On this day, 20 May 1978: Whizzer and Chips with Krazy

Cover artwork: Ian Knox

I remember this issue of Whizzer and Chips as something of a stand-out because it broke the strict format of the comic's cover design at the time. The rule was that Sid's Snake always ran on the left half of the front cover, with a panel trailing another story on the right. But - with Star Wars mania at its height in Britain in the spring of 1978 - all rules were off for the launch of a cracking new series, Starr's Wars, drawn by the extraordinary Ian Knox.

Starr's Wars - a sheriff Western in space - lasted only three or four months in Whizzer and Chips. I wonder whether it was considered just a bit too 'out there' and unhinged for what was otherwise a fairly conservative humour comic in 1978. With Knox's darker, never-predictable artwork, and anything goes universe (see the outlaw escaping by catching hold of a passing meteor, and the brilliant cannons with hands and feet), this was a strip in the anarchic tradition of Krazy, which so unsuitably had been incorporated into Whizzer and Chips a month previously.

Starr's Wars: Ian Knox (artist)