Whizzer & Chips hits the big 40

[Lew Stringer]

Today is the 40th anniversary since Whizzer and Chips No.1 arrived in newsagents. IPC's first venture into humour comics began a line of comics that dominated the shelves in the latter 20th Century. I prepared an article on the comic a while back and it's just gone "live" over on my blog....

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2009/10 ... s-no1.html

Lew

[Peter Gray]

Its an interesting read..
we do have different tastes...I love Whizzer and Chips..Whoopee..etc..all humour comics..
maybe if you were born at the same time as me..1974..you would have loved it more..
for you the Power comics are the best..(I do like some of the Power comic pages...to be honset the humour pages mostly..also I only have less than 10 copies to refer to)

I have loads of Whizzer and chips...mostly 80's..
Sweet Tooth...Odd Ball...Shiner..Sid's Snake..Buytonic Boy..Super store..Joker..Lazy Bones..The Champ by J.Edward Oliver..Bewitched Belinda..Freddy 3d..Paws..Happy Families..Krazy Gang...Robert's Robot..are just all magic to me..just love it..it was the best..

[Lew Stringer]

Its an interesting read..
we do have different tastes...I love Whizzer and Chips..Whoopee..etc..all humour comics..
maybe if you were born at the same time as me..1974..you would have loved it more..
for you the Power comics are the best..

Well I was still a child when Whizzer & Chips came out Peter. I'm not that old. Yes I preferred the Odhams humour comics because they didn't operate under the same restraints that IPC imposed on their creators. (Although admittedly we did have more leeway with Oink! than other artists/writers did on other IPC humour comics.)

Don't get me wrong; I didn't dislike the IPC funnies. I read Whizzer & Chips every week for its first five years, I had every issue of Cor!!, Knockout, and Shiver & Shake, and bought every new comic IPC published. The stories were well written and the artwork top class. I just felt the Odhams style was funnier because it was more unrestrained. Years later I heard from an ex-IPC staffer that when IPC took over they dictated that The Nervs should stop and that it was too vulgar to ever reprint. That pretty much summed up the direction their comics were heading in.

Any comparison between Ken Reid's Frankie Stein and Bob Nixon's version makes it clear what I mean. Both great artists, but the IPC Frankie was written much "safer". Business-wise that may have been better as the IPC version lasted far longer, but creatively, and for laugh-content, Ken Reid's version went up to 11.

Lew