The Disloyal Drollery of Kid Comic

Cheeky was not the only character among the roster of IPC's funny folk to specialise in the cracking of gags while sporting a jumper emblazoned (at least in his early appearances) with the letter K. The similarly attired junior japester was of course Kid Comic, who made his chortlesome debut in the first issue of Wow! in June 1982, telling readers, 'I'm going to be a comedian when I grow up, just like them! They're my heroes!', while indicating a selection of posters on his bedroom wall bearing the likenesses of those titans of titter-inducing TV, Basil Brush, Morecambe and Wise, Benny Hill and The Two Ronnies.

Following the cancellation of Wow! after just 56 editions, Kid Comic transferred, along with a select few fellow Wow!-ites, into Whoopee (which lost its own exclamation mark as a consequence). Kid Comic had a prestigious position on the cover of the first combined Whoopee and Wow!, seemingly leading the delegation of inductees at the head of the table around which the survivors of Wow! met their new Whoopee colleagues, and shaking hands with Whoopee's ever-beaming Smiler. KC continued a comedy career until making a final Whoopee appearance in the ultimate edition dated 30 March 1985. A number of his Whoopee colleagues transferred directly into Whizzer and Chips, the comic built around the conceit of being two 'comics in one'. Sadly, readers never discovered whether the aspiring comedian achieved his goal of attaining a showbiz career since, although the character was one of the few to actually age over the years, he hadn't reached adulthood by the point of the strip's termination.

 

KC's debut - Wow! 05 June 1982. Art: Martin Baxendale, as is the example below

The final original KC strip - Whoopee 30 March 1985

However, Kid Comic found himself resurrected, albeit in the form of reprints, in Whizzer and Chips dated 04 March 1989. In that issue his strip was located on page 25, thereby placing it within the Whizzer realm ruled over by serpent enthusiast Sid. The following 8 Kid Comic reprints occupied the same site, but as of the issue dated 13 May 1989, the KC reprints moved to page 23, which is within pugilist Shiner's Chips territory. All subsequent Kid Comic reprints (the final KC reprint appearing in the comic dated 07 April 1990) appeared in Chips.

I take no pleasure in exposing the turncoat, Whizzer/Chips boundary-crossing nature of Kid Comic's later career, but its relevance (beyond the two funsters' previously-discussed shared predilections for humorous badinage and common sartorial preferences) to my quest to document all things Cheeky-related will become apparent in my next post.

Whoopee - 1984, the year of the big issue (marginally boring opening section - feel free to skip)

As I near the end of my examination of Cheeky Weekly, I am now preparing for the next phase of this blog, which will be following the fortunes of that select band of strips that transferred into Whoopee following the cancellation of  Cheeky's comic.

You're probably aware that I built a database to record all the Cheeky Weekly data, and I use this to do various analyses about the comic. The database idea developed from my decision about nine years ago to scan all my issues of Cheeky Weekly as a kind of backup to the physical copies should anything happen to them. I began the Cheeky scanning process on 30 November 2009, with the aim of completing 2 issues per day, and finished on 07 March 2010. This process encompassed all 117 issues of the weekly comic (the summer/holiday specials being scanned between 13 and 22 August 2010), but not the annuals as I didn't want to damage them.

As I scanned each image I included in the filename the contents of that particular page, and the artist information. As I looked at the growing 'Cheeky Scans' folder on my laptop, I realised all that data could be mined and yield some interesting (to me, anyway) information, such as the number of strips drawn by a particular artist. I therefore developed a structured way of recording in the file name all the various nuggets of info about each page.

Initially my intention was to search through the filenames using Windows File Explorer to satisfy my curiosity about the comic's history, but I soon encountered the limitations of this approach. A further idea then emerged which was to design and build a database to accommodate the information, allowing much deeper analysis of the data. So I built the database then created some procedures that would read through all the filenames in the Cheeky Scans folder and distribute the data into the various database tables.

The Cheeky Weekly data was loaded, some more procedures written to do the analysis and generate the tables that you will be only too familiar with on this blog, and I tentatively entered the blogosphere with this humble offering on 26 June 2010.

But that wasn't the end of the scanning - 06 December 2013 saw me hunched once again over a steaming scanner and commencing to work through my Whoopee collection, which commences from the first Whoopee/Cheeky merged edition. This scanning project was more onerous than the Cheeky one, as there were 264 editions of Whoopee between its absorption of the toothy funster's comic and its own demise. The Whoopee scans were completed on 24 July 2015, and as I write this I realise I didn't scan the Whoopee specials, and I'm not even sure if I have them in my collection - will have to investigate.

In recent weeks my preparations for the Whoopee phase of this blog have involved doing some loads of the Whoopee data into a test instance of my comics database. I encountered some errors resulting from typos in the data (not surprising when you consider that the data relates to 8,462 Whoopee pages) which have now been corrected, but I'm pleased to say that my code for doing the data loads was found to be entirely bulletproof.

Now that figure of 8,462 Whoopee pages brings me to the real subject of this post. The mathematicians among you will of course be shouting 'Whoopee was a 32 page comic, and 8462/32 = 264.4375, so explain yourself at once, Mr Niblet'.  And indeed I was also puzzled as to how .4375 of a Whoopee could exist. Had I, in a frenzy of scanning, somehow entered duplicates of some pages? A quick delve into the data revealed that there were in the period in question 4 issues of Whoopee which exceeded the normal 32 pages;

Art: Tom Paterson

The first was 25 August 1984's 36-pager, which contained a 4-page flyer (or 'Extra 4-Page Pull-Out' as it styled itself) in its centre pages for football mag Shoot! which was evidently getting a big promotional push for the 1984/85 season.

Tom again

The next 32+ issue was the same year's 15 September edition which contained a new version of the flyer, still describing itself as an extra 4-page pull-out, which was a little fraudulent as the comic that week amounted to 34 pages and thus readers were actually 2 pages down on the deal.

Toy Boy: Terry Bave
Sweeny: Tom Paterson

The next issue to exceed 32 pages was 29 September 1984, which contained a 4-page flyer among its 36 pages, the design cheekily referencing The Sun newspaper.

You brainy readers will have calculated that the supposed 50 titles (although the first page of the flyer promises full details of 50 titles, only 30 are detailed - 29 pictured plus mention of David Bellamy who may have had an annual devoted to him although Wikipedia doesn't mention it in his bibliography) and million annuals equates to 20,000 of each, but maybe IPC weighted their print runs towards those they expected to be popular so, for example, there may have been fewer 321 Annuals than Buster (I know which I'd rather read, and the less said about the Jim'll Fix It annual the better). And why no mention of the mighty Whizzer and Chips and, for that matter, Whoopee? Pleasing, though, to see the Cheeky Annual listed second, after IPC's humour heavyweight, Buster.

Tom Paterson

Whoopee's final 36-page issue was that dated 20 October 1984, which contained a 4-page flyer for IPC's computer mag, Big K. Wikipedia tells us that the mag launched in April 1984 and survived for only a year (maybe not surprising for a publication whose name sounds more like a breakfast cereal than a hip guide to the latest tech).

1981 - A Cheeky Christmas part 5 (conclusion)

Next up in my examination of the 1981 festive escapades of those characters from Cheeky Weekly who continued to appear in Whoopee! is Paddywack.

Paddywack Art: Jack Clayton

I like Jack Clayton's depiction of the laughing party guests in the final panel.

The remaining survivors from Cheeky Weekly at this point were Charlie Counter and his battery-powered buddy, Calc. UK television viewers in 1981 had a choice of three channels (Channel 4 would launch in November 1982), most homes had only one TV and less than one in ten households had a video recorder. Thus the Christmas day televisual dilemma looming chez Counter was a familiar one to comic readers of the time.

Art: Terry Bave

I found this to be a rather sad ending as the Counter family withdrew to separate rooms on Christmas evening, but no doubt they all gathered again once their respective programmes had finished. Terry Bave furnishes his customary Christmas embellishments. Always good to see Charlie's dad's extraordinary moustache.

If I may, I'll close this look back at the Christmas 1981 edition of Whoopee! with a couple of non-Cheeky related strips. Actually, the first does in fact have a link to the toothy funster, since it's drawn by the mighty Frank McDiarmid. The Spectacular Adventures of Willie Bunk first appeared (as far as I know but see my observation later) in the debut issue of Whizzer and Chips in 1969, drawn by Frank. You can see that strip on Peter Gray's blog. To me, it seems that there's evidence of re-sizing of artwork on those Whizzer and Chips pages, so I'm wondering if that strip was in fact a reprint. Anyway, Wikipedia tells us that Willie's Whizzer and Chips adventures ended in that comic's 26 December 1970 issue. However, Frank brought Willie out of retirement to begin a new run of adventures in Whoopee! dated 12 September 1981, and Peter posted the first of that new series here.

Here's the lad with the magic glasses as he appeared in Whoopee! dated 26 December 1981...

Art: Frank McDiarmid

Frank's less cartoony style in evidence here works very well with this kind of story. As Peter mentions on his blog, the Bunk strips made use of spot colour to denote the fantasy sequences where readers shared the world that young Willie was experiencing through his glasses.

Coincidentally, Lew Stringer recently posted a similar 'owner of enchanted eyewear' character's Christmas episode, namely Billy Binns and his Wonderful Specs, from Boys World in 1963. 'Bins' is of course slang for spectacles; I've seen speculation that it's short for binoculars, or that it's Cockney rhyming slang based on the phrase 'bins and receptacles' which I can only imagine was a term used in relation to refuse collections in days gone by.

My final selection from this festive Whoopee! is the back cover's Smiler story. If you remember from the first part of my look at the issue in question, Shiner featured on the cover, so this page nicely rounds off the issue. I always enjoy Nick Baker's artwork, and on his strips featuring the ever-smiling little lad there's the bonus of the descriptions of the various 'beams' issuing from the hero's gob as the story progresses. We join the family just as they've polished off their festive slap-up feed...

Art: Nick Baker

 I hope your Christmas and New Year are suffused with 'beams'.

1981 - A Cheeky Christmas part 4

My trawl through the pages of Whoopee!'s 1981 Christmas issue in search of the Cheeky Weekly survivors now arrives at pages 18 and 19, occupied by a character called Robot Granny. This is of course the aged automaton who Friends of Cheeky first knew as 6 Million Dollar Gran. On her transfer to Whoopee!, Gran's strips were for some reason given a numerically-focused change of title and she appeared as $6000,000 Gran, occasionally reverting to her former title, as was the case in her final outing before being given a more radical re-titling as of Whoopee! dated 09 May 1981, in which the synthetic senior citizen's strips were re-branded Robot Granny (not the last time her strip would undergo a title change). This new stage in Gran's career saw her become a nanny employed by Lord and Lady Swankly to look after their kids at Rottenrich Hall, which is where we find her on Christmas Eve, 1981...

Whoopee! 26 December 1981
Art: Ian Knox

As it's Christmas I'm not going to complain at the two references to Gran being bionic. Her debut in Cheeky Weekly made it clear that she was a robot but despite this she was often described as bionic during her run in the toothy funster's comic. It's surprising that the mistake was still being made when such descriptions of her attributes contradicted the strip's new title

Gran's abilities suit her to the oft-used 'Helping Santa out of Trouble' plot.

1981 - A Cheeky Christmas part 3

This third installment of my look through the Christmas 1981 issue of Whoopee! in order to observe the seasonal adventures of our Cheeky Weekly pals who had survived the cancellation of their comic brings us to page 13's Christmas Quiz Time, a workout for Xmas-pud-addled brains that featured the toothy funster and his chums (including Paddywack who was for some reason absent from the cover of that festive edition). I have already posted about this page, so I'll direct you here for the full info.

Next up is Cheeky himself, now in somewhat reduced circumstances. Once he was the star of his own comic, and had begun his Whoopee! run with 5 pages a week, but Christmas '81 finds our grinning pal confined to a 2-page centre spread, and even then he has to share it with strips featuring his slimy sidekick and a bearded, jolly fellow who gets very busy at the end of December. Nevertheless Frank McDiarmid packs the space with a welter of Yuletide gags, as Cheeky meets a good number of his Krazy Town pals. Sadly there's no slap-up feed but the feature concludes with a nice sentiment courtesy of the man with the sleigh and reindeer.

Whoopee! 26 December 1981
Art: Frank McDiarmid

More from Whoopee! at Christmas '81 soon,

1981 - A Cheeky Christmas part 2

In the second part of this look back at the festive frolics of the survivors from Cheeky Weekly who continued to appear in Whoopee! at the end of 1981, our attention turns to Stage School, where the eternal battle between the juvenile showbiz wannabes and their resolutely anti-theatrical tutor shows no sign of letting up as the season of goodwill approaches...

Whoopee! 26 December 1981
Art: Robert Nixon

I always feel a bit cheated if a Christmas story doesn't end with a slap-up feed, and Robert Nixon (who does some great seasonal border work) furnishes a sizeable festive nosh-up, complete with steaming turkey. The Christmas truce ending is suitably heartwarming.

Another look back to Christmas '81 coming soon.

1981 - A Cheeky Christmas part 1

Art: Nick Baker

This issue of Whoopee!, the Christmas 1981 edition despite its Boxing Day cover date, features a Yuletastic cover by the great Nick Baker. Nick, who's probably most well known for drawing the ever-grinning little lad Smiler, endows the entire Whoopee! line-up of fun pals with Smiler-like 'beams' (well, apart from Frankie Stein). Mercifully, we are spared the full horror of Cheeky, whose gob could hardly accommodate a more fearsome set of gnashers than his own, with a mouthful of Smiler-alike dinner manglers, since the toothy funster is only seen in profile. However, Calculator Kid, Mustapha Million, Teacher and kids from Stage School and 6 Million Dollar Gran (survivors all from Cheeky Weekly which merged into Whoopee! when the toothy funster's comic ceased publication in February 1980) all get a dental upgrade.

Not seen on this cover is Paddywack, the other Cheeky Weekly survivor who continued to appear in Whoopee! at this stage.

Let's see what our mate Mustapha was up to as Christmas 1981 approached...

Art: Joe McCaffrey

Pity we don't get to see a slap-up feed at the end.

I'll be examining the 1981 festive doings of our other Cheeky Weekly pals soon.

Mergey Christmas

To get you into the seasonal spirit here's four pages of festive fun starring Cheeky, from the first Christmas issue of Whoopee! to hit the shops after it absorbed an ailing Cheeky Weekly in February 1980.

Whoopee! with Cheeky! 27 December 1980
Art: Frank McDiarmid

Cheeky Weekly Star Guest appearances in other comics - Conclusion

The 1979 run of IPC's trans-comic promotional tool, Star Guest, spanned 18 weeks. During this period, features from Cheeky Weekly made visits to Whizzer and Chips and Whoopee! on alternate weeks, as has been documented in earlier posts in this Star Guest series.

It has to be said that, when reviewing the whole run of Cheeky Weekly Star Guest appearances in the other titles, the decisions on the distribution of the strips between Cheeky Weekly's companion comics, the choice of features, and the weeks in which they were placed seem to be rather ill-considered, not to say chaotic.

Let's work through those features chosen to appear as Star Guests, in alphabetical order;

Calculator Kid appeared twice, both times in Whizzer and Chips! On the occasion of his 23 June 1979 outing to Whiz-kid and Chip-ite territory, Charlie and Calc were absent from the same week's issue of Cheeky Weekly! (not a little disappointing for any W&C readers who, having enjoyed Calc in their comic, returned to the newsagent and bought the same week's Cheeky Weekly expecting to partake of more fun with Charlie and his electronic pal).

Cheeky appeared 5 times; 3 times in Whoopee! and twice in Whizzer and Chips. As is only fitting, Cheeky was the most frequent Star Guest envoy to the other titles. The reason for the Whoopee! bias is unclear. One visit to each of the companion comics was composed of panels that had previously appeared in Cheeky Weekly, but with new gags. This allowed readers unfamiliar with the toothy funster's title to enjoy some Frank McDiarmid artwork. Frank was no doubt too busy to take on any Star Guest assignments, so Barrie Appleby provided his usual high standard of work on 3 Cheeky strips. Sadly, as each Star Guest appearance was limited to a single page, it wasn't possible to give a flavour of the weekly nature of Cheeky's adventures, The fact that there was no hint of the framing devices which were Cheeky Weekly's unique selling point was somewhat irrelevant as those devices were dispensed with by the time Star Guest concluded.

Disaster Des appeared once in Whizzer and Chips,and once in Whoopee! In the week of his Whoopee! appearance he was absent from Cheeky Weekly!

Elephant On The Run appeared once (in Whoopee!) and that week the feature was absent from Cheeky Weekly!

Mustapha Million appeared twice in Whoopee! and once in Whizzer and Chips. On his second Whoopee! visit, Mustapha's story exhibited an uncomfortable similarity to the premise of the Bumpkin Billionaires, established stars of that comic.

Skateboard Squad appeared once (in Whizzer and Chips) and that week the feature was absent from Cheeky Weekly!

The Burpo Special appeared once (in Whoopee!).

The Gang appeared once (in Whizzer and Chips - which was rather an odd choice in which to locate it since the strip was a reprint from that very comic!). The Gang had begun being reprinted in Cheeky Weekly just 2 weeks before they were pressed into Star Guest service, so clearly there had been no time for the Cheeky editorial team to assess reader appreciation of the strip before it was selected. Cheeky Weekly had so many other original features on which the editor would have had feedback and would have made superior ambassadors so the reasoning which led to the inclusion of The Gang is hard to understand.

Why, Dad, Why? appeared once in Whizzer and Chips, and once in Whoopee!

One might imagine that the features chosen to represent Cheeky Weekly during Star Guest would be those considered by the editor to be most popular with readers of the toothy funster's comic, but the inclusion of The Gang, together with the general haphazard nature of the promotion (for example Calculator Kid appearing twice in Whizzer and Chips, but not in Whoopee!), makes me wonder whether any such consideration was made during the selection of candidates.

This sorry collection of doubtful choices and lack of co-ordination just reinforces my impression that IPC management had all but given up on Cheeky Weekly by this stage and were running the comic down in preparation for the customary merge into another title. I must stress that I have no doubt that the creative team were still striving to give readers the best possible entertainment, but it seems to me that support from the top brass was falling away.

But into which of the other IPC titles of the time would the toothy funster's comic be subsumed?

When the 1979 run of Star Guest ended there were four IPC humour/adventure titles that could have provided a home for Cheeky Weekly refugees. In addition to the aforementioned Whizzer and Chips and Whoopee! were two other IPC humour/adventure comics; the publisher's longest-running title in the field, Buster, and their newest entrant in the same market, Jackpot. You may ask why Buster didn't feature in this Star Guest promotion. Well, for reasons unknown (to me, anyway), Buster seems to have habitually exempted itself from all runs of Star Guest of which I'm aware. Jackpot was absent from this Star Guest run (as host and guest) because it commenced publication in May 1979, part-way through the promotion, and was the subject of its own publicity campaign within the IPC comics. It was never the case (as far as I'm aware) that a comic merged into a title whose launch date was later than its own, so that ruled out Jackpot from becoming host to Cheeky Weekly's survivors. Whizzer and Chips had welcomed the remnants from Krazy when that title folded in April 1978, in the process inheriting Cheeky in his role as a member of The Krazy Gang. Maybe it was felt that to merge Cheeky Weekly into a Whizzer and Chips already boasting the toothy funster would increase the goofy-teeth-quotient to unacceptable levels. As we know, when Cheeky Weekly ceased publication in February 1980 it merged into Whoopee!

There has long been speculation in certain quarters of British comics fandom that some titles were launched with the intention of building a following and then merging the newer title into a more established one. This would deliver a circulation boost to the senior comic as a proportion of the erstwhile readers of the defunct title chose to follow the surviving characters when they moved into their new home. Any new Cheeky Weekly readers recruited by the Star Guest promotion from among the existing followers of Whoopee! would, if they continued to maintain their weekly Whoopee! habit, fail to deliver any sort of circulation boost to Whoopee! when Cheeky Weekly met its untimely end, since they were already buying Whoopee! Readers with limited pocket money who liked what they saw of Cheeky and Co. during Star Guest may have opted to drop Whoopee! in favour of Cheeky Weekly, thus depleting the circulation figures of their original title of choice. Even when the merge came, it's unlikely all those new Cheeky fans would re-adopt Whoopee!

Maybe at the end of this Star Guest run IPC had not yet decided into which comic Cheeky Weekly would be merged. Nonetheless, IPC reduced the promotion's effectiveness as a means of boosting circulations in the long term by not including Buster in its run.

With the exception of the two reconstituted-Frank McDiarmid-art-with-new-gags pages, and The Gang's cut-down-to-one-page-from-two reprinted strip, all the Cheeky Weekly Star Guest pages in Whizzer and Chips and Whoopee! were new and never appeared in Cheeky Weekly.

Thanks once again to Irmantas for supplying the scans of the Cheeky Weekly Star Guests in Whoopee! that I have used during this series.

Date	Comic	Star Guest	Artist	Feature included in Cheeky Weekly that week?
31-Mar-1979	Whizzer and Chips	Calculator Kid	Terry Bave	Yes
07-Apr-1979	Whoopee!	The Burpo Special - Hid Kid	Frank McDiarmid	Yes. And Hid Kid appears (insofar as he ever appears) on Sunday
14-Apr-1979	Whizzer and Chips	Skateboard Squad	Mike Lacey	No
21-Apr-1979	Whoopee!	Disaster Des	Mike Lacey	No
28-Apr-1979	Whizzer and Chips	Cheeky	Barrie Appleby	Yes
05-May-1979	Whoopee!	Why,Dad, Why?	John Geering	Yes
12-May-1979	Whizzer and Chips	Why,Dad, Why?	John Geering	Yes
19-May-1979	Whoopee!	Elephant On The Run	Robert Nixon	No
26-May-1979	Whizzer and Chips	Mustapha Million	Joe McCaffrey	Yes
02-Jun-1979	Whoopee!	Cheeky	Barrie Appleby	Yes
09-Jun-1979	Whizzer and Chips	Disaster Des	Mike Lacey	Yes
16-Jun-1979	Whoopee!	Cheeky	Barrie Appleby	Yes
23-Jun-1979	Whizzer and Chips	Calculator Kid	Terry Bave	No
30-Jun-1979	Whoopee!	Mustapha Million	Joe McCaffrey	Yes
07-Jul-1979	Whizzer and Chips	Cheeky	Frank McDiarmid (page composed of art previously published in Cheeky Weekly)	Yes
14-Jul-1979	Whoopee!	Cheeky	Frank McDiarmid (page composed of art previously published in Cheeky Weekly)	Yes
21-Jul-1979	Whizzer and Chips	The Gang	Robert MacGillivray (page reprinted from Whizzer and Chips)	Yes
28-Jul-1979	Whoopee!	Mustapha Million	Joe McCaffrey	Yes

Cheeky Weekly Star Guests in Whoopee! (part 9)

Well, this is the 18th and final week of IPC's 1979 Star Guest promotion and the burning question is; who has been selected from the ranks of Cheeky Weekly celebrities to make the final circulation-enhancing bid within the pages of Whoopee?

Whoopee! 28 July 1979
Art: Joe McCaffrey
Many thanks to Irmantas for this scan

Our monied mate Mustapha Million is pressed into Star Guest service for the third time (and for the second occasion in Whoopee!). Mustapha's pal Jimmy continues to exhibit symptoms of Cheeky Weekly Inconsistent Hair Colour Syndrome.

The first panel encapsulates the Mustapha milieu, thus ensuring that any Whoopee! readers unfamiliar with the strip's premise are apprised without delay, and then we're off on a tale of papier machinations. Maybe this script, dealing as it does with the disposal of vast amounts of cash, is encroaching a little too closely on the territory occupied by existing Whoopee! stars, those reluctantly rich rustics the Bumpkin Billionaires.

However, any Whoopee! readers persuaded to return to the newsagent for a further helping of middle-eastern mirth would have been able to enjoy Mustapha's 2-page adventure in that week's Cheeky Weekly. Gratifyingly for anyone enticed by the above strip to place a regular order for the toothy funster's comic, Mustapha appeared in all the subsequent editions of Cheeky Weekly. Our pecunious pal also survived the merge when Cheeky Weekly ceased publication, and found himself back within the pages of Whoopee!

This strip was new and never appeared in Cheeky Weekly.

Cheeky Weekly Star Guests in Whoopee! (part 8)

Even-numbered weeks of IPC's 1979 Star Guest promotion saw representatives of Cheeky Weekly visiting Whoopee! and as we've reached week 16 of the sales-boosting sallies into companion comics, the only question is who has been chosen from the ranks of CW superstars to promote their comic. Stepping forward to do his duty for the second consecutive week (the previous week in Whizzer and Chips) and his third time as a Whoopee! Star Guest is the toothy funster himself.

Whoopee! 14 July 1979
Art: Frank McDiarmid
Many thanks to Irmantas for this scan

Disco Kid's 'Leaf Carrot' joke mystifies me. Anyone? Update - Peter and Bruce have solved the riddle - see the comments below.

Like Cheeky's promotional outing in last week's Whizzer and Chips, this strip is actually a mash-up, re-using previously published Frank McDiarmid art to present some new gags. This time the majority of the art was originally seen in Cheeky Weekly dated 03 March 1979 (an issue in which the toothy funster sported a long scarf).

This page and those below are from
Cheeky Weekly 03 March 1979.
Art: Frank McDiarmid

Any Whoopee! readers who failed to be enticed by the toothy funster's visit would have enjoyed 29 further weeks untroubled by Cheeky's corny gags. No doubt those same Whoopee! readers would have been dismayed to learn in their comic dated 02 February 1980 that our grinning pal, and a retinue of fellow Cheeky Weekly survivors, would be seeking refuge in the pages of their comic of choice as of the following week.

The Ads – 'Multi-Comic' Ads

IPC, publishers of Cheeky Weekly, were on occasion so keen to broaden the circulations of Cheeky Weekly's companion titles that they couldn't resist cramming more than one comic into a single ad. Let's have a look the promotions of this type which appeared in the pages of the toothy funster's comic...

The first such sales-boosting drive appeared in Cheeky Weekly dated 03 December 1977, wherein our grinning pal's ugly fizzog was seen looming above a page consisting of what we must assume IPC felt were among the strongest representatives from three of their other titles; Krazy (the comic which spawned the Cheeky phenomenon and where the toothy funster was concurrently appearing), Whoopee! (the paper that would offer refuge to the ragged band of Cheeky Weekly survivors who emerged from the wreck of the toothy funster's title when it foundered in February 1980) and Whizzer and Chips (IPC's famous '2-comics-in-one'; a gimmick that would later be shamelessly appropriated by Cheeky Weekly itself). It's curious that IPC didn't include in this ad their longest- running humour/adventure comic of the period, Buster. Maybe it was felt that Buster wasn't in need of any additional marketing at the time, and the fact that the title not only outlived all the comics featured in this ad, but survived to the year 2000 rather bears out this opinion. Buster also remained aloof from 1979's Star Guest promotion.

Unlike the rest of the ads we'll be examining here, the above publicity material wasn't linked to any particular promotional drive, it seems it was just designed to expose Cheeky Weekly readers to the fun to be had in some of the other IPC product lined up alongside their favourite title on the newsagents counter.

In the issue dated 07 January 1978 the same three comics got a further boost as a new ad alerted readers to the commencement of cut-out Spotter Books in those titles. Cheeky Weekly had of course commenced its own Spotter Book of Fun that week. The Whizzer and Chips Spotter Book of Wheels sounds extremely tedious, but I suppose it ties in with that comic's Whizz Wheels character.

A week later the Spotter Book promotion, and the 3 other participating titles, got another mention presumably as a reminder to any kids who last week purchased an extra title or two with the intention of completing extra cut-out books. Added to the already established scheme is additional inducement to keep purchasing, in the form a a teaser for a 'Great Competition' which is 'coming soon'. Quite which comics this applies to is not made clear.

A fortnight later the same comics, now styled 'The Funtastic Four' (with Buster again conspicuously absent from the line-up), were given a further promotional push to coincide with the final instalments of the booklets. The same characters are given prominence in the blurb as were in the 03 December 1977 ad. Oddly crude dummy renditions of the comic covers are on display.

In the 24 June 1978 issue was an ad encompassing no less than 5 titles - Buster (surprise!), Whizzer and Chips (which had of course by this time absorbed Krazy), Cheeky Weekly, Mickey Mouse and Whoopee!. The cause of this comic cavalcade was the imminent appearance of condensed versions of these titles within their companions in a promotion that would rotate across the participating comics over a four-week period.

Cheeky directed readers towards the forthcoming Mini-Comics schedule in the following week's issue.

Anyone left in suspense by the cryptic reference to the impending competition in the 14 January comic were no doubt relieved to read the announcement of the 5 Papers Competition in Cheeky Weekly dated 15 July 1978.

Later in the same issue was another schedule of upcoming mini comics, once again introduced by the toothy funster.

By the 26 August 1978 issue Buster had resumed its standoffish attitude and was absent from the titles participating in the forthcoming toy competitions and simultaneous cut-out-and-keep promotion.

A variation on the same ad, featuring a reversed masked hero, appeared 7 days later. In addition to publicising the commencement of the cut-out games, the ad reminded readers that Whoopee was that week running the first of the four toy competitions. Lone Ranger toys were on offer, but the TV Western boom of the 50s and 60s was long-forgotten by this time, so the decision to market a range of action figures based on the masked man and his Native American pal at this particular juncture is a bit puzzling.

Whizzer and Chips was the location of the toy competition the following week. The lucky winners of the 10 star prizes would each receive a Clash of the Robots game.

Art: Sid Burgon

It seems there was a space that needed filling in Cheeky Weekly 7 days later as an ad promoting our grinning pal's comic together with Whizzer and Chips and Whoopee (oddly Mickey Mouse, the location of that week's toy competition, wasn't mentioned) found itself squeezed into page 31 alongside the concluding element of Saturday, the instructions for the Crack-A-Joke Game and a stamp-collecting ad (please tell your parents).

IPC were at this time clearly convinced of the effectiveness of the cut-out-and-keep marketing ploy, as little time seemed to elapse without readers being encouraged to cannibalise their reading matter. Thus it's little surprise to find that as 1979 dawned another multi-comic ad turned up in Cheeky Weekly (dated 06 January), heralding further upcoming scissor-paste-and-cardboard action in the big 3 humour titles. Buster yet again exempts itself, as does Mickey Mouse.

As we've come to expect, the message was reinforced 7 days later to coincide with the commencement of the promotions.

Friends of Cheeky who were so inclined would have been sharpening their scissors on learning, in the comic dated 31 March 1979, that '3 Super Pull-Outs' with a 'pop' theme were due to commence the following week, one in each of the usual 3 titles. Sweeny Toddler and the Bumpkin kids are again on hand.to assist with the publicity drive.

The usual rehash of the initial ad appeared the following issue....

...and a somewhat more radical refashioning, in which the Sweeny/Bumpkin collaboration was replaced with a generic popster who looks to me to have sprung from the pen of Arthur Martin, was printed in the following edition...

Buster (which had absorbed Monster Fun since it last participated in a multi-title promotion) made a surprise reappearance (along with Mickey Mouse) in the multi-comic ad in Cheeky Weekly dated 21 April 1979, announcing that sachets of milkshake would be given free in each of the featured titles over coming weeks. And - what a surprise - a cut-out feature would commence in each drink-powder-bearing edition!

The follow-up ad in the next edition was expanded to fill a whole page.

By 05 May 1979, the milkshake boat had sailed as far as Buster was concerned so it's no surprise that young master Capp's title is absent from another full-page follow-up ad in which Sweeny and the junior Bumpkins have been replaced by two representatives of the target audience.

By the third week of the Two Shakes promotion, the reinforcement ad was reduced to a half page since there were only 3 comics still to provide thirsty comic consumers with flavoured powder for their lactic libations. The same two readers' representatives were featured.

It's a little surprising that IPC chose to launch a new humour/adventure comic at this time - Jackpot – in competition with their own milkshake and cut-out promotion running across more established titles.

The next 'multi-comic' ad didn't strictly relate to comics – as Christmas 1979 drew thrillingly close, many Cheeky Weekly readers will no doubt have left their favourite reading material conspicuously open at page 8 of the 15 December comic, in the hope of finding one or more of IPC's humour annuals under the tree on the 25^th.

Page 27 of the same issue carried news of yet another imminent competition running across the familiar 5 humour titles (Jackpot is absent).

This was to be the last multi-comic ad in Cheeky Weekly which, despite participating in all the cross-comic promotions detailed above, evidently failed to establish satisfactory circulation figures and came to an end just a few weeks later with the issue cover-dated 02 February 1980.