A few days ago was the 50th anniversary of Whizzer and Chips, but I completely forgot about it due to the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who Magazine being on the same day! Anyway, here's my belated post on the subject (which is in itself an updated rewrite of a blog post I did ten years ago)...
Five decades ago, on Saturday 11th October 1969, IPC Magazines launched the first of many humour titles that would propel them to the top of the British comics industry. Whizzer and Chips No.1 arrived boasting the unique selling point of it being "Two comics for only 6d", - 16 page Chips comic was inside 16 page Whizzer.
As with most comics of the period, Whizzer and Chips No.1 was promoted on television with short, snappy ten second advertisements and within other comics (such as Smash!) with four page pull-out ads.
In reality, Whizzer and Chips was only ever one comic of course, and, within the walls of IPC, was regarded as such by its editor Bob Paynter. At the time D.C. Thomson's Dandy and Beano each had 16 pages for 4d and IPC knew they couldn't compete on that level, so the illusion of two comics for 6d worked, as Whizzer and Chips seemed better value for money as "two" comics than it would have as one.
Being a rival to Dandy and Beano was obviously the intention, and IPC's clever "two-in-one" marketing technique ensured the success of the comic right from the outset. A comic cannot survive on a gimmick alone of course, and fortunately Whizzer and Chips also had a strong content. Many of the humour strips were created by relatively new cartoonist Terry Bave and his wife Sheila who provided the scripts. Bave had learned his craft freelancing for Odhams on strips such as Sammy Shrink and Baby Smasher. For the early issues of Whizzer and Chips he provided no less than seven pages! One of the most popular, Me and My Shadow, a simple but imaginative concept, can be seen here...
Other artists who had freelanced for Odhams also appeared in IPC's new venture. Mike Lacey kicked off with Odd-Ball (which would run for many years by various artists) and Sid's Snake, but the superb Graham Allen was wasted on the limited strip Give A Dog A Bone (a dog tries to hide his bone every week with not-quite-hilarious consequences). Earlier that year, IPC had dropped Mike Higgs' very popular strip The Cloak from Smash! but Bob Painter asked him to create a new strip for Whizzer and Chips. The result was Space School, which, due to editorial tastes, lacked the scope and satire that had made The Cloak so popular, but was still a funny strip in itself...
Adventure strips also appeared in the early issues of Whizzer and Chips, albeit fairly lighthearted ones compared to the sort of material that comics such as Valiant featured.
Kings of the Castle was a ho-hum strip about the working-class King family inheriting a castle, The Space Accident was a science fiction strip drawn by Ron Turner, The Spectacular Adventures of Willie Bunk was about a kid with magic glasses, but the standout strip for me was The Stealer, nicely illustrated by Tom Kerr...
The most distinctive humour pages in the comic were written and drawn by veteran comic artist and comic historian Denis Gifford who presented us with Koo-Koo Klub and a revival of his 1950s Knockout character Steadfast McStaunch. Every week Gifford devised puzzles that McStaunch would need the reader to solve, - a great interactive idea. Whist Gifford is remembered as the author of many books on comics (who also devised tv and radio shows) his inventive comic style has now mainly been forgotten which is a great shame. Here's the first 1969 Steadfast McStaunch, completely written, drawn, and lettered by Denis...
Another gimmick that Whizzer and Chips was renowned for was the "rivalry" between the two comics, where characters from one comic would "raid" the other, - and the readers would have to spot them in backgrounds. That didn't kick off until issue two, however Chips No.1 cover-starred Sid's Snake - the characters that from No.2 would be the cover stars and mascots of Whizzer. The famous cover star of Chips, accident-prone Shiner, didn't appear until the second issue.
Right from the outset Whizzer and Chips looked slicker, stronger, and better designed than its Odhams predecessors Wham!, Smash!, and Pow! had been. Personally, as a ten year old reading it back then, I found it entertaining but not as irreverent or, well, funny, as the Odhams weeklies had been. The hallmark of IPC's humour comics was "safe" comedy, and Bob Paynter would always encourage creators to be "careful", fearing backlash from parents and retailers.
That said, hundreds of thousands of kids obviously enjoyed Whizzer and Chips immensely, given its long run. Even though I never found Harry's Haunted House anywhere near as entertaining as The Nervs, I still stuck with the comic until my early teens, - mainly due to the solid storytelling and artwork. The popularity of Whizzer and Chips led to the launch of Cor!! in 1970, and many other similar titles such as Whoopee!, Shiver & Shake, Monster Fun, Jackpot, and others which enjoyed varying degrees of success. Even Fleetway's Buster was gradually revamped into an all-humour title to fit within the IPC humour group.
IPC attempted the "two-in-one" gimmick again in the early 1970s with football weekly Score 'n' Roar and humour comic Shiver and Shake. Neither were very successful, proving that innovation is better than imitation. (My theories on Score 'n' Roar's failure can be read here.)
Fifty years ago I remember a schoolmate of mine, Grant Hicks, running around the playground of our junior school with Whizzer and Chips No.1, ecstatic that he'd got "Two comics for the price of one". IPC's gimmick had paid off, and continued to do so for that title for many years.
Companion comics which fell by the wayside, such as Knockout and Whoopee! were merged into the seemingly invincible Whizzer and Chips. Eventually the two-in-one comic's luck ran out. Whizzer and Chips folded in 1990, by which time a drop in sales and budget cuts meant that it contained a lot of reprint and had reduced its total page count from 32 pages to 24, phasing out the Chips insert. Yes, in the end Whizzer and Chips merged into itself, before being swallowed up by the long-running Buster.
Images from Whizzer and Chips are Copyright ©Rebellion Publishing.
I've been told by the editor of Best of British magazine that their latest issue carries an article on Whizzer and Chips' 50th anniversary, so look out for it in your local shops!
For our latest Christmas flashback we move to the year 1972 for a few pages from Knockout, IPC's 20 page weekly that tried to compete directly with D.C. Thomson's Dandy and Beano. It didn't quite succeed though, only lasting for just over 100 weeks. Still, it was a good, fun comic for its time. Here's some examples from the 1972 Christmas issue.
The cover strip by this time was Joker, who had proven to be very popular, and would continue to be a reader's favourite after Knockout merged into Whizzer and Chips the following year. (Characters that play pranks often seem to be a hit with readers, although personally I can't stand such sadistic brattish characters unless they get their comeuppance in the final panel.) Artwork here is was the brilliant Sid Burgon.
Another Sid Burgon strip inside the comic was The Haunted Wood...
The centrespread strip was The Super Seven, which had been Knockout's original cover strip for the earlier issues. Mike Lacey artwork here. Mike was one of the artists who'd been asked to base his style on that of Leo Baxendale for comics such as Wham! and Smash! but he proved to be so brilliant he became one of IPC's top artists and drew countless pages for the company for years.
Shrimp is a long-forgotten character and this may be his last appearance. I don't know who the artist was but it looks like the same style as the artist who drew Tomboy for Cor!! Note that Sammy Shrink was arriving the following week. Announced as a "new feature" but in fact a revival of a character last seen in Pow! in 1968, and drawn by the same artist, Terry Bave.
Of course no IPC comic would be complete without a Terry Bave strip, and this issue of Knockout had My Bruvver!...
On the back page, Fuss Pot was being as annoying as ever, but I really liked this strip thanks to the distinctive art of Norman Mansbridge. I remember my editor on Buster telling me that even the baddies should have a happy ending at Christmas (so Tom Thug did, once a year) and here Fuss Pot indeed has a happy ending... albeit due to concussion!
There'll be another selection of Christmas pages from an old comic again tomorrow. Which will it be? Find out on Tuesday morning!
If my settings are right, this post should go live around midnight so a Happy New Year for 2018... and for 1973 in this case! Here are a few examples from the New Year edition of Cor!! which introduced The Goodies as a new strip, based on the very popular TV show of the time.
The cover art is by Joe Colquhoun, proving that he was as adept at humour as he was for adventure strips. Amongst many other strips, Joe was the original artist on Roy of the Rovers in the 1950s, drew the adventures of fighter ace Paddy Payne in the 1960s, and the gritty anti-war strip Charley's War in the 1970s/80s.
He'd used his lighter touch on strips such as Cap'n Codsmouth and Football Family Robinson for Jag so was ideal to draw The Goodies strip for Cor!!
Cor!! was mainly a humour comic, with an occasional light adventure strip. One of the funnies was Whacky, a boy fated to find himself in situations that led to him being whacked on the backside. (It was the 1970s.) The sadistic teacher in this strip gets his just desserts, but it really does read like a very peculiar strip to modern sensibilities with "Sir" obsessed with whacking the boy for no other reason than the teacher obviously gets a kick out of it! Art by Mike Lacey...
5 Minute Wanda was another new strip that began in that issue. Some IPC humour characters were based on a very flimsy premise. In this case, a girl who gets bored after five minutes. Art by Graham Allen...
Jasper the Grasper had started out as a very short lived series in Wham! in the 1960s, drawn by Ken Reid. This revived series for Cor!! was drawn by Trevor Metcalfe. That's still Ken's old logo though.
Donovan's Dad was originally by Terry Bave but this one is drawn by Les Barton (who'd been the original artist on I-Spy for Sparky). I don't know if this was a fill-in or whether Les was the permanent replacement, but it's a very nice page.
Eddie - He's Always Bored was so similar to 5 Minute Wanda that I'm surprised both characters appeared in the same comic. Both strips even had the same artist in Graham Allen. It was always good to see Graham's work though, as he'd been one of the regulars on the Odhams comics and the first artist on The Nervs for Smash!
Most of these strips are now ©Rebellion Publishing. I think Jasper the Grasper may be still owned by Time Inc. though (as it originated in Wham!) and The Goodies are presumably still owned by... The Goodies!
This was the first Christmas issue of Whizzer and Chips, and also No.11 of the series (as you can see by the number I added in felt tip back when I was ten). The cover strip, Sid's Snake, was drawn by Mike Lacey.
As I'm sure most of you know, Whizzer and Chips gave the illusion of being "Two Comics in One" by having its middle 16 pages posing as the pull-out Chips comic. Therefore I'll look at each comic individually...
In Whizzer, Little Saver was a gentle strip, miles away from the humour of the wildly boisterous Power Comics that Whizzer and Chips had replaced. This page was drawn by Les Barton...
At this stage, Leo Baxendale was still drawing Champ, although not for long as I recall. This was full of his trademark humour and would have been a good fit in Wham!
Over in the Chips section, the cover strip Shiner was by Mike Lacey...
Whizzer and Chips had a good smattering of adventure strips in its early days. This one, The Space Accident, was illustrated by Ron Turner...
This page of Hetty's Horoscope required some digital remastering to get rid of the inks showing through from the previous page (a result of the cheap newsprint the comic was printed on). However, I decided to keep the crude colouring job I did on it back in 1969. Artwork by Terry Bave...
Although IPC had made the ludicrous decision to drop the popular spy spoof The Cloak from Smash! because it didn't suit their narrow parameters of humour, Mike Higgs stuck at it to create something new. The result was Space School, written and drawn by Mike...
One of the veteran artists on the comic was Denis Gifford, who had revived and updated his old Steadfast McStaunch character from the original Knockout comic to produce new stories for Chips. Denis' clever inclusion of puzzles into the strip was very inventive, and presumably inspired Jack Oliver to do likewise years later...
Next time: Another Christmas comic from the past! Which comic? Which year? Wait and see!
The Cloak, by Mike Higgs, was one of my favourite strips of the 1960s so I was over the moon to find myself working as Mike's assistant for a while in the early 1980s. I'm proud that I can call Mike a friend and still see him regularly when we put the world of comics to rights over a pie and a pint. (Not necessarily a pie.) Here's Mike's brilliant Cloak strip on the cover of the Easter edition of Pow! back in 1968.
The strip continued inside. (The depiction of the natives wouldn't be permissible today but it has to be seen in the context of the times.)
The rest of the issue also had an Easter theme to the humour strips. Here's Ken Reid's incredible work on Dare-A-Day Davy...
The Tiddlers and The Dolls, drawn by Mike Lacey...
Georgie's Germs, drawn by Cyril Price, a veteran artist who had been illustrating comics since the 1930s and was still producing great work in the 1960s...
...and, on the back page, Sammy Shrink by Terry Bave...
Pow! also contained two Marvel reprints (Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four) and a few home-grown adventure strips. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the X-Men never had a strip in Pow!... except for this issue, when an edited version of a strip was used to promote that week's issue of Fantastic...
The 1960s were good days for British weekly comics. As with all things, times change, but the UK comics industry continues to evolve and survive (see my recent article on that here). Happy Easter!
Here we go with this year's selection of vintage Christmas issues, kicking off with Wham! No.185, dated 30th December 1967 (published by Odhams the week before the cover date, as all British comic were of course).
The Tiddlers cover strip is drawn by Mike Lacey, proving to not only be an excellent imitator of Leo Baxendale's style (Leo had quit Odhams the previous year) but a funny cartoonist in his own right. The strip continued onto the back page...
All of the Odhams 'Power Comics' that week featured this full page Christmas message...
The Wacks, drawn by Gordon Hogg...
The reprints of The Fantastic Four had no festive theme of course but I thought you'd like to see a page anyway. Script by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby...
Eagle Eye Junior Spy took up the centre pages, with artwork by Stan McMurtry...
McMurtry also got a mention in that week's letters page, beneath the Danny Dare strip by Artie Jackson...
Finally from this selection, here's a Sammy Shrink strip by Terry Bave. Sammy would be revived years later to have a long run in Whizzer and Chips and other IPC comics...
This was the final Christmas issue for Wham!, as the comic would be cancelled a few weeks later and merged into Pow! A shame, but by this stage Wham! was past its best. That said, it was still a livelier, and funnier, comic than some of its rivals.
Another selection of pages from a Christmas comic from the archives tomorrow!
