A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: THE CHUMPIONS

The Chumpions. Two boys and a girl meet a Tibetan Lama and give him a fruit and a nut. He rewards them with great powers: the girl (Dot) can now stretch like a piece of string and access objects that otherwise can’t be reached, the tall lean boy (Lofty) has magnetic powers – handy for removing metal objects (e.g. guns) from other people’s possession, and the fat boy (Tubby) can turn into a rubber ball and become a means of travelling long and short distances or crossing obstacles. They are now the Chupmions whose mission is to help other people in trouble. They take all sorts of missions – from saving an absent-minded Einstein look-alike professor from evil machinegun-wielding crooks to mowing a football pitch when the mower is broken. They would defeat a gang of evil spies speaking with a German accent in one episode and go looking for a little girl’s missing kitten in the next. 

The Chumpions meet the loopy Lama in every single episode (or he sometimes contacts them via telepathic television) and he is always lost looking for his way to Tibet. He is lost in more ways than one: he sometimes wonders if he did right in making them the Chumpions. The monk's favourite treat are yak-butter sandwiches and doesn’t fail to mention this in each episode. 

From COR!! issue dated 20th February, 1971 (No. 38)

Apparently, the strip wasn’t faring well with the readers because it got quite a lot of negative feedback in the Postbag section. Nonetheless, the black and white strip occupied two full pages and enjoyed quite a long run from 9th January to 25th December, 1971 (issue Nos. 32 - 82). 

In the last episode members of a mountain climbing expedition invite the Lama to travel to Tibet as their guide. Before leaving, the Lama takes away the children’s powers because they are fed up with chumpioning and yearn to be ordinary kids again. Illustrated by an artist whom I can’t identify. Any ideas please?

From COR!! issue dated 5th June, 1971 (No. 53)