On this day, 2 July 1983: Whoopee Welcomes Wow!

Jul 2

Jul 2 On this day, 2 July 1983: Whoopee Welcomes Wow!

Merger Issues, Wow!, On This Day, Whoopee!

Here’s a contender for one of my all-time favourite covers. I wasn’t a reader of either Whoopee! or Wow! at the time of this merger (previewed in last Sunday’s blog post), but I do love a good communal banquet picture and this one, by the brilliant Robert Nixon, is a joy. The banqueting scene is a great tradition in British comics, dating back at least to the days of 1950s Eagle (when Dan Dare, PC49, Harris Tweed, Jeff Arnold, Tommy Walls et al would gather with editor Marcus Morris for a steaming Christmas dinner), and generally symbolises togetherness, prosperity and celebration. It’s ironic when used, as on this occasion, to mark the event of a merger – for many readers an occasion for being screwed over as their favourite title heads down the pan – but it’s still a pleasure to pore over the image, identifying all the characters and seeing who’s up to what. The only thing I’d question about this particular cover is whether there’s enough food to go round. I count four sandwiches, six trifles, eight jammy dodgers , nine fairy cakes, nine sausage rolls, one small cake, a few sausages, a pie and a bottle of pop to feed at least 37 characters. And Snack-man, Ossie and Sweeny Toddler don’t appear to be in sharing moods.

Inside the comic, we find another re-telling of how The Bumpkin Billionaires won their fortune (check out this post for three other versions of this story, two from 1974 and one from 1985). The Creepy Comix lad finds a collectors’ special edition, Boy Boss appears in a comic within a comic, the storyline of 6 Million Dollar Gran takes a change of direction as Gran heads off to start up a new gang of oldies, Cheeky (once owner of his own comic) is reduced to a three-panel line as part of the Quick Strips page, and there’s an unlikely team-up as Whoopee!’s Smiler joins the Kid Comic strip from Wow!