Welcome to the Cheeky Weekly blog!


Welcome to the Cheeky Weekly blog!
Cheeky Weekly ™ REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, COPYRIGHT ©  REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED was a British children's comic with cover dates spanning 22 October 1977 to 02 February 1980.

Quick links...
Basic Stats
Cheeky Weekly Index - Cheeky Annuals and Specials Index
Cheeky Weekly Artist Index
Features by Number of Appearances
Cheeky Weekly Timeline
Major Characters from the Cheeky pages
Features Ordered by Date of Commencement

*** ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT ©  REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used with permission. ***
*** CHEEKY WEEKLY, KRAZY, WHOOPEE!, WHOOPEE, WOW!, WHIZZER AND CHIPS and BUSTER ARE ™ REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, COPYRIGHT ©  REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ***
Thanks for reading the blog.

Wednesday 31 July 2013

Whoopee! Star Guests now received

Many thanks to Irmantas, author of the highly-recommended Kazoop blog, who has very kindly sent me scans of the Cheeky Weekly Star Guest pages which appeared in Whoopee! between April 07 and 28 July 1979.

I'll be posting the scans in due course.

Sunday 28 July 2013

The Cut-Out Features - Crack-A-Joke Game


Cheeky Weekly dated 26 August 1978 carried news of a cut out games promotion that would feature across their humour titles as from the following week. This promotion, which also promised prizes from toy manufacturer Marx (who themselves were promoting their new line of Lone Ranger figures), was timed to coincide with the end of the school summer holidays and the prospect of the nights closing in. I would guess that comic sales traditionally fell off during the summer as some erstwhile readers forsook comic consumption in favour of outdoor actvities, so publishers IPC hoped not only to recoup those who had strayed, but also encourage a regular comic-buying habit in those who had been lured into purchasing an unfamiliar title just to get the game or enter the competition.

Different games appeared in each of the participating titles. In keeping with its gag-oriented nature, Cheeky Weekly was host to the Crack-A-Joke Game, which appeared in the comic over 4 weeks from 02 September 1978 to 23 September 1978. It was a board game based around the Saturday morning pictures element of Cheeky's Week which ran in the comic from the first issue until that dated 02 December 1978. Players competed to be the first to reach the cinema, but matters were complicated by having to collect and dispose of question and answer cards.

The first issue to contain elements of the game featured half of the board on the centre pages, together with 12 of the associated cards on the back cover. In the following issue, the remaining half of the board occupied the middle of the comic, and a further batch of 12 cards were printed on the back page. A week later another dozen cards featured on page 16 (the right-hand half of the centre spread). The final elements of the game, consisting of a further 12 cards on page 17, together with the all-important and quite complex instructions on page 22 (located safely away from the cards so that cutting them up didn't deprive readers of the rules).

The likenesses of Cheeky and pals included on the board and the cards were all drawn by Barrie Appleby.

The left side of the board was printed on the centre pages
of Cheeky Weekly dated 02 September 1978, and the
right side in the same location the following week.

The confusion over 6 Million Dollar Gran's relationship to Cheeky's universe, which originally arose in a Skateboard Squad strip in the 04 February 1978 issue, continues with this game, where the synthetic senior citizen is included among the Krazy Town characters whom players encounter as they move around the board. In Cheeky's universe Gran was a character in a TV show.

Cheeky Weekly 02 September 1979 -
back cover.
09 September 1978 - back cover

16 September 1978 - page 16

23 September 1978 - page 17

23 September 1978 - page 22

Also lost to posterity - comics that had been cannibalised in order to assemble the game would be depriving future comic historians of...

  • 02 September 1978 - Page 15 (Wednesday), Page 18 (What's New, Kids), Page 31 (Saturday conclusion, Teacher's Teasers answers, Game Part Two Next Week!)
  • 09 September 1978 - Page 15 (Wednesday), Page 18 (Silly Snaps page 1 of 2), Page 31 (Saturday conclusion, Sorry Pals (price increase next week), Two Pin-Up Pics next week, Ad for Soccer Monthly first issue)
  • 16 September 1978 - Page 15 (Wednesday)
  • 23 September 1978 - Page 18 (What's New, Kids), Page 21 (Mustapha Million page 2 of 2)

Tuesday 23 July 2013

Mr. Hill - Bob or Gordon?

Some time back, when I was preparing this Other Cheeky Artists post, I needed to find the artist's first name. I recognised his style, which I mainly associate with the Super Store strip from Whizzer and Chips (although more relevant to this blog was his work on The Krazy Gang which he took over from Ian Knox in issue 48 of Krazy and continued to draw after Krazy folded and the strip transferred into Whizzer and Chips), and knew his surname was Hill because he sometimes signed his work as 'Mr. Hill'. I did a search and found this page, which suggests his first name was Bob, as does this.

However, I have subsequently seen him referred to as Gordon Hill by a number of people who are far more knowledgeable than I am in the field of British humour comics. Here are a couple of examples;

Peter Gray, whose blog is one of my go-to sources of British comic artist info has this;

http://petergraycartoonsandcomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/happy-easter-from-whizzer-and-chips.html

(note the Mr.Hill signature on the Krazy Gang poster in the above link)

George over at Wacky Comics posted this, and it looks as though, despite having a wealth of knowledge of British artists, George was originally also confused about the name of the artist in question - see the comment from Andy Boal, whose knowledge of British comic artists is extensive, at the foot of the page...

http://www.wackycomics.com/2013/02/this-week-in-1978-whizzer-and-chips.html

Yet Lew Stringer who is without doubt one of the most knowledgeable members of the British comic community refers to the artist as Bob here;

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/this-week-in-1989-buster.html

And just to confuse things further, Peter Gray also has this...

http://petergraycartoonsandcomics.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Bob%20Hill

Does anybody know definitively which is the correct first name of the Super Store/Krazy Gang Mr Hill?

UPDATE: Many thanks to Irmantas who has confirmed in his comment below that according to Denis Gifford, this artist's name was Bob Hill.

Having revived fond memories in the course of investigating this comic conundrum, I thought I'd treat myself to a look at the very first Super Store strip (I hope readers of this blog will allow me to go a little off-topic here), and I embarked on a trawl through my Whizzer and Chips collection to locate it. I'd forgotten that Super Store was one of the winners of Whizzer and Chips' Comedy Choice feature, in which six new strips were tried out in the issues dated 29 May to 03 July 1976, and at the end of the series readers were invited to rank the prospective features in order of preference. This wasn't the first time this idea had been used in IPC's comics.

W&C's editor engendered a friendly rivalry between those readers who preferred the contents of Whizzer (who were dubbed Whizz-Kids) and those whose tastes gravitated more towards the features in Chips (Chip-ites). It wasn't revealed when the voting coupon was printed that two strips were going to get a regular slot in the comic. The winners were announced in Whizzer and Chips dated 11 September 1976. Chip-ites who had listed Super Store as their top strip would have been disappointed to find the following week their strip of choice had been allocated to the Whizzer section.

It was never revealed which of the two winners garnered the most points.

Art on all the Super Store strips below is by 'Mr' Hill.

The first appearance of Super Store,
Whizzer and Chips 12 June 1976

Whizzer and Chips 10 July 1976

Whizzer and Chips 11 September 1976

Super Store's first appearance in its own right.
Whizzer and Chips 18 September 1976

Aside from the artwork, it's hard to see the appeal of the strip in that first Super Store appearance on 12 June 1976 - the tone of the story differs quite markedly from those I remember from later in the run. Certainly the 'store which sells everything' element of classic Super Store is present, but the other appealing aspect of the later strips - the fact that nothing retailed at more than a few pence - is absent. While the bogus customer is certainly out to cause a bit of mischief, does he really deserve having £300.00 (the equivalent of almost £2000.00 today) extracted forcibly, not to mention the physical assault? Maybe readers wanted to see more sham shoppers get their comeuppance but, as if to atone for the brutal treatment of their first visitor, Uncle Rich and Willoughby give away a human chess set with real horses to another cocky customer in the first episode of the series proper.

Friday 19 July 2013

The pages - The centre spread (pages 16 and 17)

The presence of colour on pages 16 and 17 (the centre pages of a 32 page comic) made them second only to the front cover in terms of prestige. Cheeky Weekly's centre spread was most regularly host to features that occupied two pages per week. For this reason, unlike previous pages posts in which I have concentrated on the history of a single page, this time I'm considering the contents of pages 16 and 17 to constitute a single entity - the centre spread.

Pin-Up Pal posters occupied the centre pages of the first 3 issues of Cheeky Weekly. These posters, the only ones in the Pin-Up Pal series to fill 2 pages, were printed sideways in order that readers who were so inclined could, after carefully opening the staples and removing the centre sheet, rotate it through 90 degrees and end up with a 'portrait' style poster with which to adorn their bedroom wall.

From issue 4, Creepy Sleepy Tale (always accompanied by the related Wednesday conclusion so for brevity any further mentions of Creepy Sleepy Tale can be assumed to include its inseparable companion strip) moved in to occupy the centre pages for 12 weeks. This included, in 31 December 1977's Christmas issue, a slight variant on the usual Creepy Sleepy Tale as instead of relating a spooky bedtime story, Cheeky escorted Baby Burpo to a scary pantomime.

Being one of the locations of colour printing within the comic, the centre pages were on several occasions appropriated for 'cut out and keep' promotions. The first such instance was Skateboard Snap which, atypically, did not span more than one week, but was self-contained in 04 February 1978's skateboard issue – printing the 48 snap cards in a single issue was achieved by using the back cover as well as the centre pages.

As things returned to normal in the wake of the special skateboard edition, Creepy Sleepy Tale was reinstated in the centre pages as of 11 February 1978, although this was one of two occasions on which CST was printed in blue and white on the centre pages rather than the normal full colour (or at least as 'full' as the rather basic newsprint comic printing process would allow). For some reason in that issue of Cheeky Weekly full colour was rationed to the front and back covers only.

CST went on to enjoy a 21 week centre spread run until 08 July 1978 when the Wednesday element of Cheeky's Week found itself on page 16 as a result of disruption due to the presence of the Buster Mini Comic featured on pages 9-12. One might have expected that the mini comics would have been printed in the centre of the host title. However the mini comics were presented on 4 Cheeky Weekly pages, each printed sideways and designed to be removed, folded in half and collated into a miniature and somewhat truncated version of the comic being promoted. In order to accurately reflect the colour covers of the guest comics, printing the cover on page 16 would mean readers leafing their way through Cheeky Weekly's pages in order would encounter what was intended to be the internal pages of the mini comic on page 15 before turning to page 16 to see the colour cover (I assume that arcane technicalities of the printing process precluded colour on page 15). The editor probably felt that this would be rather disconcerting for readers, so decided to shunt colour to page 9 and locate the mini comic cover there, then follow that with the mini comic contents on the following 3 pages. As the number of colour pages each week was strictly limited, reallocating colour elsewhere deprived the centre spread of its multi-hued nature. The shunting of the main Wednesday feature to page 16 meant the first CST page occupied page 17 that week.

Despite the presence of the Whizzer and Chips mini comic, the 01 July 1978 Creepy Sleepy Tale stayed on the centre pages because it was printed in blue and white (for the second time), presumably to bestow on it at least a smattering of colour.

Issues dated 15 and 22 July 1978, both exhibited symptoms of mini comic intrusion (Whoopee! and Mickey Mouse being the culprits). Thus in the 15 July 1978 issue page 16 hosted an ad placed by the Department of Transport (Sarah and Tim Learn the Green Cross Code) in colour, while the other side of the centre spread contained a black and white Wednesday. The 22 July 1978 comic (the final week of the mini comics promotion) saw Wednesday swap over to page 16 while the first page of Creepy Sleepy Tale appeared on page 17. Both centre spread pages that week were in black and white.

Following the conclusion of the 4-week mini comics campaign, colour resumed its rightful place on the centre spread and Creepy Sleepy Tale returned for 2 weeks before being displaced by Mustapha Million in the 12 and 19 August 1978 issues. It was probably the case that by this stage Creepy Sleepy Tale was falling out of favour with the editor, as it was very near the end of its run. Mustapha's stories were the only 2 pagers among Cheeky Weekly's humorous content at this stage, so he was the ideal replacement for CST.

The following week, 26 August 1978, in an act of mercy Creepy Sleepy Tale was allowed to expire in its old centre-page location. Creepy Sleepy Tale was the feature to appear most regularly in the middle of the comic, clocking up 35 centre spreads (36 if you include Creepy Pantomime), each one of course accompanied by a Wednesday (conclusion) at the foot of page 17.

In the next 2 issues the 'board' part of the first centre-pages multi-week cut-out game of Cheeky Weekly's run, the Crack-A-Joke Game, printed in colour, moved in. The following week the centre spread was composed of a set of Crack-A-Joke Game cards on page 16, with a Pin-Up Pal poster featuring Calculator Kid on the opposing side. The final issue to contain elements of the Crack-A-Joke Game was 23 September 1978, in which the only occurrence of a full-colour Wednesday shared the centre spread with the final batch of game cards.

The following week saw Cheeky Weekly undergo a major revamp which introduced the Mystery Comic into the middle section. Thus began Elephant on the Run's centre-spread tenure. However, 9 weeks later the comic suffered the effects of industrial action, and the number of pages were cut from 32 to 28 for 2 issues. In those truncated issues, pages 14 and 15 constituted the colour centre spread, so Elephant relocated there and was supplanted on page 16 by Mystery Boy in his only visit to the middle of the comic, and Disaster Des' first centre spread appearance on page 17 (02 December), and a page on which the Smurf competition appeared above an ad for Mickey Mouse comic opposite the Thursday element of Cheeky's Week (09 December 1978).

Deteriorating industrial relations at the printers resulted in the presses eventually grinding to a halt, and there followed 3 weeks in which Cheeky Weekly failed to appear. Returning to newsagents' shelves with the issue cover dated 06 January 1979, Elephant resumed his rightful place in the centre pages, only to be expelled in the following 4 issues by another cut-out promotion, the Friends of Cheeky Snap Game.

After the snap game concluded, Mustapha Million moved into the centre of the comic for 2 weeks, before Elephant began another run, this time of 5 weeks' duration. In 31 March 1979's issue the curious-kid-and-fulminating-father team from Why, Dad, Why? made the first of their 2 page 16 appearances, while the other half of the centre spread contained a knitting pattern enabling readers with the requisite skills (or access to a willing friend or adult suitably adept with the necessary implements) to generate a facsimile of the toothy funster's trademark striped jersey, complete with a C emblazoned on the front.

At this point publishers IPC evidently decided Cheeky Weekly had been unencumbered with a cut-out (or in this case, pull-out) promotional feature for far too long, so the first of four instalments of the Top Ten Poster appeared in the centre of the 07 April 1979 issue. Said poster consisted of a photo montage of TV, sport and pop stars. Evidently the somewhat rudimentary colour printing of IPC's comics, although suitable for cartoon strips, was unable to handle the subtleties of colour photos, so the poster elements were printed in murky black and grey tones, with orange borders and yellow caption boxes.

On 05 May 1979 Elephant briefly regained control of the centre pages, but the following issue saw Disaster Des on page 16 sharing the centre spread with a Star Guest appearance of Super Store from Whizzer and Chips on page 17.

3 weeks after the final part of the less-than-impressive Top Ten Poster, readers who had the inclination to dismember their comic were eagerly wielding their scissors in anticipation of the Cheeky Spotter Book of Town and Around (a kind of I-Spy clone), part of which occupied page 17 opposite an ad for Trebor Chews on page 16.

Our amnesiac elephant pal then enjoyed an all-too-brief 3 week centre page sojourn until Why, Dad, Why? returned to page 16 while opposite, readers were encouraged to get down and strut their funky stuff by following the cut-out instructions for the latest dancefloor craze (or so IPC hoped), the Cheeky Hustle.

Indefatigable Elephant then resumed his centre-spread run for 3 weeks, although in the middle of that run (30 June 1979, the final issue to feature The Mystery Comic as an entity in its own right) his story was reduced to a single page (16) while across the centre spread Disaster Des was enjoying a colour adventure.

The 14 July 1979 issue saw Green Cross Man return to the centre of the comic. Unlike his earlier appearance in which the road safety crusader was confined to page 16 only, this cautionary full-colour tale entitled Football Crazy occupied the whole of the centre spread.

Elephant was then back for 2 weeks, the second of which saw his story again reduced to a single page (16), with page 17 featuring a Calculator Kid story, the first time that Charlie Counter and his silicon sidekick had made it to the centre pages in strip form (they'd appeared on a poster in the 16 September 1978 comic). The following week the centre pages were again the home to two single-page stories – this time Disaster Des was on page 16 and Calculator Kid had crossed the staples onto page 17.

The toothy funster himself was then the subject of the Giant Cheeky Poster which appeared on the centre pages over the next four weeks, starting with his his feet in the first week, working up to his ears and cranium in the 08 September 1979 comic.

Middle-Eastern moneybags Mustapha Million paid another visit to the centre pages for one week, after which the showbiz wannabes of Stage School made their one and only bid for centre spread stardom.

Mustapha was back for one week, followed by Elephant, after which Mustapha enjoyed a 2-week centre spread run. There followed two issues in which the centre pages were shared by two single-page stories – the first comprising Calculator Kid and Why,Dad, Why?, and the second containing Disaster Des and Why, Dad, Why?

In the 10 November 1979 issue, Mustapha Million commenced a 7 week centre spread run, broken in Cheeky Weekly's 1979 Christmas issue dated 29 December, which featured Tub on page 16 (the only time our portly pal featured in the centre of the comic) and the front of a Christmas card to readers from Cheeky and some of his pals on page 17.

In the 05 January 1980 issue, as the comic entered its final few weeks, Mustapha Million began a 2-issue centre spread residency, which would end his appearances in the middle of the comic. Mustapha was the third most regular occupant of the centre pages, with a total of 17 2-page stories in the middle of the comic, plus of course his appearance on a Pin-Up Pal poster in Cheeky Weekly issue 2.

In the 19 January 1980 comic, Elephant made his final page 16 appearance, while across the page Disaster Des turned up on page 17 for the final time, and in the following issue the two strips swapped sides to make their final centre page appearances. Elephant on the Run was the second most regular story to appear in the centre pages, with 23 2-page stories and 3 single-pagers.

The middle of the final issue of Cheeky Weekly was home to Calculator Kid (page 16) and a Soggy the Sea Monster reprint from Shiver and Shake (page 17), both of which were in colour - I'm guessing the Soggy strip was coloured specifically for its appearance in the middle of Cheeky Weekly, and originally appeared in black and white in Shiver and Shake.

In the table below, 1/2 denotes that the element in question is the first of 2 in a single issue, 2/2 means it's the second of two elements etc. Absence of such an indicator means the element appeared on only one page in a particular issue.

Count of Elements (or distinct combinations thereof) appearing on Pages 16 and 17 

Contents of centre pages (16 + 17) Total
Creepy Sleepy Tale 1/2 + Creepy Sleepy Tale 2/2\Wednesday (conclusion) 35
Elephant On The Run 1/2 + Elephant On The Run 2/2 23
Mustapha Million 1/2 + Mustapha Million 2/2 17
Giant Cheeky Poster 1/2 + Giant Cheeky Poster 2/2 4
Snap Game 1/2 + Snap Game 2/2 4
Top Ten Poster 1/2 + Top Ten Poster 2/2 4
Pin-up pal 1/2 + Pin-up pal 2/2 3
Calculator Kid + Why, Dad, Why? 2
Crack-A-Joke Game 1/3 + Crack-A-Joke Game 2/3 2
Elephant On The Run + Disaster Des 2
Wednesday + Creepy Sleepy Tale 1/2 2
Advertisement: Department of Transport + Advertisement: Department of Transport 1
Advertisement: Department of Transport + Wednesday 1
Advertisement: Trebor + The Cheeky Spotter Book of Fun 1/2 1
Calculator Kid + Soggy the Sea Monster 1
Crack-A-Joke Game + Pin-up pal 1/2 1
Creepy Pantomime 1/2 + Creepy Pantomime 2/2\Wednesday (conclusion) 1
Disaster Des + Calculator Kid 1
Disaster Des + Elephant On The Run 1
Disaster Des + Star Guest 1
Disaster Des + Why, Dad, Why? 1
Elephant On The Run + Calculator Kid 1
Mystery Boy + Disaster Des 1
Skateboard Snap 1/3 + Skateboard Snap 2/3 1
Smurfs competition\Advertisement: IPC + Thursday 1
Stage School 1/2 + Stage School 2/2 1
Tub + Christmas Card 1/2 1
Wednesday + Crack-A-Joke Game 1/2 1
Why, Dad, Why? + Cheeky Hustle 1/2 1
Why, Dad, Why? + Cheeky's Jersey Pattern 1/2 1

Monday 15 July 2013

Space Family Robinson update

I'm grateful to Russ Juckes who has provided the name of the first artist to draw Space Family Robinson. I've updated the SFR post here, and also the Cheeky Weekly Artist Index, the Artist Key and the Cheeky Weekly Index.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Star Guests in Whizzer and Chips - Calculator Kid

A run of Star Guest appearances began in Whizzer and Chips with Krazy Comic (WCK) dated 31 March 1979, the same cover date on which Cheeky Weekly began featuring Star Guests from Whoopee! and Whizzer and Chips.

One might have expected the toothy funster himself to have kicked off the promotional foray into WCK since his pages dominated Cheeky Weekly, but in fact the strip chosen to represent the title in WCK's inaugural Star Guest strip of the 1979 run was Calculator Kid. What this says about IPC's view of the relative popularities of Cheeky and Calculator Kid, if anything, is open to conjecture.

Whizzer and Chips 31 March 1979
Art: Terry Bave
I love how the cat goes from sublime serenity
in one panel to sheer terror in the next

This particular Calculator Kid tale never appeared in Cheeky Weekly and it would seem that, rather than being a page produced for Cheeky Weekly which was then appropriated for the Star Guest series, the set was specially prepared with a view to being used in WCK - the area covered by the artwork was slightly smaller than a usual Cheeky Weekly strip to allow space for the promotional caption at the foot of the page. It was evidently felt that the premise for the strip was simple enough to require no introduction for the benefit of those unfamiliar with it (unlike certain of the strips featured in Star Guest in Cheeky weekly - see link in first paragraph above).

Calculator Kid appeared in Cheeky Weekly as normal in the same week that he made this appearance in WCK.

In the same way that the Star Guest run in Cheeky Weekly saw characters from Whoopee! alternating each week with characters normally to be found in WCK, Star Guest in WCK was comprised of Cheeky Weekly regulars alternating with a selection of their counterparts from Whoopee! The week after the strip shown above, the Star Guests in WCK were affluent agrarians the Bumpkin Billionaires.

The 1979 WCK run of Star Guest came to an end in the issue dated 28 July 1979 (with a return appearance by the Bumpkins), the same week in which Cheeky Weekly's Star Guest run came to a conclusion.

More from the Cheeky Weekly Star Guests in WCK soon.

Wednesday 3 July 2013

Whoopee! collectors - can you help?

UPDATE 31 July 2013 - Irmantas, author of the Kazoop blog, has very kindly provided me with scans of all the Cheeky Star Guests in Whoopee! - thanks!

I will shortly be posting the Cheeky Weekly strips which appeared during the Star Guest promotion that ran in Whizzer and Chips from 31 March to 28 July 1979. During that run in Whizzer and Chips, Star Guest presented strips from Cheeky Weekly alternating with characters usually to be found in Whoopee!

I don't have any copies of Whoopee! from that period, but I'm assuming it also ran a Star Guest promotion featuring characters from Cheeky Weekly and Whizzer and Chips. Can anyone confirm that this was the case?

If my assumption is correct, and you can provide scans of the Cheeky Weekly Star Guests that appeared in Whoopee! (either posted on your own blog, which I'll link to from here, or via the email address above and I'll post them here with acknowledgments) I'd be extremely grateful.

I've seen a couple of Busters from this period and they didn't have Star Guests - from the evidence available to me it seems that Buster never participated in Star Guest as either guest or host. If anyone knows different, please get in touch.

Thanks!

Monday 1 July 2013

Cheeky Weekly cover date 17 March 1979

Art: Mike Lacey
For the second week running the Cheeky's Week...Sunday strip occupies the whole of the front cover beneath the comic title, but this time an extra panel has been added to allow us to fully appreciate the edifying sight of a traumatised Granny Gumdrop ejecting her dentures.


















In her story this week a sympathetic 6 MillionDollar Gran, seeing the Potts kids struggling with their homework, attempts to find the answers to the questions they've been set.


The synthetic senior citizen's over-enthusiastic efforts at supplying the solutions have predictable results.


Gran undergoes a 'Bionic Blush', which is a little puzzling as in the first issue of Cheeky Weekly it was clearly established that she is a robot. Young Pete Potts is seen in the closing panel having put aside a copy of Cheeky, which is missing the 'Weekly' from its title.

There are more comics on view in the Calculator Kid story. This episode, culminating as it does with Charlie receiving some cash plus a pile of comics and 2 days off school in which to read them, couldn't fail to appeal to Cheeky Weekly readers. Most kids would probably prefer a bag of sweets instead of the basket of fruit but you can't have everything.


There's an interesting juxtaposition of ads on page 8 –  I wonder how the marketing department of AA Hales Ltd (UK agents for North Pacific Flyers) will feel when they see their ad below one which offers a free flyer to readers of IPC's new adventure comic Tornado, due to breeze into newsagents next week. Admittedly the Turbo Flyer to be given away with Tornado issue 1 looks rather basic, but it still must be rather galling for Hales to have their ad sharing a page with news of a free flying toy. IPC had another half page ad for one of their titles, Mickey Mouse, on page 29 so maybe it would have been more considerate of them to have swapped their ads' locations. This was the first North Pacific ad to appear in Cheeky Weekly, and they placed ads in a further 4 issues during Cheeky Weekly's run, so evidently they weren't too upset by the placement of their debut ad.


This week's Tuesday page features the final appearance by Krazy Town's long-suffering paper purveyor Newsvendor.

Art: Mike Lacey

TV addict Square-Eyes is the subject of The Burpo Special, then returns on Wednesday to hand Cheeky a copy of The Mystery Comic.

The Disaster Des strip is absent from this week's Mystery Comic, but there is a spot-the-difference puzzle featuring the calamity-causing kid. According to Cheeky's column on the Chit-Chat letters page, the DD spot-the-difference page very nearly failed to appear.


This week's Pin-Up Pal back cover poster features the Cinema Commissionaire, who hasn't actually appeared in the comic since the 02 December 1978 issue which was the final occasion on which Cheeky was seen at the Saturday morning picture show.

Mike Lacey provides 9 Cheeky's Week elements in this issue, with Frank McDiarmid delivering the Burpo Special and poster.

Cheeky Weekly Cover Date: 17-Mar-1979, Issue 71 of 117
PageDetails
1Cheeky's Week - Art Mike Lacey
2Sunday - Art Mike Lacey
36 Million Dollar Gran - Art Ian Knox
46 Million Dollar Gran - Art Ian Knox
56 Million Dollar Gran - Art Ian Knox
6Monday - Art Mike Lacey
7Calculator Kid - Art Terry Bave
8Ad: IPC 'Tornado No 1' 1 of 2 \Ad: North Pacific Flyers (first appearance)
9Tuesday - Art Mike Lacey
10Paddywack - Art Jack Clayton
11The Burpo Special 'Square Eyes' - Art Frank McDiarmid
12Wednesday - Art Mike Lacey
13Tub 'Mystery Comic' 20 of 34 - Art Nigel Edwards
14Disaster Des spot the difference (single appearance) - Art Mike Lacey (single art on feature)
15Mystery Boy reprint from Whizzer and Chips 'Mystery Comic' 22 of 37 - Art John Richardson
16Elephant On The Run 'Mystery Comic' 21 of 34 - Art Robert Nixon
17Elephant On The Run 'Mystery Comic' 21 of 34 - Art Robert Nixon
18Mustapha Million 'Mystery Comic' 21 of 34 - Art Joe McCaffrey
19Mustapha Million 'Mystery Comic' 21 of 34 - Art Joe McCaffrey
20Why, Dad, Why? 'Mystery Comic' 17 of 28 - Art John K. Geering
21Tease Break
22Thursday - Art Mike Lacey
23Skateboard Squad - Art Jimmy Hansen
24Joke-Box Jury
25Friday - Art Mike Lacey
26Menace of the Alpha Man reprint from Shiver and Shake - Art Eric Bradbury
27Menace of the Alpha Man reprint from Shiver and Shake - Art Eric Bradbury
28Chit-Chat
29Ad: IPC 'Mickey Mouse' 12 of 18
30Saturday - Art Mike Lacey
31Saturday - Art Mike Lacey
32Pin-up pal 'The Commissionaire' - Art Frank McDiarmid


Cheeky's Week Artists Cover Date 17-Mar-1979
Artist Elements
Mike Lacey9
Frank McDiarmid1