Unpublished issues of Whoopee

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klakadak-ploobadoof
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Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by klakadak-ploobadoof »

Hi,
On November 5th, 1983 Whoopee celebrated issue no. 500, whereas it was actually the magazine’s 504th week. I know the dates of June 21st and June 28th 1980 were a combined issue (two in one). This still leaves three weeks when the comic was not published. I remember reading somewhere that there was no Whoopee on December 28th, 1974, January 4th, 1975 and January 11th, 1974. Can anyone confirm this? What was the reason for the gap? Must have been printers’ industrial action once again…
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Shaqui
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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by Shaqui »

There was a lot of industrial action and strikes at the time... Certainly TVTimes was affected late in 1974 - I looked through the trade press a while back and the publication was blanked or delayed for a good few weeks...

:o

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Captain Storm
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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by Captain Storm »

There were indeed as in early 1974 Industrial disputes meant there were no LION Issues printed on 26/01/74,9/02/74,23/02/74,09/03/74 and 23/03/74,effectively making Lion & Thunder a fortnightly comic for 10 weeks!

your clever clogs Cap! :P

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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by Kashgar »

If we are talking about IPC and its earlier incarnations industrial action, to some degree, had been a problem for them since the late 1940's. In the early 1950's the solution was to produce combined issues which they did in 1950 and 1956 (the 1956 combined issue covering a total of six weeks). Then in 1959 there was a very substantial strike which saw only two issues of comic titles produced between mid June and late August, with a similar situation then arising in late 1970 when no issues of certain titles, depending on which of IPC's printer's printed them, were published between late November and February of the following year. Then as mentioned there was another hiatus in the printing schedules in 1974 as well as other less telling gaps peppered throughout the decade.

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Muffy
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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by Muffy »

There was a strike around June/July 1980 as well, where no IPC comics were produced for 3 or 4 weeks.

I remember what happened to all my Buster comics and couldn't understand why I had missed these issues.

:soapbox:

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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by AndyB »

Whizzer and Chips kept going, I think, but using nearly all reprint. Several dropped issues, and one (forgotten which) stopped altogether.

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Peter Gray
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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by Peter Gray »

Cor!! stopped in 1974...Shiver and Shake also...

big bad bri
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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by big bad bri »

Peter Gray wrote:Cor!! stopped in 1974...Shiver and Shake also...

So was it the strikes and not low sales that killed these 2 comics.i only ever had the annuals as a kid.pretty much same as now i must try and get these 2 titles as i have just gotten Knockout(vol 2 ) and Krazy which was another 2 titles i only ever knew through the annuals.

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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by comixminx »

big bad bri wrote:
Peter Gray wrote:Cor!! stopped in 1974...Shiver and Shake also...

So was it the strikes and not low sales that killed these 2 comics.i only ever had the annuals as a kid.pretty much same as now i must try and get these 2 titles as i have just gotten Knockout(vol 2 ) and Krazy which was another 2 titles i only ever knew through the annuals.
In this interview with a union member from IPC in the later 1970s, he reckons that strikes had nothing to do with ceasing publication, which happened when a title ceased being profitable.

https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2015/0 ... te-wrobel/

If there was a strike that affected publication for 2-3 weeks, I would reckon that this wouldn't be enough by itself to stop a loyal readership - it didn't with Jinty, which skipped about 3 weeks in Dec 1978 for this reason and carried on fine for another few years.
jintycomic.wordpress.com/ Excellent and weird stories from the past - with amazing art to boot.

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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by geoff42 »

I believe the only true victim of general strikes was Scream in the eighties... a shame.

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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by Lew Stringer »

comixminx wrote:
big bad bri wrote:
Peter Gray wrote:Cor!! stopped in 1974...Shiver and Shake also...

So was it the strikes and not low sales that killed these 2 comics.i only ever had the annuals as a kid.pretty much same as now i must try and get these 2 titles as i have just gotten Knockout(vol 2 ) and Krazy which was another 2 titles i only ever knew through the annuals.
In this interview with a union member from IPC in the later 1970s, he reckons that strikes had nothing to do with ceasing publication, which happened when a title ceased being profitable.

https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2015/0 ... te-wrobel/

If there was a strike that affected publication for 2-3 weeks, I would reckon that this wouldn't be enough by itself to stop a loyal readership - it didn't with Jinty, which skipped about 3 weeks in Dec 1978 for this reason and carried on fine for another few years.
A week or two probably had insignificant impact but I'd have thought the strike that caused several IPC comics to be off the shelves for three months in 1970/71 must have done some damage to sales though? Smash! didn't last long after it returned.
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geoff42
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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by geoff42 »

when certain weeklies, especially from UK Marvel, went monthly - they didn't last much longer although Rampage was an exception, albeit it morphed into X-Men monthly for its latter duration. The Defenders strip disappeared altogether.

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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by geoff42 »

on a more upbeat note, Judge Dredd Megazine began as a monthly and then went bi-weekly for a few years before dropping back to a monthly. Fast forward many years, it's still going strong. Back in the mid-nineties, it was very close to giving up the ghost... and relied on heavy reprints such as Preacher.

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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by Lew Stringer »

geoff42 wrote:when certain weeklies, especially from UK Marvel, went monthly - they didn't last much longer although Rampage was an exception, albeit it morphed into X-Men monthly for its latter duration. The Defenders strip disappeared altogether.
Decades ago British comics publishers were resistant to the idea of doing monthly comics. As one IPC editor said to me "The readers will lose interest if they have to wait four weeks between issues". He had a good point, I think. It's a format that worked better for American comics because they often had longer, self contained stories. The only reason UK publishers eventually adopted the monthly format for new comics was out of necessity as sales of weeklies declined and it wasn't economically feasible to produce so many issues a year.
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Adam Eterno
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Re: Unpublished issues of Whoopee

Post by Adam Eterno »

geoff42 wrote:when certain weeklies, especially from UK Marvel, went monthly - they didn't last much longer although Rampage was an exception, albeit it morphed into X-Men monthly for its latter duration. The Defenders strip disappeared altogether.

The Monthlies were the end of my love affair with British Marvel. They coincided with my mid teens and sadly I very quickly lost interest after buying almost every UK Marvel comic I could for half a dozen years.

I still have full sets of The Avengers, Captain Britain, MWoM, Spiderman Weekly and it's subsequent titles up to issue #666, Planet of the Apes, Titans and Superheroes. I also only sold the complete sets of Star Wars, Conan and Dracula Lives in the last year. The only sets I didn't collect were Complete FF, Fury and Rampage that I can think of. One of my targets for 2016 is I'm just after a couple of plastic planes and I'll have all the free gifts to all of the UK Marvel comics!

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