Frank's a Tonic!

By the summer of 1982 the strip that was formerly known as The 12½p Buytonic Boy when it made its debut in Krazy, had been shorn of its monetary prefix during hero Steve Ford's continuing campaign against the villainous NME organisation in the pages of Whizzer and Chips. This adjustment to the title was probably made because younger readers would have been unaware of the  '70s TV series which the strip originally spoofed, The Six Million Dollar Man (and not, as the Wikipedia page linked to above currently suggests, because the ½ p coin had ceased to be legal tender at that time - that didn't happen until 1984).

In those summer months, while Britons were happily still spending their ½ ps, little suspecting that Nigel Lawson was plotting their demise (the coins, not the Britons. But then again...), Robert Nixon, regular artist on the strip, took a few weeks off. Stepping in to illustrate the escapades of the titular potion-enhanced adventurer were Brian Walker and, for 3 issues, Frank McDiarmid.

Whizzer and Chips 03 July 1982

There's something of Roger the Dodger
in Frank's rendition of Steve in the first panel above

Whizzer and Chips 10 July 1982.
A single-page story this week
I don't recall seeing Steve's dad before.

Whizzer and Chips  24 July 1982

The scriptwriter seems to have had an
overflowing-bath obsession at this stage