Just a bit of background info on some of the terms I use when discussing the contents of weekly comics, annuals and specials...
In a weekly comic, each feature (e.g. Mustapha Million, Calculator Kid) will usually appear as a single episode...
The first Calculator Kid episode occupied a single page
| MERGED_TITLE | CCD_DATE | PAGE_START | FEATURE_NAME | ARTIST | REPRINT_ORIGIN | ORIGIN_DATE | ELEMENTS | ELEMENT_CONFIG |
| Cheeky Weekly | 01-Jul-1978 | 24 | Calculator Kid | Terry Bave | 1 | F |
But an episode can span more than one page, often covering one and a half pages,
The first episode of Creepy Sleepy Tale occupied a page and a half
| MERGED_TITLE | CCD_DATE | PAGE_START | FEATURE_NAME | ARTIST | REPRINT_ORIGIN | ORIGIN_DATE | ELEMENTS | ELEMENT_CONFIG |
| Cheeky Weekly | 22-Oct-1977 | 19 | Creepy Sleepy Tale | Mike Brown | 2 | F,P |
or an episode may cover just half a page or even less.
Whoopee and Wow!'s Quick Strips page contained episodes of 4 different features each week.
| MERGED_TITLE | CCD_DATE | PAGE_START | FEATURE_NAME | ARTIST | REPRINT_ORIGIN | ORIGIN_DATE | ELEMENTS | ELEMENT_CONFIG |
| Whoopee and Wow! | 02-Jul-1983 | 23 | Paddywack | Jack Clayton | 1 | P | ||
| Whoopee and Wow! | 02-Jul-1983 | 23 | Bleep | Jim Barker | 1 | P | ||
| Whoopee and Wow! | 02-Jul-1983 | 23 | Cheeky (Quick Strip) | Frank McDiarmid | 1 | P | ||
| Whoopee and Wow! | 02-Jul-1983 | 23 | Here Is The News | Ed McHenry | 1 | P |
I refer to every item occupying a page as an element, so the Quick Strip page referred to above of course contain 4 elements, each of which is also an episode.
I don't record in my comics database the percentage page coverage of each element, but when analysing the content of pages I can determine programmatically, for each element, whether that element shares its page with another element or elements. Thus I can assign each element a configuration status of, if there are no other elements on the page, F = Full Page, otherwise it must be P = Part Page. Thus the page-and-a-half Creepy Sleepy Tale above is shown as having a 2 element configuration of F,P.
Episodes are more relevant to Specials and Annuals, where it was common for the same feature to appear several times. For example, Mustapha Million enjoyed 4 episodes (one new 3-page adventure, and 3 double-page reprints) across the pages of the Cheeky Annual cover-dated 1985...
| MERGED_TITLE | CCD_DATE | PAGE_START | FEATURE | ART | REPRINT_FROM | ELEMENTS | EPISODE_CONFIG |
| Cheeky Annual 1985 | 01-Sep-1984 | 6 | Mustapha Million | Joe McCaffrey | 3 | F,F,F | |
| Cheeky Annual 1985 | 01-Sep-1984 | 48 | Mustapha Million | Reg Parlett | Cheeky Weekly 03-Dec-1977 | 2 | F,F |
| Cheeky Annual 1985 | 01-Sep-1984 | 72 | Mustapha Million | Reg Parlett | Cheeky Weekly 05-Nov-1977 | 2 | F,F |
| Cheeky Annual 1985 | 01-Sep-1984 | 102 | Mustapha Million | Reg Parlett | Cheeky Weekly 26-Nov-1977 | 2 | F,F |
There are some occasions on which a feature appears in more than one episode on the same page (such as Meanie McGenie, whose 4 episodes appearing in the Cheeky Summer Special of 1982 were allocated to pages 21 and 50). When analysing at episode level, those cases are reported in my database as 2 part-page episodes sharing the same page...
| MERGED_TITLE | CCD_DATE | PAGE_START | FEATURE | ART | REPRINT_FROM | ELEMENTS | EPISODE_CONFIG |
| Cheeky Summer Special | 01-Jul-1982 | 21 | Meanie McGenie | Tom Williams | Monster Fun | 1 | P |
| Cheeky Summer Special | 01-Jul-1982 | 21 | Meanie McGenie | Mike Lacey | Monster Fun | 1 | P |
| Cheeky Summer Special | 01-Jul-1982 | 50 | Meanie McGenie | Mike Lacey | Monster Fun | 1 | P |
| Cheeky Summer Special | 01-Jul-1982 | 50 | Meanie McGenie | Mike Lacey | Monster Fun | 1 | P |
