Scans_Daily

As mentioned in previous posts, "Whizzer and Chips" had the distinction of being "two comics in one" which had a rivalry with each other. Judging from the issue at hand, July 2 1983, it appears to be an entirely arbitrary one, since the contents of one are not particularly distinct from that of the other. Therefore, I shall not tell you from which section each of the eight pages (of 25) came from. Those pages not shown are described, as usual.

( The Temptation of Eve )

*Sweet Tooth: A young fellow who enjoys candy. Sweet Tooth is fishing while sucking on candy. His nemesis, Greedy Greg, uses his own fishing line to snag a tin of mint humbugs by ST, only to discover it's actually his bait box. Yuck. Sweet Tooth moves upstream, anticipating Greg's next move. (And leaving his fishing pole behind.) Greg attempts to snag ST's real sweets container, only to run afoul of a game warden--this stretch of the river is off limits for fishing.

* Lazy Bones: Benny does not like exercise. So when his father volunteers him to exercise the neighbor's dog, Rover, Benny is naturally disgruntled. It turns out that the dog is well-trained, so Benny tells it to "fetch the ball", in full knowledge that there is no ball in his yard. By the time Rover returns from the cricket pitch with a ball, he's well-exercised indeed. Too bad the cricketers followed him back....

*Odd-Ball: A shape-shifting spherical being. His owner Nobby wants to play circuses with Odd-Ball and his friends, but OB is tired. After a few shapes, Odd-Ball demands a rest, but now Nobby wants an elephant. Odd-Ball complies, showers Nobby with water from his trunk, then climbs up in a tree and becomes a trapeze to sleep while the boy is distracted.

( In America, we'd call him Mr. Walmart. )

*Shiner: A young fellow who repeatedly gets black eyes. He wants to find an excuse for his latest injury, but has run out of them. But Mum accidentally knocks Shiner off a ladder, and he uses this to fake that she's responsible for his black eye.

( Encyclopedia Brown time! Can you spot the impostor? )

*Fuss Pot: An extremely fussy young woman. She wants better lawn gnomes. Eventually, she falls into the mold, and has gnomes modeled after her.

*The Krazy Gang: A group of kids, each with one distinguishing personality trait. The gang is broke, so they enter an invention contest. Each of the inventions goes horribly wrong, and now they're worse than broke from the materials bill.

( As has been said before, Dallas was huge in Britain. )

*Pongo Snodgrass: A young man who enjoys strong, unpleasant odors. He's dismayed to learn the new sewage plant uses a constant supply of perfume to mask the stench of raw sewage. Pongo's much more pleased with the park's enormous compost heap. That is, until he hits the patch of nettles. Pongo isn't as enthusiastic about pain as he is about smells.

*My Bruvver!!: Older brother and younger brother dislike each other. Len is required to take Thingy along bowling. Thingy disrupts the fun until he is finally hung from a pin rack for safekeeping.

*Robert's Robot: Robert has built himself a twin brother. A local rich kid shows off his robot-built bicycle, but is humiliated by Robert's robot-powered bicycle.

*Sammy Shrink: A tiny boy. For him, a bathtub is like a swim in a hot lake.

( The relatives we'd rather not mention )

*Beat Your Neighbour: The next-door families argue over whose camera is better, who's a better photographer, and which father will recover enough to whip his son first.

*Freddy 3D: Freddy has magical 3-D glasses that bring pictures to life. Oddly, he hates art class, and disrupts it with a thundercloud. Sent to the headmaster's office, he summons the original headmaster to take back his position. While the adults are out of the room, Freddy puts the old headmaster back in his portrait, and is hailed as a hero for getting rid of the intruder.

*The Buytonic Boy: Steve has amazing powers granted to him by Buytonic (something like Amway, I'm guessing) products. The NME spies have grabbed keys to the Buytonic secret stores, and Steve rushes after them. He's aided by his super-sensitive nose, and the fact that the spies are addicted to garlic and pickled onions. However, once he catches up with the spies, they reveal that they planned for this, and invited Pongo Snodgrass to visit. Steve is quickly rendered hors de combat by Pongo's body odor, but still has his Buytonic ventriloquism. He frightens Pongo off with the threat of a bath, and then makes short work of the spies.

*Joker: A practical joker. Two other fellows attempt to catch Joker off guard with the old "soot telescope" gag. He pretends to see a UFO, and rushes out of sight. When the others catch up, they find a horrific-looking alien. It is of course young Joker in a mask.


Next time, "The Topper"--almost an entire issue! This will take a bit more work, so may take a while.

Your thoughts, comments, answers to today's puzzle?

Suggested tags
medium: British comics
title: Whizzer and Chips