustapha is once again unwitting host to a weaselly Whizz-kid. Can you spot who has slipped into his strip this week? Scroll down to see the raider reveal themself.

Art: Frank McDiarmid

Yes, it's the head Whizz-kid Sid's sneaky serpent sidekick, Slippy. AND he's using that hackneyed phrase again. At least he's only thinking it, rather than speaking it but it's still ruddy annoying.

Mustapha's destructive rampage seems out of character for our normally kindly chum

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	Animalad Mustapha Million	The Krazy Gang (Cheeky) Boy Boss
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
24 August 1985	Cheeky	Sid's Snake
14 September 1985	Odd-Ball Calculator Kid	Calculator Kid Store Wars
05 October 1985	Mustapha Million	Animalad
19 October 1985	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
23 November 1985	Sweeny Toddler Sweeny Toddler Sweeny Toddler	Calculator Kid The Krazy Gang (Cheeky) Mustapha Million
18 January 1986	Mustapha Million	Super Steve
25 January 1986	Odd-Ball Cheeky	Mustapha Million Odd-Ball
08 February 1986 The Krazy Gang ends this issue	Animalad	Mustapha Million
15 February 1986	Lazy Bones	Calculator Kid
15 March 1986	Odd-Ball	Calculator Kid
29 March 1986	Calculator Kid	Master P Brain
05 April 1986	Bumpkin Billionaires	Mustapha Million
12 April 1986	Animalad	Calculator Kid
31 May 1986	Lazy Bones	Calculator Kid
07 June 1986	Mustapha Million	Joker
28 June 1986	Sweet Tooth	Mustapha Million
26 July 1986 Calculator Kid ends this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue
16 August 1986	Mustapha Million	Joker
23 August 1986	Sweet Tooth	Mustapha Million
18 October 1986	Winnie the Royal Nag	Mustapha Million
06 December 1986	Toy Boy	Mustapha Million
13 December 1986	Mustapha Million	Odd-Ball
17 January 1987	Sid	Mustapha Million
14 February 1987	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
11 April 1987	Pa Bumpkin	Mustapha Million
25 April 1987	Mustapha Million	Odd-Ball
20 June 1987	Toy Boy	Mustapha Million
27 June 1987	Mustapha Million	Memory Banks
25 July 1987	Lazy Bones	Mustapha Million
22 August 1987	Winnie the Royal Nag	Mustapha Million
12 September 1987	Mustapha Million	Sweet Tooth
19 September 1987	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
24 October 1987	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
12 December 1987	Joker	Mustapha Million
13 February 1988	Bloggs (Store Wars)	Mustapha Million
20 February 1988	Mustapha Million	Joker
12 March 1988	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
23 April 1988	Joker	Mustapha Million
28 May 1988 Readers asked not to let their Whizz-kid or Chip-ite sympathies colour their favourite strip votes	No Cheeky-related raid this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue
11 June 1988	Slippy	Mustapha Million

The Whoopee! years - It's Cheeky (second run)

The title ‘It’s Cheeky’ was used for two series of strips starring the toothy funster following Cheeky Weekly’s absorption into Whoopee! The first, five-week run served to introduce Cheeky and pals to those Whoopee! readers who had not previously made their acquaintance (although some veterans among the Whoopee! audience at the time of the Cheeky merge in early 1980 may have remembered the appearance of a Cheeky Weekly mini-comic in their favourite title back in 1978).

Following the conclusion of the initial It’s Cheeky run, our toothy pal’s comic vehicles underwent a series of format and title changes, before the second It’s Cheeky run began in Whoopee! dated 30 January 1982, a week after his Cheeky’s Week strip came to a conclusion.

Whereas the first It’s Cheeky run consisted of 4 pages per week, the second outing was limited to a single page in each edition. We can only conclude that our grinning pal’s popularity was waning somewhat by this stage in his career.

The first two episodes of the revived run of It’s Cheeky commenced with the titular tittermeister seated at his tripe-writer, a device (in more than one sense of the word) that was used to introduce all but 4 instalments of his predecessor feature Cheeky’s Week. Following his abandonment of the tripe-writer, Cheeky made his introductory remarks directly to the audience (he probably got fed up with all that typing).

Whoopee! 30 January 1982
Art: Frank McDiarmid, as is all the art below

The episode structure of this new run diverged a little from previous Cheeky strips in that there was a plot each week rather than a series of unrelated gags, and a number of the stories concerned Cheeky's home life with his mum and dad. The male contingent of the Cheeky household seemed to have something of an adversarial relationship with Mum.

The first four strips in the second run of It's Cheeky used the same title design as seen during the initial run, but as from episode five of run 2, a new design was introduced which reminds me of those old cinema signs where letters were attached to rails, sometimes rather wonkily, to spell out the title of each week's film.

Snail has a grievance

This run of It's Cheeky concluded in the issue dated 15 May 1982, the revival appearing for a total of 16 weeks. Frank McDiarmid drew all the episodes. For the first 13 weeks the strip was located on page 20, thereafter slipping back to page 24 for one issue before spending its last 2 weeks further demoted to page 26.

The toothy funster's somewhat restless Whoopee! sojourn didn't end there, however, and I'll be examining his subsequent outings soon.

In former times Cheeky would have enjoyed
a gag with each of his pals.
Snail's still got the hump.

Whizzer and Chips - The Cheeky Raids part 46

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. However, the Krazy Gang's Whizzer and Chips run ended in the issue dated 08 February 1986. Calculator Kid survived a little longer, his run of reprints coming to an end in the 26 July 1986 edition and leaving Mustapha Million as the sole Cheeky Weekly survivor.

The next raid to involve Mustapha Million occurred in Whizzer and Chips dated 23 April 1988, and saw him again as victim to an incursion. Can you locate the impudent intruder? Scroll down to see the rotten raider revealed.

Art: Frank McDiarmid

Yes, once again it's the troublesome trickster, Joker. The bequiffed buffoon was the target of Mustapha's raid into Whizzer territory in the 20 February 1988 edition. Just to be extra annoying, Joker is using that oft-repeated and infuriating phrase to announce his raid when he knows I don't like it. Grrr!

Mustapha's confectionary conveying escapade was inspired by the Cadbury's Milk Tray TV ads, although I think the Mustapha scriptwriter may have confused brands and been thinking of Black Magic chocolates. The long-running series of Milk Tray ads featured a James Bond-like character undertaking highly perilous missions to deliver a box of said sugary comestibles to an unseen recipient, placing his enigmatic calling-card alongside the chocs on a bedside table before withdrawing into the night.




It's hard to see the similarity between Fatima (for whom our middle eastern mate has clearly been carrying a torch since leaving his homeland) and Mustapha's new inamorata, but the ways of love are indeed mysterious. Personally, I think anyone who calls him Musty is to be avoided.

More (not necessarily romantically-inclined) 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	Animalad Mustapha Million	The Krazy Gang (Cheeky) Boy Boss
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
24 August 1985	Cheeky	Sid's Snake
14 September 1985	Odd-Ball Calculator Kid	Calculator Kid Store Wars
05 October 1985	Mustapha Million	Animalad
19 October 1985	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
23 November 1985	Sweeny Toddler Sweeny Toddler Sweeny Toddler	Calculator Kid The Krazy Gang (Cheeky) Mustapha Million
18 January 1986	Mustapha Million	Super Steve
25 January 1986	Odd-Ball Cheeky	Mustapha Million Odd-Ball
08 February 1986 The Krazy Gang ends this issue	Animalad	Mustapha Million
15 February 1986	Lazy Bones	Calculator Kid
15 March 1986	Odd-Ball	Calculator Kid
29 March 1986	Calculator Kid	Master P Brain
05 April 1986	Bumpkin Billionaires	Mustapha Million
12 April 1986	Animalad	Calculator Kid
31 May 1986	Lazy Bones	Calculator Kid
07 June 1986	Mustapha Million	Joker
28 June 1986	Sweet Tooth	Mustapha Million
26 July 1986 Calculator Kid ends this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue
16 August 1986	Mustapha Million	Joker
23 August 1986	Sweet Tooth	Mustapha Million
18 October 1986	Winnie the Royal Nag	Mustapha Million
06 December 1986	Toy Boy	Mustapha Million
13 December 1986	Mustapha Million	Odd-Ball
17 January 1987	Sid	Mustapha Million
14 February 1987	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
11 April 1987	Pa Bumpkin	Mustapha Million
25 April 1987	Mustapha Million	Odd-Ball
20 June 1987	Toy Boy	Mustapha Million
27 June 1987	Mustapha Million	Memory Banks
25 July 1987	Lazy Bones	Mustapha Million
22 August 1987	Winnie the Royal Nag	Mustapha Million
12 September 1987	Mustapha Million	Sweet Tooth
19 September 1987	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
24 October 1987	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
12 December 1987	Joker	Mustapha Million
13 February 1988	Bloggs (Store Wars)	Mustapha Million
20 February 1988	Mustapha Million	Joker
12 March 1988	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
23 April 1988	Joker	Mustapha Million

The Whoopee! Years - Cheeky in Sweeny Toddler, and the Tom Paterson Question

In Whoopee! and Cheeky dated 28 February 1981, in addition to his regular (at that time) 4-pages-per-week 'Cheeky' strip, the grinning gagster also made a cameo appearance, alongside a cake-carrying Krazy Town crony, in that week's Sweeny Toddler episode.

Art: Tom Paterson

If I may take us back for a moment to our toothy pal's own comic (this is relevant to the strip above, so please bear with me), as we know, even the mighty Frank McDiarmid wasn't able to generate all the Cheeky pages in every issue of Cheeky Weekly. I was aware when reading Cheeky Weekly as it was being published that other artists stood in for Frank on occasion. Frank was asked about this when he was interviewed by Paul Squires for Crikey! magazine in 2009, and Frank said that he drew two thirds of the Cheeky strips in that title, a statement that I was delighted to prove correct when I did an analysis of all the Cheeky's Week artwork in 2010.

I've long had a suspicion that Tom Paterson was among the artists who were on occasion drafted in to deputise for Frank during the Cheeky Weekly years. For a period before I started writing this blog I was a regular poster on the Comics UK forum. I raised the issue of the stand-in artists on the forum, and when I proposed there that Tom was responsible for some of the Cheeky artwork, nobody who responded agreed with me, but a couple of people made the suggestion that Frank's pencils may have been inked by other artists, something which I had not considered at all up to that point (some deputising artists, such as Mike Lacey, Barrie Appleby and Dick Millington were clearly pencilling and inking their own pages). My 2010 analysis proves that some of the artwork did indeed use the  'Frank's pencils inked by another artist' method.

However I still have a feeling that Tom did have a hand in some of the artwork during the toothy funster's heyday. His work above gives us an opportunity to compare his rendition of the toothy funster with those on the page below which is from Cheeky Weekly dated 24 June 1978.

To me, not only does the style of Cheeky's appearance look very similar, the lettering on the sound effects and notes written directly onto the panel (i.e. not in the speech bubbles) matches very closely. Interesting.