Gran Toddles In

The issue of Whoopee and Wow! displayed below joined the array of comics vying for attention on newsagents' counters in August 1984. Four and a half years after Cheeky Weekly had been merged into it, reference to the toothy funster's comic had long since been dropped from Whoopee's cover, not least because another failed title, Wow!, had been absorbed just over a year before this issue appeared, and thus gained the companion title slot.

However, all the survivors who had jumped ship as a holed-beneath-the-waterline Cheeky Weekly sank into comic history continued to appear in Whoopee and Wow! at this time, although their fortunes had varied considerably as the post-Cheeky Weekly months progressed;

• Stage School were still occupying two pages a week, undiminished from their days in the toothy funster's comic.
• 6 Million Dollar Gran had metamorphosed into a seemingly non-robotic role as the leader of Gran's Gang, a single page strip that was something of a come-down after her 3-pages-a-week Cheeky Weekly heyday.
• Mustapha Million continued to appear but had recently reverted to reprints of his Cheeky Weekly adventures.
• Charlie and Calc's Calculator Kid escapades continued (not reprints), and had in fact generated a spin-off strip, Calculator Corner.
• Paddywack persisted with his brand of bumbling buffoonery. 
• Ironically, Cheeky himself had suffered the worst ignominy, and from being the star of his own comic was now reduced to a single row of panels near the rear of Whoopee and Wow!

The cover of Whoopee and Wow! dated 18 August 1984 featured a surprise appearance by Cheeky Weekly's synthetic senior citizen, Gran, making a cameo appearance in the Sweeny Toddler strip...

Sweeny Toddler: art Tom Paterson
Family Trees: art Robert Nixon

This looks a bit odd to me; Gran is the only character in the strip to display a shadow on her body, and casts no shade on the ground to her right. Also her unspecified 'Yak Yak', and indeed her very presence, seems to be entirely ignored by the other characters in the frame. As you can see below, Gran plays no further role in the strip. Strange. Maybe the aged automaton's presence was meant to suggest that Sweeny's Great Grandpa was a member of Gran's Gang. 

For the benefit of anyone puzzling over the teaser in the Family Trees cover appearance...

Art: Robert Nixon

A Victory For Team Cheeky!

The readership of Whoopee and Wow! in early 1984 probably included a large proportion who weren't even aware that 6 of the strips they were enjoying each week had transferred into their comic from the defunct title Cheeky Weekly in February 1980. However, most readers of the time would have known that Whoopee! had assimilated some strips from another failed comic, Wow!, because that title had been getting second billing on the cover since July 1983. The aforementioned 6 refugee features from the toothy funster's comic had all survived the Wow! merger, though Cheeky's strip had been reduced to single row of panels and 6 Million Dollar Gran had undergone a major refashioning to become the lead character in a strip called Gran's Gang. Nevertheless the fact that all the Cheeky strips which transferred to Whoopee! had managed, in one form or another, to withstand the vicissitudes of the contracting British comics industry for a period of 4 years after Cheeky Weekly's demise (at the time to which I'm referring - some Cheeky Weekly characters would survive considerably longer) is rather remarkable. Not only that, but a new strip based on Calculator Kid, entitled Calculator Corner, had been introduced after the Cheeky Weekly merger, and was still appearing as 1984 commenced.

The page below is from Whoopee and Wow! dated 21 January 1984.

TV Quiz Kids was one of the highlights of Whoopee and Wow! at this time. Devised and drawn by the ever-inventive J Edward Oliver, the strip affectionately spoofed a different TV quiz show each week. The page above took as its inspiration Anglia TV's Sale of the Century, the self-styled 'quiz of the week' from Norwich, presented at the time by Nicholas Parsons.

16 comic characters from the Whoopee and Wow! crew of the time were depicted as quiz contestants, 5 of whom were Cheeky Weekly survivors. Stage School was the only ex-Cheeky Weekly strip not to be represented on the page, despite at this point having the honour of appearing on pages 2 and 3 of Whoopee and Wow! each week. Stage School's absence from Wail of the Century may have been because it was an ensemble piece and therefore had no real lead character to represent it.

Somewhat surprisingly, bumbling blockhead Paddywack provides the correct answer to his question. It's less surprising that Gran gets her question right as she has a computer brain (despite her robotic nature no longer being apparent in Whoopee and Wow! by this stage).

6 Million Dollar Gran's electronic brain
Cheeky Weekly 06 May 1978
Art: Ian Knox

Fluffing their questions and letting the Cheeky side down are the toothy funster himself, Mustapha Million and, in another shock, Calculator Kid who evidently wasn't allowed to confer with his silicon-chipped sidekick.

Of the 11 remaining regular characters, only 2 have the correct answer, so I make that a win for team Cheeky whose members had a success rate of 40% with their answers, whereas the combined brainpower of characters originating in Whoopee and/or Wow!, despite their greater numbers, can only achieve a paltry 18.18% correct responses. I know they're severely hampered by having Frankie Stein on their team, but shame on you, Bookworm and Bleep.

Another J Edward Oliver version of Cheeky can be seen here.

 

Whoopee welcomes Wow! (and loses its exclamation mark)

In February 1980 an ailing Cheeky Weekly, having notched up 117 issues, finally succumbed to the increasing burden of reprints and fillers, and was merged into IPC stablemate Whoopee! Inevitably, some of the strips which had featured in the toothy funster's comic were consigned to comics oblivion, but a select few managed, in a kind of comics version of survival of the fittest, to shoulder their way into the amalgamated titles.

Comic merges of this kind, where the most popular strips from a title whose circulation had fallen to unsustainable levels were shoehorned into a more successful comic, were a common occurrence in the early 1980s. Initially the cover of the amalgamated comic would carry the stronger comic's title above the name of the comic it had absorbed, but usually the secondary title would eventually be quietly dropped from the cover in readiness for any further merges that may ensue (assuming the comic was not itself absorbed into another title).

The final issue of Whoopee! to include a reference on the front cover to the Cheeky title was that dated 25 July 1981.

Veteran Whoopee! readers were therefore probably not surprised to learn at the end of June 1983 that their comic was about to consume another IPC funny paper, Wow!

All the Cheeky Weekly characters that survived
the merge into Whoopee! had continued to feature
in the combined comic, and all made the transition
into Whoopee and Wow!
However, in the move, some fared better than others.

Wow!'s publication history spanned issues dated 05 June 1982 to 25 June 1983, a life just half as long as that of Cheeky Weekly. This was probably a symptom of the increasingly harsh economic realities that confronted British comics as the 80s progressed; any under-performing titles were culled much more swiftly.

As mentioned earlier, when a merge occurred it was necessary for each title to drop their less popular strips in order to accommodate the best-performing features in the combined comic. Remarkably, however, all the strips that had transferred from Cheeky Weekly in its merge into Whoopee! also survived the absorption of Wow!

The first combined issue of Whoopee and Wow!, dated 02 July 1983, included the following strips that had originated in Cheeky Weekly;

• Stage School (still a 2-page feature and now promoted to pages 2 and 3)
• 6 Million Dollar Gran (now undergoing her second reboot in a strip titled Gran's Gang, but reduced from 2 pages to 1)
• Paddywack (a single row, 3-panel strip)
• Cheeky (ignominiously reduced to a single row on the Quick Strips page. Cheeky's strip had initially been 4 pages per week at the time of the merge with Whoopee! but had slowly been reduced until it was one page a week just prior to the merge with Wow!)
• Mustapha Million (still a 2-pager but demoted from pages 2 and 3 to 28 and 29)
• Calculator Kid (remaining a single pager)

Calculator Kid's spin-off strip, Calculator Corner, which had appeared after Cheeky Weekly merged into Whoopee!, also continued after the Wow! merge.

Representatives of all the ex-Cheeky Weekly strips could be found on the cover of the first combined Whoopee and Wow!, heading from the Whoopee Office towards a somewhat meagre celebratory feast considering the number of guests. Cheeky's peripheral position on the cover accurately reflected the reduced circumstances in which he now found himself.

Joining the combined comic from Wow! was Frank McDiarmid's 2-pages-per-week Boy Boss.

Evidently IPC felt an abundance of exclamation marks on its comic covers was something to be avoided, so Whoopee! lost the ! it had sported since its inception.