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!
I'm very sorry to hear of the passing of the artist James Hansen (often known as Jimmy Hansen) who died on Tuesday 19th June 2018. Although I never met him, I had communicated with him several times on Facebook and of course I was well aware of his work for comics such as Whizzer and Chips, Buster, Beano, Dandy, Wallace and Gromit, and many more.
In a career spanning more than 40 years, Jimmy Hansen drew thousands of pages for British comics, working on strips such as The Bumpkin Billionaires, Ricky Rainbow, P5, a stint on Dennis the Menace, and Buster amongst others. He was the cover artist on Buster for the last several years of the comic, bringing a great sense of energy and fun to the strip, as he did with all his pages.
In more recent times, he contributed the sci-fi strip Slash Moron to Aces Weekly, which he worked on with Bambos Georgiou and John Burns.
Tributes are starting to come in from people who knew and worked with him, remarking on his professionalism and friendliness. He was one of the top humour artists in the business whose work entertained countless readers over the decades.
My condolences to James' family and friends on their loss.
Here's a small selection of pages by the artist...
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!
Ron Turner had a long and impressive career in comics and illustration, dating back to the late 1930s. He was particularly notable for his science fiction book covers for Vargo Statten's novels in the 1950s and for the Rick Random stories. (If you can still find a copy, I urge you to buy this wonderful collection.)
I first saw his artwork in the mid-1960s when he did a few fill-ins on the Gerry Anderson strips for TV21 specials, and of course his long run on The Daleks strip on the back page of the weekly. By the 1970s he was freelancing on the IPC comics, and the examples I'm showing here are of a series called The Castaways that he drew for Whizzer and Chips in 1972 (24th June and 8th July issues). I don't think it ran for long, and may not be well known (or well remembered) today so I thought I'd post a couple of samples. The story is the well-trodden "kids stranded on island" idea, but it's always good to see Ron Turner artwork and the distinctive inking techniques he used.
I was never too enamoured by most of the strips in Whizzer and Chips but there were some that really stood out as something different to the formula. One being Timothy Tester, a two page strip that began in the comic in 1972.
The strip was drawn by Cliff Brown, and I suspect he may have scripted it too as he was the writer of Scream Inn for Shiver and Shake. Brown's distinctive style made a refreshing change to the Reg Parlett / Leo Baxendale style that many artists were using at the time. I have to confess that his style was one that influenced me in some ways. Not that I ever copied any figures but I can see now that I'd subconsciously added it to the mix when I was developing my own style years later.
Does anyone know if Cliff Brown is still around? I think the last time I saw his work was in a puzzle magazine we both contributed to in the 1990s.
Anyway, without further ado, here are three marvellous Timothy Tester strips from Whizzer and Chips in the summer of 1972. A good, lively strip, and perhaps it has potential for a future collection by Rebellion?
Many of us will remember the strip Me and My Shadow by Sheila and Terry Bave that had a successful run in Whizzer and Chips from the very first issue in 1969, but it wasn't the first humour strip about a living shadow. There was a precedent called Sally Sunshine and her Shadow, drawn by Albert Pease, that appeared in the original Chips in the early 1950s.
Whether or not Sheila and Terry were aware of the earlier strip I don't know, but it's a good concept worth repeating. Sally's shadow was far friendlier towards her than the shadow of the sixties was towards his owner. Here's a couple of strips for comparison. The one above is from Chips No.2962 (dated January 10th 1953) while the one below is from Whizzer and Chips No.2 (dated 25th October 1969).
Even though I spend most of my time writing and drawing them, I very rarely dream about comics. However there was one vivid dream a few years ago where I discovered that some cancelled comics of yesteryear were actually still being published and you'd find the latest editions if you rummaged deep enough into the displays in newsagents' shelves.
That's sort of what happened in reality today when I found The Topper and The Hotspur in Sainsbury's. Well, strictly speaking it's The Best of The Topper Annual and The Best of The Hotspur Annual, two of the newly published reprint books I mentioned a while ago.
I'd recently acquired The Best of Whizzer and Chips Annual and The Best of 70s Girls' Comics Annual too, thanks to the kindness of someone who sent them to me. These books are all exclusive to Sainsbury's, and not every branch is stocking them. The DC Thomson books have 80 pages and the Egmont ones have 72 pages. Yep, they've lost weight over the years!
I think the DC Thomson books win in terms of print reproduction and reprint choices. The Best of The Topper Annual has some very nice 1960s and 1970s strips, including a Dudley Watkins Mickey the Monkey page and what looks like a Davey Law Beryl the Peril strip. All the old favourites are there including Figaro, Big Uggy, and The Whizzers from Ozz. There are some later strips too, such as Tricky Dicky, but I'd guess at least half of the material is from the sixties and early seventies.
The Best of The Hotspur Annual is another goodie. I'm not too familiar with the DC Thomson adventure comics but from the styles and presentation it looks like the 70s and 80s are covered here. Possibly the 60s too. The only drawback is that as they're annual strips some don't feature the artists who did the weekly adventures, so although King Cobra is here, it's not by Ron Smith. (There is a great Ron Smith contents page though.)
The Best of 70s Girls' Comics Annual has a selection of stories from Misty, Tammy, Jinty and Sally. The reproduction isn't as good as the Thomson books but everything is legible. There's a few features too, for nostalgic reasons. The Egmont books have chosen to add a 'tanning' effect to the edges of the pages to make them look aged but it's an unnecessary addition really.
The Best of Whizzer and Chips Annual seems to be a random selection of strips. Some are reproduced better than others but overall they're sharp. Oddly, even though the back cover declares 'Chips is inside', the book does not use the 'Two comics in one' gimmick but mixes up the strips instead. There's a Chips cover, but it's on page 10. Thing is, that 'two in one' gimmick never looked convincing in the annuals anyway (and who in their right mind would tear out the middle section of a book?) so perhaps Egmont felt it wouldn't work here, especially with a book that's only 72 pages. Still, it's a pity they didn't simply make the second half of the book a Chips section.
There are other books in these retro series from Egmont and DC Thomson that I haven't seen yet. The Best of The Beezer Annual, The Best of Bunty Annual, and apparently The Best of Battle Annual and The Best of Roy of the Rovers Annual. Good luck finding them! The books have a RRP of £7.99 but Sainsbury's are selling them for the bargain price of £3.99 each. Alternatively, if you can't find them at your local Sainsbury's, you can buy the DC Thomson books full price from the DCT website:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands/annuals-calendars/annuals.html
