Cheeky Weekly Star Guests in Whizzer and Chips (part 4)

By week seven of IPC's 1979 Star Guest promotion, the dispersal of Cheeky Weekly Star Guests among the participating titles had settled into a regular pattern – odd-numbered weeks of the promotion saw representatives of the toothy funster's comic making visits to Whizzer and Chips, while Whoopee! hosted visitors from our grinning pal's title on even-numbered weeks.

Thus in the promotion's seventh week it was no surprise to find Cheeky Weekly guest stars appearing in Whizzer and Chips, but maybe the choice of strip is a little unexpected, because it's Why, Dad, Why?, the strip which made a Star Guest appearance in the previous week's Whoopee!.

WDW was on something of a roll at this time as, in addition to appearing as a  Star Guest for the second consecutive week, over in the edition of Cheeky Weekly sharing the same cover date as the issue of Whizzer and Chips from which the page below is taken, Dad and Son were for the only time promoted to the cover of the Mystery Comic.

Whizzer and Chips 12 May 1979
Art: John Geering

Unlike the WDW episode chosen for the strip's visit to the previous week's Whoopee!, which was less than emphatic in setting out the feature's premise, the story above highlights Son's incessant questioning, and Dad makes clear in panel four his views on this aspect of his offspring's personality. This could suggest that the page was specifically produced for use as a Star Guest rather than being selected from work intended for Cheeky Weekly (this strip was new and never appeared in the toothy funster's title). Thanks to research by Stephen Archer, I now know that this WDW episode was, like all the WDW stories featured in the Cheeky titles, based on a script originally written for the feature of the same name which ran in Whizzer and Chips in the early 1970s. However John Geering redrew the tales that featured in Cheeky Weekly, as well as this Star Guest outing, whereas the original Whizzer and Chips run was illustrated by Manny Curtis. This particular WDW episode is based on a script originally used in Whizzer and Chips dated 25 September 1971, and was not seen in any of the Cheeky titles.

The caption at the foot of the page advises Whizz-Kids and Chip-Ites that further father-and-son fun can be had in Cheeky Weekly (the comic had already received a plug in panel five). Any Whizzer and Chips readers who weren't deterred by the violence depicted in this strip and were keen to enjoy more knockabout larks of a similar nature had the opportunity (if they commenced reading our grinning pal's comic with the 12 May 1979 issue) to read a further 29 episodes before Cheeky Weekly expired and Why, Dad, Why? went into retirement.