Barry Glennard and Robert Nixon's Cheekys

The management at comic publishers IPC were clearly convinced of the effectiveness of cut-out-and-collect promotions, which appeared incessantly in their comics during the seventies and eighties. This cover of Whizzer and Chips dated 30 August 1980 sees the comic in week 3 of its Book Snap promotion...

Citrussy Sid's Snake art - Mike Lacey
Parfum de Pongo Snodgrass art - Ian Knox

Book Snap added another level of marketing into the usual cut-and-keep scenario, as the images on each of the snap cards were re-drawn versions by Barry Glennard of the covers of that autumn's IPC annuals, including the 1981 Cheeky Annual (publication of the Cheeky annuals continued until 1984's 1985-cover-dated annual, despite Cheeky Weekly having folded in February 1980). The rather primitive printing process used at the time could not handle colour photographs, hence the need for these re-drawn, slightly simplified versions.

Art: Barry Glennard

Below is the actual cover, drawn by Robert Nixon. Unfortunately, the front and back of the annual both feature the same image. It would have been nice if the back cover showed a 'what happened next' pic of Cheeky, whose rather un-Christmassy intention would no doubt have backfired, leaving him liberally coated in custard, but the IPC budget clearly didn't stretch to such extravagances (they couldn't afford to waste the custard). I'll leave you to work out what (and more importantly who) is missing from Barry Glennard's version of the cover.

Art: Robert Nixon

A later example of Robert's renderings of Cheeky and pals can be seen here, while the entirety of this The Other Artist's Cheekys series can be tracked down here.

Arthur Martin's Cheeky

From Krazy dated 22 January 1977 - this Micky Mimic story, including a cameo by the toothy funster, is drawn by Arthur Martin.

It would have been nice to see Teacher in this strip, but on at least one day that week he was off sick so wasn't available (he'd probably read the script for the above story and, realising that it culminated in the schoolmaster antagonist being sacked, threw a deft sickie).

Teacher did return to work, just in time to set up a Walter Wurx gag, later in that same comic...

Krazy 22 January 1977
Art: Frank McDiarmid

Immediately following the Micky Mimic story above, Cheeky appears again in the Krazy News-Pound half-pager, where he's drawn by Ian Knox, who was the regular artist on The Krazy Gang (which numbered Cheeky among its members) at this point.

Leslie 'Styx' Harding's Cheeky

One of the joys of being a comics enthusiast is discovering unexpected character/artist combinations. Here's one such - the toothy funster depicted by Styx in an episode of Paws, first published in Krazy dated 23 April 1977.

Krazy 23 April 1977
Art: Styx (Leslie Harding)

I didn't realise until doing a bit of research just now that Styx was, in the early 1950s, a mentor of Reg Smythe, the creator of Andy Capp.

For more examples of Cheeky drawn by non-regular artists, follow this link.

Sid Burgon's Cheeky

Almost a year before Cheeky Weekly was launched, the toothy funster had made his debut in the pages of Krazy comic, where he had featured in 2 strips. Not only was he the star of 'Ello It's Cheeky, which was very much the template for the Cheeky's Week pages in Cheeky Weekly, but he was also a member of The Krazy Gang who appeared in the strip of the same name.

Despite (or possibly because of) its bold deviation from the traditional British humour comic format, Krazy ceased publication after a 19-month run. Following Krazy's final issue dated 15 April 1978, the most popular features decamped to IPC's long-running Whizzer and Chips, which then became known as Whizzer and Chips with Krazy (WCK). Whizzer and Chips had a particular gimmick (evidently highly effective in view of the comic's longevity) whereby it was presented as being two separate comics, with Chips located in the centre of Whizzer (the same idea was appropriated by Cheeky Weekly, although clearly much less successfully, during the 37 issues in which The Mystery Comic was found in its centre pages).

The Krazy Gang, still featuring the toothy funster, was one of the strips that transferred from Krazy to WCK. Here's the cover of the first combined issue, on which the Krazy refugees met the stars of the host comic. Artist Sid Burgon is somewhat restrained when it comes to depicting Cheeky's trademark choppers.

Whoopee! staff artist's Cheeky

1982's 'little alien lost' movie blockbuster, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, had its UK premiere on 09 December of that year. In Whoopee! dated 26 February 1983, Cheeky regaled his Krazy Town pals with a barrage of E.T. gags. At the end of the strip, readers were invited to submit their own E.T. suggestions for the chance to win 'E.T. type awards'.

Whoopee! 26 February 1983
Art: Frank McDiarmid

In Whoopee's 09 April 1983 issue, the following announcement appeared, including a version of Cheeky drawn by (presumably) a Whoopee! staff artist.

Whoopee! E.T. - Erroneous Text.

Roy Mitchell's Cheeky

A new puzzle feature began in the 04 December 1982 issue of Whoopee!. This new series of perplexing posers went under the name of Quizmaster, and characters from the roster of Whoopee! stars would take turns at being the titular question-setter. The series was drawn by Roy Mitchell, who signed himself 'Mitch', and would include a trademark mushroom/toadstool thing each week (which Mitch also incorporated into his Rambling Rhymes artwork in the same comic).

The host of the first Quizmaster was Cheeky Weekly's Calculator Kid, and in the 19 March 1983 issue Cheeky got his chance at setting readers some brain teasers.

I found Mitch's real name on Peter Gray's blog.

Terry Bave's Cheeky

From Whoopee! dated 10 October 1981 comes this extract from the second instalment of Terry Bave's How To Draw Comic Strips cut-out booklet, allowing us a glimpse of his version of our toothy pal.

Alongside Cheeky are Terry's versions of other stars who shared Whoopee's pages at the time, some of whom were survivors of the merge of Cheeky Weekly into Whoopee! which occurred in February 1980.  The top row of characters consists of Toy Boy (who was regularly drawn by Terry),  the bibliophile titular character from the Bookworm feature (usually drawn by Sid Burgon), Archie from the Lolly Pop strip (also by Sid at this time although Terry seems to channeling an earlier version from the days when Arthur Martin did the visuals) and Charlie from the Calculator Kid feature (another of Terry's strips), who can also be seen in his distinctive yellow tracksuit top on the booklet's back cover - see below.  Then there's a row of lower halves which feature the young caver from The Cavers (I don't think he was ever named in the strip, which was drawn by Jim Petrie), Jack Clayton's Paddywack from the strip of the same name, Tom Paterson's Sweeny Toddler, who was actually bumped from this particular issue by Terry's booklet, and the distinctive lower portion of Mustapha Million, who was drawn in Whoopee! at this time by Joe McCaffrey.

The final row of faces commences with a familiar toothy gagster, followed by Nick Baker's Smiler, Mike Lacey's Billy Bumpkin from The Bumpkin Billionaires, and Gran who had regenerated from 6 Million Dollar Gran into Robot Granny by the time this issue was published, and was drawn in the weekly strip by Ian Knox.

This was the second of Terry's How To Draw Comic Strips booklets to feature in Whoopee!  Terry was a stalwart of IPC's comics at this time, and I really enjoy his style of drawing, which is particularly appealing when he depicts characters with beaming smiles.

Whoopee! 03 October 1981

Robert Nixon's Cheeky

Ever wondered what Cheeky and pals would look like if rendered by the hand of Robert Nixon, another of the great British humour comic artists?  Well, Whoopee! dated 03 January 1981, published just under a year after Cheeky Weekly had merged into it, included a calendar drawn by Robert.  Featured on the calendar along with stalwarts of Whoopee! was the toothy funster and some of his chums.

It was customary that, following a comic merge, the comic which had been absorbed into the more successful title would get 'second billing' on the cover for a period of time. The issue that contained this calendar doesn't contain any reference to the merged comic on the front page, although the preceding and following issues did mention Cheeky on their covers.  The final issue of Whoopee! to include a reference to Cheeky on the front cover was that dated 25 July 1981.  I suspect that's the reason why the calendar above is called the Whoopee! calendar, rather than Whoopee! and Cheeky - it was known at this stage that by the end of the year the Cheeky billing would be dropped.