Here’s the Scream Inn guestbook for 1976, documenting who called and when. All 52 weekly episodes in WHOOPEE! comic were by the regular artist Brian Walker.
January 3, 1976 · Sleeping Rip Van Winkle. A nice episode with Innkeeper giving a toast to 1976:
January 10, 1976 · Little Jack Horner, super-star of the nursery rhyme world
January 17, 1976 · Manmoon
January 24, 1976 · Abominable Snowman
January 31, 1976 · Berty Blubber - the fattest man in the World
February 7, 1976 · Figure-skating champion
February 14, 1976 · Wally the Woodworm
February 21, 1976 · Scarecrow
February 28, 1976 · Simple Simon. This episode is special because of two reasons: resident spooks often got desperate when the guest turned out to be indifferent to their best efforts, but it was the first - and the only - time that the whole crowd of WHOOPEE! characters showed up to help them. Secondly, the caller actually wins and collects the prize, but then returns it – the lad is really simple minded…
March 6, 1976 · Innkeeper's Twin. I like this panel with the old mirror trick; note that the two pairs of eyes are also playing the mirror game in the background…
March 13, 1976 · Dr. Livingstone
March 20, 1976 · Mysto the great mind-reader. The coffin-shaped TV set in the first panel is a nice example of cool industrial design :)
March 27, 1976 · Jack-Of-All-Trades
April 3, 1976 · Fireman. Check out the creepy-crawlies in the foreground:
April 10, 1976 · Rugby player
April 17, 1976 · Dancing bear
April 24, 1976 · Old King Neptune
May 1, 1976 · Cat-Man, American-type comic book super-hero. This one is really full of sound effects, and resident spooks put on their Comic-Con outfits:
May 8, 1976 · Blackbeard the Pirate
May 15, 1976 · Archaeologist
May 22, 1976 · Old King Cole
May 29, 1976 · Demolition Expert
June 5, 1976 · The Great Flyin' Fred - Trapeze Artiste Extraordinaire
June 12, 1976 · Golfer (Brigadier Bunkerton)
June 19, 1976 · Painter. From time to time the artist embellished the strip with nice page-wide panels. Page two of this episode had the first example of that:
June 26, 1976 · Der Red Baron - famous WWI Air Ace. This episode also had a page-wide panel:
July 3, 1976 · Clock maker
July 10, 1976 · A Whoopee! reader. I like the ending of this story and how it smoothly leads to call to action:
July 17, 1976 · Newspaper seller
July 24, 1976 · Cobbler
July 31, 1976 · Toffee-nosed kid. Here the spooks are desperate again, so they summon the ghosts from the mansion of the caller’s Dad:
August 7, 1976 · Coalman. Other WHOOPEE! stars made quite a few guest-appearances in the strip in the previous years, but this was only the second time when this happened in 1976 (the first one was in issue of 28th Feb.). Of course, the Bumpkin Billionaires were the least-likely candidates to call at Scream Inn to win some money because their greatest desire was to get rid of the cash they already owned. As could be expected, their scheme to waste a million in this episode didn’t work – see the full episode HERE.
August 14, 1976 · Lolipop man
August 21, 1976 · Jockey
August 28, 1976 · Toy Boy – The only episode in 1976 when a fellow star from WHOOPEE! tried to win the prize at the suggestion of a reader. The episode also features characters of The Ghost Train – the strip that Brian Walker illustrated in WHOOPEE! before the arrival of Scream Inn. See the full episode HERE.
September 4, 1976 · Cricketer
September 11, 1976 · Al Capone the notorious gangster:
September 18, 1976 · Queen's guard
September 25, 1976 · King Kong
October 2, 1976 · Little Miss Muffet
October 9, 1976 · Sheepdog
October 16, 1976 · Piglet. This episode was reprinted in full and received a couple of paragraphs in the book “Comics: Ideology, Power and the Critics” that I mentioned in the previous post:
October 23, 1976 · Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland
October 30, 1976 · Million Dollar Man - a Bionic Bloke
November 6, 1976 · Auctioneer
November 13, 1976 · Little Boy Blue
November 20, 1976 · Stuntman
November 27, 1976 · Parachutist
December 4, 1976 · Boxing kangaroo
December 11, 1976 · Disc Jockey
December 18, 1976 · Doctor Doolittle
December 25, 1976 · Fairy – Xmas episode
Come back soon for the last part covering the year 1977...
Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd
