Whizzer and Chips - The Cheeky Raids part 54

New readers start here... After Cheeky Weekly folded and was incorporated into Whoopee as of February 1980 six strips that had originated in the toothy funster's title survived the merge and continued to appear in the amalgamated comic. Whoopee itself foundered in March 1985 and was merged into Whizzer and Chips. Three of the surviving Cheeky Weekly strips successfully negotiated this second merge and went on to appear in the newly combined publication, rather inelegantly titled 'Whizzer and Chips now including Whoopee'. The survivors were Mustapha Million, Calculator Kid and (appearing only twice) Stage School. Cheeky continued to appear, but as a member of The Krazy Gang, who had moved into W&C when Krazy, the comic in which the Gang originated, expired in April 1978. However, the Krazy Gang's Whizzer and Chips run ended in the issue dated 08 February 1986. Calculator Kid survived a little longer, his run of reprints coming to an end in the 26 July 1986 edition and leaving Mustapha Million as the sole Cheeky Weekly survivor.

When I embarked on this Whizzer and Chips - The Cheeky Raids series almost 10 years ago, the task of identifying the sneaky Whizz-kids and sly Chip-ites who were traversing the boundaries into each other’s territory was easy - if I failed to uncover the infiltrators myself I could always consult the following week’s comic because in the issues published during the major part of the period under investigation, the culprits would make themselves known 7 days after perpetrating their clandestine incursions. However, Whizzer and Chips dated 30 July 1988 was the final issue to adhere to this 'owning up' tradition, and in fact all raiding (barring some reprinted strips that had originally included raiders) was suspended until new raids (although only one per week) resumed in Whizzer and Chips dated 12 August 1989. Unfortunately for those such as myself who are trying to document the raids (or at least the Cheeky-related raids in my case), the practise of naming the interlopers did not resume. Just to make things doubly difficult, the 23 September 1989 issue saw weekly reciprocal raids return, again without any subsequent disclosure although readers were warned each week, by means of captions on the Sid's Whizz-kids and Shiner's Chip-ites pages, to be vigilant for interlopers.

I find the cessation of the admissions of culpability to be rather puzzling, as surely it was an incentive to readers, or at least those whose powers of observation were lacking, to buy the following week's issue.

So despite my promise (threat?) in April 2020, in the 53rd part of my Cheeky Raids series, that 'more raiding fun' would ensue 'soon', there have in fact been no further instalments. Until now. I have determined that I will bring the series to a conclusion, and be honest about the instances where I have been unable to identify a raider, for such there have been.

The raid I documented in the preceding, almost 4-year-old, post in this series gave details of the cross-border forays undertaken in Whizzer and Chips dated 28 October 1989. I have been able to identify raiders in the following week's edition, but they need not concern us here as neither is Cheeky-related.

However, I am having some difficulty with the edition dated 11 November 1989. The raider into Whizzer is undoubtedly Terry Bave's jungle bungler Tarman, who has apparently relocated from his steamy equatorial habitat to a Whizztown park and can be observed peering gormlessly over some shrubbery in the background of a panel of the Sid's Snake strip.

Art: Mike Lacey

Notable in this issue are the likenesses of Mustapha Million and Calculator Kid (both of whom are of course denizens of Chips) on Sid's page. They're among the characters drawn by creditably non-partisan reader David Dawson of Rochford, Essex, whose subjects are selected from both the Whizzer and Chips factions. However, these contributions from a reader clearly cannot be considered as raids.

 

The presence of Calculator Kid among the comic cavalcade delineated by young David puzzles me somewhat since Charlie Counter's final weekly Whizzer and Chips appearance was in the issue dated 26 July 1986, over 3 years before this submission was published. I initially thought that the contribution from the youthful Rochford artist may have been languishing somewhere in either the postal system or the Fleetway offices for some years, but the presence of Scouse Mouse, who was absorbed into Whizzer and Chips with effect from the issue dated 15 April 1989, disproves this theory. I then wondered whether David had seen Calculator Kid reprints in an issue of The Best of Whizzer and Chips Monthly, but as far as I know CK's 'Best Of' appearances were restricted to the Whoopee collections, so our enthusiastic artist pal wouldn't have made the connection between Charlie and Calc and Whizzer and Chips if his only knowledge of the characters resulted from reading Best of Whoopee Monthly. Unfortunately I know very little about the publication history and contents of Fleetway's non-title-specific reprint collections such as Funny Monthly or BVC, so although I suspect Calculator Kid could well have appeared in them, I have no knowledge of when those supposed appearances occured, nor am I aware whether there was any indication of their title of origin. Did Master Dawson have access to some old weekly issues of Whizzer and Chips?

Mustapha Million was still appearing in Whizzer and Chips at the time, so his presence among the laughter luminaries populating David's artwork is understandable. Mustapha seems to be unhappy, possibly due to his proximity to Kid Comic who I believe was by this time something of a pariah among his Whizz-kid and Chip-ite colleagues due to his treachery (read on to discover more).

I now have to admit that, despite several trawls through its pages, I have been unable to identify a Whizz-kid raider in the Chips segment of this comic (just to remind you Whizzer and Chips dated 11 November 1989 is the edition currently under scrutiny). Spotting Kid Comic on Shiner's page made me consider for a moment that he was the raider, but on checking I discovered that KC had changed his allegiance from Whizzer to Chips as of the 13 May 1989 edition (and anyway Kid Comic's humorous exchange with Terry from the Supermum/Super Mum strip which began a series of reprinted (I assume) episodes in Whizzer and Chips dated 05 November 1988 (on that first occasion as an emergency replacement for Town Tarzan, whose strip, according to an accompanying footnote, had been lost in the post), concluding in the 02 September 1989 edition, seems entirely convivial).

 

The depiction of Whizz-kids on the cover of the Whizzer and Chips Annual on the above page is within an advertisement, thus putting those appearances beyond the scope of raids.

Since my goal in this series of posts is to identify raids involving ex-Cheeky Weekly characters, of whom only Mustapha Million was still appearing at this juncture, and having established that our young Arab Chip-ite chum was not the raider into Whizzer this particular week, I would only need to record a raid against this issue if it was Mustapha himself who had been intruded upon. Having subjected Mustapha's strip in this issue to particular scrutiny, I am fairly confident that he has not been raided, but having been unable to find a raider anywhere within Chips, I am not entirely sure that a sneaky Whizz-kid has not infiltrated Mustapha's story and evaded my raider radar, so I am placing the episode below as blog readers may have more visual acuity than my decrepit minces can muster. You'll notice that Mustapha's Cheeky-resemblant pal is among the characters, and the two autograph-collecting girls have similarities to Libby and Louise. The members of Dross are obviously based on popster trio Bros, and artist Frank McDiarmid does nice renditions of the band members. The script is a bit harsh on 'the other one'.

More raiding fun soon!

Whizzer and Chips Cover Date	Raider	Raided
06 April 1985	Mustapha Million	Super Steve
04 May 1985	Bloggs (Store Wars)	Mustapha Million
11 May 1985	Joker	The Krazy Gang (Cheeky)
18 May 1985	Calculator Kid & Calc	Odd-Ball
01 June 1985	Animalad Mustapha Million	The Krazy Gang (Cheeky) Boy Boss
08 June 1985	Odd-Ball	Calculator Kid
06 July 1985	Toy Boy	Calculator Kid
13 July 1985	Pa Bumpkin	The Krazy Gang (Cheeky)
27 July 1985	Joker	Mustapha Million
24 August 1985	Cheeky	Sid's Snake
14 September 1985	Odd-Ball Calculator Kid	Calculator Kid Store Wars
05 October 1985	Mustapha Million	Animalad
19 October 1985	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
23 November 1985	Sweeny Toddler Sweeny Toddler Sweeny Toddler	Calculator Kid The Krazy Gang (Cheeky) Mustapha Million
18 January 1986	Mustapha Million	Super Steve
25 January 1986	Odd-Ball Cheeky	Mustapha Million Odd-Ball
08 February 1986 The Krazy Gang ends this issue	Animalad	Mustapha Million
15 February 1986	Lazy Bones	Calculator Kid
15 March 1986	Odd-Ball	Calculator Kid
29 March 1986	Calculator Kid	Master P Brain
05 April 1986	Bumpkin Billionaires	Mustapha Million
12 April 1986	Animalad	Calculator Kid
31 May 1986	Lazy Bones	Calculator Kid
07 June 1986	Mustapha Million	Joker
28 June 1986	Sweet Tooth	Mustapha Million
26 July 1986 Calculator Kid ends this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue
16 August 1986	Mustapha Million	Joker
23 August 1986	Sweet Tooth	Mustapha Million
18 October 1986	Winnie the Royal Nag	Mustapha Million
06 December 1986	Toy Boy	Mustapha Million
13 December 1986	Mustapha Million	Odd-Ball
17 January 1987	Sid	Mustapha Million
14 February 1987	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
11 April 1987	Pa Bumpkin	Mustapha Million
25 April 1987	Mustapha Million	Odd-Ball
20 June 1987	Toy Boy	Mustapha Million
27 June 1987	Mustapha Million	Memory Banks
25 July 1987	Lazy Bones	Mustapha Million
22 August 1987	Winnie the Royal Nag	Mustapha Million
12 September 1987	Mustapha Million	Sweet Tooth
19 September 1987	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
24 October 1987	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
12 December 1987	Joker	Mustapha Million
13 February 1988	Bloggs (Store Wars)	Mustapha Million
20 February 1988	Mustapha Million	Joker
12 March 1988	Odd-Ball	Mustapha Million
23 April 1988	Joker	Mustapha Million
28 May 1988 Readers asked not to let their Whizz-kid or Chip-ite sympathies colour their favourite strip votes	No Cheeky-related raid this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue
11 June 1988	Slippy	Mustapha Million
16 July 1988	Toy Boy	Mustapha Million
30 July 1988 New raids halted
05 August 1989 (raid reprinted from 25 Aug 1984)	Cheeky	Store Wars
12 August 1989 Resumption of new raids (one per week)	No Cheeky-related raid this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue
02 September 1989	Joker	Mustapha Million
16 September 1989	Slippy	Mustapha Million
23 September 1989 Weekly reciprocal raids resume	No Cheeky-related raid this issue	No Cheeky-related raid this issue
28 October 1989	Mustapha Million Sweeny Toddler	Bobby's Ghoul Mustapha Million
11 November 1989 - Tarman is the Chip-ite raider into Whizzer, but I have been unable to identify any raider into Chips