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.

 

Classic Comics - Egmont UK

I'm delighted to report that Egmont UK, who hold the copyright to Cheeky Weekly, have given me permission to continue using material from the comic on this blog.

As you'll see from Egmont's website, they are releasing gems from their impressive archive of iconic British comic titles, so let's hope the Classic Comics project is a success.

The features – Menace of the Alpha Man

Cheeky Weekly 24 February 1979

Keeping up Cheeky Weekly's adventure quotient (alongside Mystery Boy) in the 18 issues spanning cover dates 03 March to 30 June 1979 was Menace of the Alpha Man, reprinted from its original run in Shiver and Shake in 1974. The initial outing of this story has been covered in typically comprehensive style over at the Kazoop blog, so I won't attempt to summarise the plot, but will instead concentrate on other aspects of the strip following its exhumation from IPC's vaults some 5 years after its original appearance.

Menace of the Alpha Man was chronologically the eleventh straight reprint feature to appear in Cheeky Weekly (not including the strips in the Old Comic series), and the third sourced from the pages of Shiver and Shake. Those earlier strips resurrected from S&S, The Terrible Trail toTaggart's Treasure and Eagle Eye,  were shorn of their original competition elements when occupying the pages of Cheeky Weekly, but Alpha Man's reprint run did in fact conclude with a cash-prize competition in the manner of its original appearance. At the conclusion of his adventure in Cheeky Weekly the week before Alpha Man's recycled tale began, Eagle Eye told readers "Next week, look out for a new serial starring 'The Alpha Man'! You could win some cash!"

All the Cheeky Weekly episodes of Alpha Man
were read on Friday by Cheeky who would sneak a read
of Teachers' Weekly
Art: Frank McDiarmid

Recycling a comic competition could give an unfair advantage to any Cheeky Weekly readers with access to a Shiver and Shake collection (maybe lovingly hoarded by an older sibling), so the canny editor chose to make some alterations to the suspect's names in the Alpha Man strip on its second run. Compare the list of suspects below with their Shiver and Shake counterparts over at Kazoop.

Cheeky Weekly 23 June 1979

However, the basic idea of the story - that the initial letters of the words describing each of the methods used by the Alpha Man to pursue his nefarious ends could be rearranged to spell out his real name - was unchanged. Thus, following some judicious juggling of letters by staff in the Cheeky Weekly office, in his 1979 run the Alpha Man was revealed to be not Bert Gash as he was in 1974, but Seth Brag. Despite this change, anyone with access to Shiver and Shake would have found it easy to substitute the new name for the original since the characters' faces were not altered.

Whereas in 1974 there were 50 £1 prizes on offer (although 51 winners were listed as can be seen over at Kazoop – Andrew and Alison Little presumably shared their prize), in 1979 the same number of prizes were available but had doubled in value to £2.

Cheeky Weekly 18 August 1979
There was no explanation of the solution as there had been
when the list of Shiver and Shake winners were printed

Alpha Man's original run appeared in Shiver and Shake from 09 March 1974 and its outing in Cheeky Weekly commenced almost exactly 5 years later on 03 March 1979. Yet, despite both runs occupying 18 issues, the final Cheeky Weekly installment appeared in the comic dated 30 June 1979, whereas the Shiver and Shake story ended in the 03 August 1974 issue. The later conclusion of its first run is due to a printers' strike which halted publication of Shiver and Shake for the whole of July 1974.

 Menace of the Alpha Man in the Cheeky Weekly Index

Feature	First Appearance	Final Appearance	Total Issues	Total Issues Missed In Run	Page History
Menace of the Alpha Man	03-Mar-79	30-Jun-79	18	0	26,27

Cheeky Weekly cover date 24 March 1979

Art: Frank McDiarmid

The Cheeky's Week...Sunday cover strip contains 2 gags this week – the top row of panels concern the latest of Auntie Daisy's culinary catastrophes, while the bottom panel displays the full horror of a dairy delivery disaster resulting from the ill-advised collaboration between Milkie and Bump-Bump Bernie.

After an encounter with Ursula on Wednesday, Cheeky is alerted to the imminent arrival of this week's copy of the Mystery Comic by mirthful mailman Postie.

Art: Frank McDiarmid

Tub's story is a bit odd this week – our portly pal is perplexed as his glider has landed 'out of reach', yet it's only lodged on a window ledge. Tub is not the most athletic of kids, so surely a quick walk up the stairs would involve less exertion than trampolining or clambering up the rain pipe.

This week's Mustapha Million story introduces our wealthy pal's pet hippopotamus, Frisky.

Art: Joe McCaffrey

Bumped from the Mystery Comic this week is Disaster Des, whose absence is due to disruption resulting from the 2 pages given over to listing all 800 lucky winners of the Saint competition which ran in the 02 December 1978 issue plus a further half page of Smurf competition winners from 09 December 1978, not to mention a full-page ad heralding the first issue of IPC's new comic, Tornado.

On page 29 is news of a somewhat unusual feature next week – it's a knitting pattern for Cheeky's jersey.

Art: Frank McDiarmid

Our toothy pal 'enjoys' a spot of fishing on Saturday, before the comic rounds off in the traditional way with a Pin-Up Pal poster, this week featuring that sporran-sporting skinflint, Uncle Hamish, fleeing in terror from Do-Good Dora's collecting tin.

Frank McDiarmid provides all 9 Cheeky's Week elements in this issue, together with the back cover poster. This is the final time that Frank's work will grace a Pin-Up Pal poster. The feature will come to an end next week, with a Skateboard Squad poster by Jimmy Hansen.

Cheeky Weekly	Cover Date: 24-Mar-1979, Issue 72 of 117
Page	Details
1	Cheeky's Week - Art Frank McDiarmid
2	Sunday - Art Frank McDiarmid
3	6 Million Dollar Gran - Art Ian Knox
4	6 Million Dollar Gran - Art Ian Knox
5	6 Million Dollar Gran - Art Ian Knox
6	Monday - Art Frank McDiarmid
7	Calculator Kid - Art Terry Bave
8	Ad: Trebor 'Double Agents Identikit Promotion' 2 of 2
9	Tuesday - Art Frank McDiarmid
10	Paddywack - Art Jack Clayton
11	Ad: IPC 'Mickey Mouse' 13 of 18 Ad: 'Battle Action' 1 of 2
12	Wednesday - Art Frank McDiarmid
13	Tub 'Mystery Comic' 21 of 34 - Art Nigel Edwards
14	Mystery Boy reprint from Whizzer and Chips 'Mystery Comic' 23 of 37 - Art John Richardson
15	Ad: IPC 'Tornado No 1' 2 of 2
16	Elephant On The Run 'Mystery Comic' 22 of 34 - Art Robert Nixon
17	Elephant On The Run 'Mystery Comic' 22 of 34 - Art Robert Nixon
18	Mustapha Million 'Mystery Comic' 22 of 34 - Art Joe McCaffrey
19	Mustapha Million 'Mystery Comic' 22 of 34 - Art Joe McCaffrey
20	Why, Dad, Why? 'Mystery Comic' 18 of 28 - Art John K. Geering
21	Thursday - Art Frank McDiarmid
22	Saint competition results (single appearance)
23	Saint competition results (single appearance)
24	Joke-Box Jury
25	Friday - Art Frank McDiarmid
26	Menace of the Alpha Man reprint from Shiver and Shake - Art Eric Bradbury
27	Menace of the Alpha Man reprint from Shiver and Shake - Art Eric Bradbury
28	Chit-Chat
29	Smurfs competition results (single appearance)\Ad: IPC 'Cheeky Weekly: Jersey pattern next week'
30	Saturday - Art Frank McDiarmid
31	Saturday - Art Frank McDiarmid
32	Pin-up pal 'Uncle Hamish' - Art Frank McDiarmid (final art on feature)

Cheeky's Week Artists Cover Date 24-Mar-1979

Artist	Elements
Frank McDiarmid	9

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.

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)

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.