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.
When I embarked on this Whizzer
and Chips - The Cheeky Raids series almost 10 years ago, the task
of identifying the sneaky Whizz-kids and sly Chip-ites who were traversing the boundaries into each other’s territory was easy - if I
failed to uncover the infiltrators myself I could always consult the following
week’s comic because in the issues published during the major part of the period under investigation, the culprits would make themselves known 7 days after perpetrating their clandestine incursions.
However, Whizzer and Chips dated 30 July 1988 was the final issue to adhere to this 'owning up' tradition, and in fact all raiding (barring some reprinted strips that had originally included raiders) was suspended until new raids (although only one per week) resumed in
Whizzer and Chips dated 12 August 1989. Unfortunately for those such
as myself who are trying to document the raids (or at least the
Cheeky-related raids in my case), the practise of naming the
interlopers did not resume. Just to make things doubly difficult, the
23 September 1989 issue saw weekly reciprocal raids return, again
without any subsequent disclosure although readers were warned each week, by means of captions on the Sid's Whizz-kids and Shiner's Chip-ites pages, to be vigilant for interlopers.
I find the cessation of the admissions of culpability to be rather puzzling, as surely it was an incentive to readers, or at least those whose powers of observation were lacking, to buy the following week's issue.
So despite my promise (threat?) in April 2020, in the 53rd part of my Cheeky Raids series, that 'more raiding fun' would ensue 'soon', there have in fact been no further instalments. Until now. I have determined that I will bring the series to a conclusion, and be honest about the instances where I have been unable to identify a raider, for such there have been.
The raid I documented in the preceding, almost 4-year-old, post in this series gave details of the cross-border forays undertaken in Whizzer and Chips dated 28 October 1989. I have been able to identify raiders in the following week's edition, but they need not concern us here as neither is Cheeky-related.
However, I am having some difficulty with the edition dated 11 November 1989. The raider into Whizzer is undoubtedly Terry Bave's jungle bungler Tarman, who has apparently relocated from his steamy equatorial habitat to a Whizztown park and can be observed peering gormlessly over some shrubbery in the background of a panel of the Sid's Snake strip.
|
Art: Mike Lacey
|
Notable in this issue are the likenesses of Mustapha Million and Calculator Kid (both of whom are of course denizens of Chips) on Sid's page. They're among the characters drawn by creditably non-partisan reader David Dawson of Rochford, Essex, whose subjects are selected from both the Whizzer and Chips factions. However, these contributions from a reader clearly cannot be considered as raids.
The presence of Calculator Kid among the comic cavalcade
delineated by young David puzzles me somewhat since
Charlie Counter's final weekly Whizzer and Chips appearance was in the
issue dated 26 July 1986, over 3 years before this submission was published. I initially thought that the contribution from the youthful Rochford artist may have been languishing somewhere in either the postal system or the Fleetway offices for some years, but the presence of Scouse Mouse, who was absorbed into Whizzer and Chips with effect from the issue dated 15 April 1989, disproves this theory. I then wondered whether David had seen Calculator Kid reprints in an issue of The Best of Whizzer and Chips Monthly, but as far as I know CK's 'Best Of' appearances were restricted to the Whoopee collections, so our enthusiastic artist pal wouldn't have made the connection between Charlie and Calc and Whizzer and Chips if his only knowledge of the characters resulted from reading Best of Whoopee Monthly. Unfortunately I know very little about the publication history and contents of Fleetway's non-title-specific reprint collections such as Funny Monthly or BVC, so although I suspect Calculator Kid could well have appeared in them, I have no knowledge of when those supposed appearances occured, nor am I aware whether there was any indication of their title of origin. Did Master Dawson have access to some old weekly issues of Whizzer and Chips?
Mustapha Million was still appearing in Whizzer and Chips at the time, so his presence among the laughter luminaries populating David's artwork is understandable. Mustapha seems to be unhappy, possibly due to his proximity to Kid Comic who I believe was by this time something of a pariah among his Whizz-kid and Chip-ite colleagues due to his treachery (read on to discover more).
I now have to admit that, despite several trawls through its pages, I have been unable to identify a Whizz-kid raider in the Chips segment of this comic (just to remind you Whizzer and Chips dated 11 November 1989 is the edition currently under scrutiny). Spotting Kid Comic on Shiner's page made me consider for a moment that he was the raider, but on checking I discovered that KC had changed his allegiance from Whizzer to Chips as of the 13 May 1989 edition (and anyway Kid Comic's humorous exchange with Terry from the Supermum/Super Mum strip which began a series of reprinted (I assume) episodes in Whizzer and Chips dated 05 November 1988 (on that first occasion as an emergency replacement for Town Tarzan, whose strip, according to an accompanying footnote, had been lost in the post), concluding in the 02 September 1989 edition, seems entirely convivial).
The depiction of Whizz-kids on the cover of the Whizzer and Chips Annual on the above page is within an advertisement, thus putting those appearances beyond the scope of raids.
Since my goal in this series of posts is to identify raids involving ex-Cheeky Weekly characters, of whom only Mustapha Million was still appearing at this juncture, and having established that our young Arab Chip-ite chum was not the raider into Whizzer this particular week, I would only need to record a raid against this issue if it was Mustapha himself who had been intruded upon. Having subjected Mustapha's strip in this issue to particular scrutiny, I am fairly confident that he has not been raided, but having been unable to find a raider anywhere within Chips, I am not entirely sure that a sneaky Whizz-kid has not infiltrated Mustapha's story and evaded my raider radar, so I am placing the episode below as blog readers may have more visual acuity than my decrepit minces can muster. You'll notice that Mustapha's Cheeky-resemblant pal is among the characters, and the two autograph-collecting girls have similarities to Libby and Louise. The members of Dross are obviously based on popster trio Bros, and artist Frank McDiarmid does nice renditions of the band members. The script is a bit harsh on 'the other one'.
More raiding fun soon!