welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.



Friday, January 17, 2020

CASH PRIZES IN WHOOPEE! COMIC



Check out the caption at the top of the front page of WHOOPEE! above. Indeed, in 1975 (and later on) readers of the comic were rewarded with more than just a bundle of laughs – they could also win themselves quite a bit of cash!

I randomly picked the issue cover-dated 17th May, 1975 and checked how much prize money was up for grabs in a week.


£1 was offered for each letter published in the ‘Letters’ column:


£1 was paid for each joke used (readers were asked to send jokes in a variety of subjects (School, Animal, Spooky, All at Sea, Police, Historical, etc.):


A prize of £1 was paid to the sender of that week’s Knock Knock joke:


There was a prize of £1 for every good suggestion for a script of Scream Inn:


That’s in addition to the joy of seeing your name included in the strip, usually in the first panel:


Last but not least, a kingly reward of £2 was offered for each World Wide-Weirdies idea used (not to mention the extra bonus of seeing your name in print at the top of the page):


Theoretically, if a resourceful reader was successful on all 5 counts, he or she could collect £6 in a single week!

Moreover, the adventure strips included in WHOOPEE! at that time encouraged readers to take note of the various clues in the weekly episodes, and enter for a cash prize at the end of the story. They were asked to write the clues on a coupon provided, stick it on the back of a postcard and send it to IPC Magazines. Fifty senders of the first all-correct cards were rewarded with £1 each, and saw their names printed in the magazine! Here’s an example from Island of Suspicion, followed by the coupon included in the next week’s issue of WHOOPEE!:



Besides, WHOOPEE! had all kinds of goodness offered by its advertisers. Here’s what was advertised in the issue of 17th May, 1975:




IPC children’s comics of the 70s competed for the young readers’ pocket money with well-established DCT titles. The Beano and The Dandy were 20 pages thick and cost 3 p., they had a stellar lineup of strips such as The Bash Street Kids, Biffo the Bear, Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Little Plum, Desperate Dan, Black Bob,  Corporal Clot, Roger the Dodger, etc. – all fondly remembered by parents and grandparents who now bought comics for their kids and grandchildren. In this context, IPC had to make an extra effort.

In the case of WHOOPEE!, the price of 5 p. (2 p. more than The Beano or The Dandy) was a drawback, but the page count of 32 (12 pages more than The Beano or The Dandy), the excellent lineup of dynamic fresh-looking characters and strips (particularly those exploiting the hot new theme of horror humour – which DCT tended to completely avoid at the time), the quality of the art, the abundance of colour pull-out posters and fun booklets (hardly ever found in the rival comics) made WHOOPEE! a very appealing package. Involving the young readers into the process of creating the comic (by asking to send strip ideas, etc. and printing contributors’ names in the paper) was a particularly clever move of the editorial team, as was the generous cash-reward policy.

To put my findings into context, I checked my copies of that week’s issues of The Beano and The Dandy to see what their cash prize offering was. Somehow, I was not surprised to discover it was just £2 per week in The Beano (£1 for each letter printed, and £1 for each printed drawing of a reader’s pet): 



…and an unspecified cash prize for each ‘little funny story’ printed in The Dandy (the top story of the week received a Practical Joker’s Fool Outfit):



And while you’re here, I would like to remind you that although 2019 is over, my promotion for the POWER PACK OF KEN REID is not. Get your copies of the books and BONUS FREE PRINTS on eBay or from my online shop HERE!


Monday, January 13, 2020

1975 WHOOPEE! POSTERS


1975 was the year of WHOOPEE! posters – as many as 9 were offered. Let’s take a look at them. 

Fleetway's printers were still on strike at the start of 1975, so WHOOPEE! wasn’t published until 18th January of that year. As you may recall from the previous post, the fans of Frankie Stein received only the first two parts of his Super Poster in December 1974. The Editor wrote this message in ‘Letters’ column of the first post-strike number:


It took the Editor a few weeks to re-issue the Frankie Stein Poster, and instead of printing just Part 3, it was decided to print all three, including the first two that were already presented in December 1974. Here is how Frankie Stein Super Poster was announced in the issue cover-dated 15th March, 1975:


The giant-size 3-part poster was duly included in the next 3 issues of WHOOPEE! (22nd March – 5th April, 1975): 


Each issue had instructions to the readers. These came with Part 1 of the poster:


This message accompanied Part 2:


And finally, here’s the one that came with Part 3:


When the 3 sections were put and taped together, the poster looked something like this:


The good news that the Editor hinted at in his message accompanying Part 3 of Frankie Stein poster was announced the following week (12th April, 1975):


All 4 members of the filthy-rich Bumpkin family got their own colour pull-out posters in the next 4 issues (19th April - 10th May, 1975):


Here’s what the posters looked like:





All 4 were accompanied by instructions how to remove them from the paper:





Having won the Pick-A-Strip competition earlier in the year, Sweeny Toddler became a resident strip in WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE starting from 29th March, 1975. If editorial decisions to give characters the special privilege of their own pull-out posters were an indicator that a particular strip was doing well in the popularity charts, then it can be assumed that Sweeny quickly became a readers’ favourite. His personal poster was announced in the issue cover-dated 23rd August, 1975:


… and came with the next week’s issue (30th August, 1975):



Three more pull-out posters were offered by the end of 1975.  New posters were usually advertised a week in advance. The honour to announce the arrival of Scream Inn poster was given to Suffering Sam whose message was included in the issue cover-dated 6th September, 1975:


… and the poster was duly presented a week later (13th September, 1975). Here’s the front cover of the issue, followed by the poster itself:



Toy Boy was next in line. Here’s Toy Boy’s message in WHOOPEE! cover-dated 11th October, 1975:


The poster arrived next week (18th October, 1975). It was the last issue of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE. The Editor finally decided to drop the clumsy title and revert back to just WHOOPEE! from next week onwards:



WHOOPEE! closed the year with a poster of Scared-Stiff Sam, introduced by Sam’s Mum in the issue of 20th December, 1975 (Sam was too scared to appear himself to break the good news…):


The poster itself can be found in the 1975 Xmas number (27th December, 1975):



P.S. By coincidence, Peter Hansen recently posted a picture of the surviving original artwork for the Xmas cover on Facebook. It is interesting to note that the balloon highlighting Sam’s poster in the printed version was originally the frame for the second part of the name of the comic. I believe the dark circle is from the glue applied to attach the new caption, which later came off and exposed Robert Nixon’s original lettering. This suggests it was drawn before the Editor decided to drop ‘AND SHIVER & SHAKE’ from the title.


An overview of 1976 is next in line.

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd 

And while you’re here, I would like to remind you that although 2019 is over, my promotion for the POWER PACK OF KEN REID is not. Get your copies of the books and BONUS FREE PRINTS on eBay or from my online shop HERE!