Cheeky was not the only character among the roster of IPC's funny folk to specialise in the cracking of gags while sporting a jumper emblazoned (at least in his early appearances) with the letter K. The similarly attired junior japester was of course Kid Comic, who made his chortlesome debut in the first issue of Wow! in June 1982, telling readers, 'I'm going to be a comedian when I grow up, just like them! They're my heroes!', while indicating a selection of posters on his bedroom wall bearing the likenesses of those titans of titter-inducing TV, Basil Brush, Morecambe and Wise, Benny Hill and The Two Ronnies.
Following the cancellation of Wow! after just 56 editions, Kid Comic transferred, along with a select few fellow Wow!-ites, into Whoopee (which lost its own exclamation mark as a consequence). Kid Comic had a prestigious position on the cover of the first combined Whoopee and Wow!, seemingly leading the delegation of inductees at the head of the table around which the survivors of Wow! met their new Whoopee colleagues, and shaking hands with Whoopee's ever-beaming Smiler. KC continued a comedy career until making a final Whoopee appearance in the ultimate edition dated 30 March 1985. A number of his Whoopee colleagues transferred directly into Whizzer and Chips, the comic built around the conceit of being two 'comics in one'. Sadly, readers never discovered whether the aspiring comedian achieved his goal of attaining a showbiz career since, although the character was one of the few to actually age over the years, he hadn't reached adulthood by the point of the strip's termination.
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| KC's debut - Wow! 05 June 1982. Art: Martin Baxendale, as is the example below |
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| The final original KC strip - Whoopee 30 March 1985 |
However, Kid Comic found himself resurrected, albeit in the form of reprints, in Whizzer and Chips dated 04 March 1989. In that issue his strip was located on page 25, thereby placing it within the Whizzer realm ruled over by serpent enthusiast Sid. The following 8 Kid Comic reprints occupied the same site, but as of the issue dated 13 May 1989, the KC reprints moved to page 23, which is within pugilist Shiner's Chips territory. All subsequent Kid Comic reprints (the final KC reprint appearing in the comic dated 07 April 1990) appeared in Chips.
I take no pleasure in exposing the turncoat, Whizzer/Chips boundary-crossing nature of Kid Comic's later career, but its relevance (beyond the two funsters' previously-discussed shared predilections for humorous badinage and common sartorial preferences) to my quest to document all things Cheeky-related will become apparent in my next post.
