Blimey! It's a Christmas Cheeky

Over on his (sadly approaching its end) blog, Lew Stringer is examining the 1979 festive issue of Cheeky Weekly.

UPDATE - I should have mentioned that Lew's other blog will be continuing.

Krazy Kristmas Kountdown part 2

In the first part of our quick flick through the pages of Krazy dated 18 December 1976 in search of Cheeky's contributions, we didn't encounter any festive material. However, delving deeper into the comic the impending celebrations become more apparent, as on page 19 the forthcoming Krazy Christmas Number is given a plug ('number' being a rather archaic, even for the 1970s, comics way of referring to what today we would call an 'issue').

There is no Krazy Gang strip in this number issue, the gang probably having been bumped due to the presence of part 3 of the Krazy 1977 Diary. However fans of Cheeky's comic colleagues needn't be too upset as they do appear in the toothy funster's story this week (one of the aspects of Krazy that made it such a great comic was the regular crossing of characters from one feature to another - Cheeky had already done so in this issue as we saw in the previous post). Things start to get really Christmassy as the toothy funster is ejected onto the snowy streets of Krazy Town, and there's further crossing-over of characters as Cheeky meets Stumbly Fumbly, son of Detective Fumbly, whose Casebook was the subject of a weekly text feature in Krazy. Accident-prone Stumbly was a variation on Bump-Bump Bernie, who by this time had appeared once, in Krazy dated 31 October 1976.

Art: Frank McDiarmid
The bottom left panel is the payoff to the
gag set up on the page shown above.
Note background pee gag

Snail wasn't appearing every week yet - this is
his third appearance.
Note possible background pee gag in
panel 7 (in what manner was Willie
Cook's name inscribed in the snow?)
Note foreground pee gag

Frank renders a rather muscular Sporty

The Gang, including Cheeky who is wearing the same rather fetching red and white sweater he modelled on the cover, are also featured in the Krazy News Pound reader participation feature. Printing the gags in coloured ink is possibly not the best choice for legibility.

That concludes Cheeky's contributions to this issue. Hap-pee Christmas pals!

Krazy Kristmas Kountdown part 1

This time last year I examined Cheeky's contributions to Krazy's first Christmas edition, appropriately dated 25 December 1976. This time I'm looking back a week earlier to see what our toothy pal was up to as the inhabitants of Krazy Town geared up for the impending festivities.

Art: Mike Lacey

Cheeky gets to appear on the cover, sporting a snazzy red and white jumper instead of his usual red and black ensemble, tasked with publicising the Custard Pie Corner reader participation feature. Swiftly turning the pages in order to avoid being splatted by the incoming sloppy confection, we find the grinning gagster making an uncharacteristically joke-free guest appearance in the 12½ p Buytonic Boy adventure. As the story starts, the titular Steve Ford is happily collecting Christmas trees for the members of the Krazy Gang, yet soon the energy-boosting effect of the tonic he purchased in the first episode of this series (as depicted in the title panel for the benefit of latecomers to the strip who may be puzzling over the 'buytonic' reference) seems to be wearing off...

Art: Robert Nixon

Although he appears to have made a full recovery, the reason for Steve's sudden lassitude is not addressed.

In the aforementioned Custard Pie Corner, there are a couple of political pastings as Home Secretary Merlyn Rees and former Prime Minister Harold Wilson both cop a custardy facefull, along with kangaroo impersonator (apparently) and crooner Max Bygraves.

I'll be further delving into Cheeky's 1976 pre-Christmas capers soon.

Whizzer and Chips - The Cheeky Raids part 50

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.

Art: Terry Bave, whose Tarman of the Jungle
began inside. Terry also gives us his
rendition of Watford Gapp, Joker
and Sweeny Toddler with
canine companion Hairy Henry

The Whizzer and Chips moratorium on new raids, imposed at the end of July 1988, was lifted in the issue dated 12 August 1989 (a week after our toothy pal had been the infiltrator in a reprinted raid). During the suspension of the raids Sid and Shiner’s individual weekly strips had been abandoned in favour of a centre-pages confrontation of the two faction leaders, entitled Sid vs Shiner, and the Chip-ites and Whizz-kids letters had also been moved into adjacent pages titled Sid’s Whizz-kids vs Shiner’s Chip-ites. 

However the former arrangement was restored in the 12 August 1989 issue, with the Chip-ite and Whizz-kid letter pages dispersed back into their individual titles and Sid and Shiner once again allocated their own strips.

Mustapha Million continued to appear, almost 12 years after his Cheeky Weekly debut, drawn at this time by Frank McDiarmid, who had also begun illustrating a new strip, Cosmic Cafe, as from the edition dated 13 May 1989.

Maybe the raids were reinstated in response to reader requests. The announcement of the first raid of the new run differed from those documented earlier in this series of posts, in that there was only one raid perpetrated (in the raids I've covered previously a Whizz-kid character raided a Chip-ite, and vice versa, in each issue), and additionally the raid was announced in the comic in which the raid was undertaken (previously the raiders were revealed a week later), although the identity of the interloper and victim were not revealed. Readers were aware that a raid was in progress due to Sid's disgruntled announcement...

The raider was stetson-sporting JR, who had slyly slipped into the Bumpkin Billionaires story. Since neither are Cheeky-related I won't be featuring that here, but I thought I'd include Frank McDiarmid's Cosmic Cafe from the same issue. Set in a galactic greasy spoon caff, this strip was a lot of fun and allowed Frank's imagination to run wild with the various alien customer designs. I like the depiction of the black hole, and it's always good to see a 'Boilk!' (the traditional comics way of indicating digestive distress). Robotic chef MNX (oh yes), who gets referred to incorrectly as MINX in his first namecheck this issue, seems on this occasion to be a hi-tech version of Auntie Daisy.

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
16 July 1988	Toy Boy	Mustapha Million
30 July 1988 New raids halted
05 August 1989 (raid reprinted from 25 Aug 1984)	Cheeky	Store Wars
12 August 1989 Resumption of new raids	No Cheeky-related raid this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue