WHOOPEE! PULL-OUTS in 1980

In 1980 the first 4 issues of WHOOPEE! (January 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th) included the Giant All-Year X-Word and 1980 Calendar consisting of 4 pull-outs printed on the centre pages.

Assembly instructions and X-word solutions came with the last part:

… and, once assembled, the X-word/calendar looked something like this: 

One of the issues mentioned above also had this page that gives us an idea of the most popular WHOOPEE! strips at the time:

I find it a bit surprising that Frankie Stein and Scared-Stiff Sam were in the ‘supporting cast’ category. I would have hoped that at least Frankie was still a big star at that point...

Many fans hated the GOOD NEWS INSIDE issues because they marked the end of their favourite comic, but let us not forget that defunct papers were usually merged into other comics that had nice adverts heralding the expansion of their character lineup. WHOOPEE! issue, cover dated 2nd Feb., 1980 came with a Special Announcement of WHOOPEE! and CHEEKY merger next week:

Starting from the issue of 9th Feb., 1980, WHOOPEE! became another two-comics-in-one package  - IPC’s third after WHIZZER AND CHIPS and SHIVER AND SHAKE. The intention of this blog-series is to cover WHOOPEE! pull-outs, so it is worth-while pointing out that, technically speaking, starting from that week, every single issue of the paper published in 1980 came with a pull-out – a 16-page CHEEKY comic inside WHOOPEE! Here are the first 4 covers of the CHEEKY section, drawn beautifully by Frank McDiarmid. I have to say I find them more appealing that those of the WHOOPEE!s where they were included:

Of course, very few readers actually detached the CHEEKY section, and when you buy WHOOPEE! comics for your collection today, it is unlikely the “pull outs” will be missing.

The first 4 combined WHOOPEE! and CHEEKY comics, cover-dated February 9th, 16th, 23rd and March 1st, 1980, also had ‘proper’ pull-outs – a 4-part 'FIB' Card Game:

Instructions how to play the game came with the last part:

Next up was the Ticklish Allsports Pocket Book in the issues cover-dated March 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th, 1980:

Here is a selection of pages, many drawn by Jack Clayton, with a few by other artists:

The Editor took a break with WHOOPEE! pull outs till Autumn and came up with quite a unique and educational one in the 4 issues of October 11th,18th, 25th and Nov. 1st, 1980. 

It was How to Draw Comic Strips, with 14 cartooning lessons by Terry Bave. I thought it would be a good idea to show the booklet in full – maybe you’ll find it a useful tool to share with someone taking their first steps at drawing:

The issue with the last part of Terry Bave’s booklet was the Firework number, so it came with yet another Guy Fawkes’ mask drawn by Brian Walker (I think…), from an idea devised by a lucky reader who won the contest and pocketed a grand prize of 50 pound – enough to buy 416 issues of WHOOPEE!, priced 12 p. at that time! 

The last pull-out for 1980 was in the Christmas issue – the only one without a front cover of the CHEEKY section inside since the WHOOPEE!/CHEEKY merger. The front cover below was by Robert Nixon:

The pull-out was The Whoopee! Flip the Kipper Game drawn by Mike Lacey and printed in full colour on the centerspread:

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

SOME OF MY EARLY COMIC WORK

I found a pile old comic art that I drew as a kid and thought I might share some of it here. I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion that one of my big inspirations to draw comics was an early issue of WHOOPEE! sent to me by my British pen friend Andrew. I studied and admired the art so much that I even copied it in my drawings, as confirmed by the images below. Created in 1980, they come from what I hoped would be a 36-page comic book drawn for my own and my mates’ enjoyment, with not even the remotest hope/thought of getting it published because we didn’t have comics here at the time, and I was just a kid when I drew it. Oh, and we didn’t refer to those things as ‘comics’; we called them ‘adventures’. 

Looking at it now, I think it was quite a good story idea: two Moonsters (i.e. humanoid residents of the Moon) enter for a space race around the Solar System. At the same time, three crooks steal a precious statue from the Moon Art Museum. They must deliver it to a criminal mastermind on another planet to get paid. One of the crooks, who is having second thoughts about his way of life, joins the crew of the two Moonsters who know nothing of his secret cargo that he carries hidden in a pram and hopes to deliver to the boss. The other two crooks are eager to get hold of their mate, recover the statue and claim payment for themselves... 

Sadly, other things (or new story ideas) must have come up and I only drew 8 pages of the book (up to and including the start of the race) but the general premise suggests it would have been filled with weird adventures involving space creatures, suspense, explosions and whatnot… 

As you can see, the front cover is a rip-off of World-Wide Weirdies by Ken Reid:

One of the crooks is a spitting image of Prof Cube, while another one appears to be inspired by the monstrous pilot of the spacecraft seen in the top left corner of Ken’s original World-Wide Weirdies frame. In the panels below the two ‘gangsters’ decide to blow up railway tracks to prevent the arrival of the President of the Moon and sabotage the start of the race. Prof Cube’s lookalike appears to have no hands but in truth his hands fold inside the compartment behind the little door on his belly…

The dashing news reporter in the splash panel below is obviously Frankie Stein (minus screws and bolts): 

President fires the starting pistol to signal the start of the race, and this is where the adventures end…

Anyway, the find brought back some happy memories, and I think both the story and the drawings are rather good – I was only 12 or 13 years of age then!

Let me know what you think. I have other stories to show. Many are unfinished (I was a busy kid :) ), but I have a complete 4-page comic adaptation of “The Lobster and the Lioness” – the most famous short story by Australian writer Ernest Francis "Kodak" O'Ferrall which I drew at the age of 14 or 15 in 1982. Here’s the opening panel: 

THE MOONSTERS ON SPARKY BACK COVERS – PART 6

The other day I found Bill Ritchie’s self-portrait in an episode of Hungry Hoss (The BEEZER cover-dated Jan. 19th, 1985), which has prompted me to post the next 10 instalments of The Moonsters as they appeared on the back cover of SPARKY in 1968. 

Images are © D.C.Thomson & Co. Ltd.

MY FIRST PUBLISHED CARTOONING WORK

If you’ve been following my blog for some time, you may be aware that years ago I used to be a freelance cartoonist and comic artist here in Lithuania. In my interview for Steve Holland's Bear Alley website that I did to promote The Power Pack of Ken Reid, I mentioned that my first published work was actually in the UK! 

Here’s the story: I started learning English since my first year at school at the age of seven. When I was in third grade, I wrote a little story in English, and presented it in the form of a small illustrated 12-page book. Each illustration occupied a full page, with text on the opposite page. I showed it to my English teacher, and she posted it to her pen friend at Shakespeare Middle School in Leeds. A few months later my teacher gave me a copy of the 1978 Autumn edition of the School’s magazine with my story printed in full! I think they were impressed with the effort of a young non-native speaker from the other side of the Iron Curtain…

A few days ago I found the magazine in my archive. Here are the front and back covers - the latter looks a bit like a Creepy Creation by Ken Reid, don’t you think?

My little story is in the two images below. It even has a slap-up feed panel at the end! Considering I was only 9 or 10 years of age when I wrote it, and had only been studying English for some 3 years, the language isn’t too bad… The story was printed in black and white, and the print quality was rather poor, so my 10 year old self must have decided to colour it in and go over the handwritten text with a pencil… 

If you feel like checking out my published comic work of the early 90s, you can see some of it in my old blogposts HERE and HERE.