THE BEEZER (1950s - 80s)
'Broadsheet' type comic which was far to big to be opened properly when reading it in bed on a Saturday morning. Strips included Pop Dick and Harry - a fat bloke and his two sons; and the Numbskulls. Again. See Topper...

BOBO BUNNY (early '70s)
Surreal fare for the under eights. Bobo of the title was a blue rabbit, who lived with his family of assorted brightly coloured and bizarrely named rabbits, like cousin Read-to-me and Aunty Shut-that-door. Our favourite was Uncle Muncher who was orange, and ate everything in sight ("Oh no, Uncle Muncher has eaten the front door."). Other stories in the comic were Pinkie Puff the Magic Elephant, and 'We All Live in a Big Yellow Caravan', in which around 30 people lived in a caravan that was both big and yellow.

THE BOG PAPER (1989)
Very strange attempt by humourless Yank comic importers Marvel to cash in on by this time dead 'comic magazine' craze, by issuing comic based entirely on topic of shit. 24 pages of shit and shit related comic strips included Doctor Phoo - 'His timeship's a loo' who explored alien lands in outside lav, and Royston Roylette (Jesus..) - 'He always buys a toilet!' where every week Royston would be sent out to buy something a return with shit receptacle. Various other attempts to cram every last bad joke out of shit drawn by Beano artists who wanted to get into Viz filled rest of issue as well as hilarious 'free toilet paper' which was serialised every week. I bought two issues. I doubt there were many more.

BOYS' WORLD (1960s)
'Mature' adventure rag which lasted little more than a year. The front page featured a `What would you do?' , for instance if you were in a narrow alleyway with a car speeding towards you (can't remember the answer), or if you found yourself battling a crocodile (get on its back and hold its jaws shut - unlike the jaw-closing muscles, the opening ones are weak). There was also Iron Man, who was a robot which could operate autonomously or under the remote control of the son of the dead scientist who made him. He was human looking, and was strong, could run fast etc. Sometimes the plastic skin would come off, burned or whatever, and show the metal. Billy Binns And His Magic Specs involved a wimp who acquired amazing physical skills when he wore the magic spectacles, and wasn't as bad as it sounds. John Brody was a general adventurer, notably in `John Brody and the Green Men', where he found a lost world inhabited by people with green skins. The plot was reasonably grown up, not least Brody's relationship with the Queen of the green people, who was a total dish. Good artwork.

CHAMP (1970s)
10 pages of each issue was taken up with the rags to riches tale of defunct football club ('We Are United'') rebuilding its fortunes with a selection of memorable stars on the pitch (Terry Evans, arrogant winger, LimpAlong Leslie AGAIN, and Charlie Barr present too). United was led by manager/player Joe Pearson. This old warhorse was getting on a bit and only took to the pitch when the team were really up the shitter. He scored in every game. "We Are United" was a bit of a departure for DC Thompson, entering new realms of realism with a team that (gasp!) DIDN'T ALWAYS WIN! Some of the footballers: Hedgehog (A Punk! See DC Thompson embrace the counter-culture!), Kevin Nicklish (a signing from a rival team) and Charlie "Iron" Barr (a signing from a rival comic - Spike - which merged with Champ). Aside from United the comic also featured Kids Rule OK (nothing to do with the strip of the same name that appeared in ACTION), and Wilson, that man who seemed to frequent the long-grassy areas of municipal parks wearing a black leotard . Originally he was billed as a Man With No Name, sometimes referred to as Smith, but loads of letters from young boys stating their dads knew the Man With No Name's real name 'cos he used to be in the Hotspur put an end to all that. Pendragon had weekly one-off tales of the unexpected type surreal / horror stories. Spike merged into Champ somewhere along the line, which made no difference really, given that the characters in both titles (and indeed Buddy) seemed so incestuously interchangeable. Like the way of all flesh, Champ eventually merged with Victor. "We Are United" continued for another year or so but none of the other stories were picked up.

CRISIS (1988-90)
Riding high on the coat tails of the US 'adult comic' boom spearheaded by 'The Dark Knight Returns' and 'Watchman', good old Fleetway Comics inflicted 'Crisis' on the British consciousness. Its launch caused quite a flap - good reviews in 'The Guardian' and 'Face' magazine. Its sub-guerilla look and overtly preachy political stories were tedious. Like Mark Thomas without the funny and interesting bits. Pat Mills and Carlos Ezquerra's 'Third World War' sunk under the weight of its own research and John Smith and Jim Baikie's half boiled 'Watchman' rip off 'The New Statesmen' was confusing and dreary. The fact that it was blatant filler material spoke volumes about the comic. Predictably, 'Crisis' lost readers. 'Adult' readers migrated to the hipper 'Deadline' and the younger kids stuck with sister title '2000AD'. Some good things did come out of 'Crisis', most notably Grant Morrison's 'controversial' 'True Adventures Of Adolf Hitler' and mediation on serial killing: 'Bible John'. Also John Smith redeemed himself with the teen-angst 'Straitgate'. However, 'Crisis's' real legacy would have to be the discovery of current DC Comics fan fave Garth Ennis. Ennis produced a series of over written stories on the troubles in Northern Ireland. Not much cop in my opinion, but generally well received none the less. 'Crisis' really was the beginning and end of the late '80s British comic revolution. We don't miss it. See also Deadline, Revolver.

THE CRUNCH (1978-81)
Fantastically macho boys comic in Victor/Warlord vein from D.C. Thomson, but with less WW2/romantic heroism. Amoral loner-type characters being 'hard'. Interestingly, also featured the first problem page for readers (boys!) to drop a tearful line to. A reader who hated being made to take piano lessons was encouraged by big-brotherly agony uncle Ask Andy to stick at it, because even Elton John had had to start somewhere. Gave away Barry Sheene poster with issue one.

DEADLINE (1988-96)
PART of the "new comix" fad of the late '80s, when 'graphic novels' were getting reviewed in the observer instead of Variety-like obscure comic trade journal Speakeasy. Started up by 2000AD stalwarts Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon, Deadline (with the title printed sideways-on in the late '80s manner) was an eclectic mix of comic strips (Hewlett and Martin's pop-culture-referencing Tank Girl; Phil Bond's Wired World; Nik Abadzis' surreal urban globe-headed angstmeister Hugo Tate; and obscure ramblings from ex-NME illustrator Shaky Kane), music interviews (usually Cud), an obscurist strip featuring one "Mark E D'Sade", and columns varying from ex-Channel Four Daily presenter Garry Rice's limp humour (catchphrase - "I came into some money the other day - a bit messy perhaps, but not yet illegal") to monged-out Learyalike Ron Merlin. Top stuff in its early days, but as the comix craze subsided in the '90s, so the inspiration dried up. The last gasp came when the 'Line sunk all their money into the "couldn't fail" film of Tank Girl (produced by Americans, who of course took out all the references to The Italian Job, The Gumball Rally and The Generation Game, thus screwing the point). Wipe out

FIREBALL - see Bullet

HOOT (1985-6)
DC Thomson's presses were enjoying a quiet spell when this comic was invented. Simply 16 pages of strips that weren't good enough to get into the Beano, or the Dandy, or the Topper, or the Beezer, in that order. 'Main' character was ex-Nutty baby Cuddles, enjoying a rather nomadic existence and trudging from comic to comic. Also included was a character called Spotted Dick, which even then was unwise. The centre spread featured eight three-panel strips of ancient cartoon characters from old comics, all drawn by the same artist and all looking the same. Editorial was very brief - the first five issues gave away Raleigh Vektar Electronic Bikes, and that was it.Didn't impress many, given that it was 20p, at that point more expensive than the Beano and Dandy, for less pages. Closed down after exactly a year and merged with the Dandy, Thomson's lack of interest apparent by the fact the last issue still had 'new' on the cover.

THE HOTSPUR (1950s - 70s?)
Old school comic, the home of rotund posho outcast Billy Bunter, and 'Morgan The Mighty'? There was also a futuristic 'highway man' with a robotic horse... Also a medieval story concerning some blacksmith guy and a mallet - the word 'oaf' was used with great abandon.

Some reasons why Krazy comic/Cheeky weekly were dead good:
1. The first three Krazys had free gifts of a sqirty camera, a kazoo and a pair of glow in the dark vampire fangs.
2. "Handy Andy - HIS HAND PICTURES COME TO LIFE!" - A Krazy comic character (whose name escapes me) showed you how to do hand shadows at the end of the strip. I can still impress people with my Elephant and Winston Churchill to this day.
3. What an echoing void the world would be without "Mustapha Million", the arabian boy millionaire who lavished swimming pools, private limousines and towering chocolate ice creams on his mates, much to the chagrin of his grumpy old retainer.
4. The back of the Krazy comic always contained a picture with which you could conceal the comic from thieves, e.g. a patterned dinner mat, a row of bookends to place on a bookshelf, a more boring comic etc.
5. Cheeky weekly was once advertised on TV (during Tiswas) with the voice of Kenny Everett.
6. Custard Pie Corner, where you'd send in a photo of a pal or celeb , nominating them for 'a custard pie clobbering': "I have chosen Rod Hull and Emu for a custard pie because they always hurt people!" If you were dead, dead lucky the picture of your mate was printed as is, and then re-printed with cartoon pie drawn on with liquid paper or... well, no... it must have been liquid paper. The alternative doesn't bear thinking about.

Notable characters that Cheeky would meet on any one day:
Posh Claude - mandatory upper-class focus of reader hatred
Iddle-I-Po - 'Inscrutable Chinese Editor' (it says here!), always got one over on Cheeky
Gloomy Glad - Incurably depressive girl who walks with her own personal rain cloud forever above her
Louise - Love struck with Cheeky and forever tricking him into gestures that made him look keen, which he wasn't
The Bakers Boy - Dim ugly thug forever losing a cake to Cheeky in riddle related bets.

Krazy comic folded soon after Cheeky went solo.

LION ('60s-'70s)
One of the classic British boys' comics that existed before Marvel swamped the market with American reprints. Featured strips such as Sylvester And The Touchstone, the time travel adventure Kelly's Eye, Robot Archie, and The Steel Commando. Eventually merged with Valiant, but - hey - it was called LION & VALIANT, not the other way around.

MANDY
Girl's magazine full of adventure stories - 50/50 set in Victorian England or modern-day Britain. Stories were the usual orphan with incredible talent and horrible step family finds happiness and fulfilment (usually with small fluffy animal included). There was an interesting "social comment" story where a group of children's search for a foster family after their mother was sent to hospital for an unspecified mental illness. There was also another story about a girl escaping from an Eastern European prison camp. "Mandy" was a glossy-haired young woman of around 14 years (at the age of eight, I thought she was dead sophisticated - by the time I was 12, she was total sap). Anyway, the cover story was usually about Mandy and her every day life of going to school, buying clothes, doing homework, and going to the pictures with incredibly boring boyfriend, Tommy (Timmy?). She had a dog too, and he was forever getting into amusing scrapes with the cat. Mandy herself was a sap of the highest order, but the real star of the comic was Valda. Valda was a mystical person who cropped up in various guises: roving-woman-in-very-short-dress, mountaineer-in-very-short-dress, tennis-player...etc. Valda drew mystical powers from a crystal pendant which she would whip out whenever something needed fixing - motors, fatal injuries, tennis elbow...you name it.

THE MARVEL BUMPER COMIC (1988)
From the same stable as The BOG PAPER (qv), another chilling example of Marvel trying to be funny. Like BBC CHOICE to the rest of their publications, a dumping ground for every strip Marvel had they couldn't find a comic for. Linked, hysterically, by 'Mavros', like Enfield without the wit. Lasted nine months. Marvel trying to be funny is similar to Arnold Schwarzenneger trying to be funny, ie not funny at all. See also IT'S WICKED (same year - they were in a bad way) which was loose 'ghost' theme comic, which parodied songs of the day by rewriting entire lyrics with terrible puns.

MISTY/SPELLBOUND (1970s)
Girls' "spooky" comics from Fleetway and DC Thompson respectively. The title character of Misty was a spooky storyteller...

MONSTER FUN ('70s)
Later to merge with Whoopee, this comic was a themed-strips affair (cf Shiver and Shake). It featured such 'gems' as Kid Kong (junior great ape) and Gums, a shark with false teeth which he kept losing to amusing effect.

NIPPER (1987)
Really scraping the barrel with this one, a 'younger' version of Buster, with the main character a three year old and some pretty ropey strips. For the first few months, the comic was A5, hence the name, which led to Fleetway losing out on returns as most were stolen. Thus, later issues were A4, the punters said 'What's the point of this comic at all?' and it merged with Buster after eight months. Buster actually referred to itself as 'Buster and Nipper' for a few months afterwards but only about two characters lasted more than the token six months.

THE NUTTY (late '70s-85)
DC Thompson's stab at something a bit more anarchic in the early eighties and it was a fairly good effort - lasting over 100 issues. It led with Bananaman on the front and back pages, the centre-pages were given to the Wild Rovers, and other strips included Doodlebug (mouse thing that drew stuff) and some comicla Red Baron style German WWI incompetent flying ace ("Donner und Blitzen! Ze plane has hit our meatwagon!"), and Peter Pest, who was morbidly preoccupied with coming between his sister and her new boyfriend each week. There was a forgetable character who was an actor and took on a different role every episode. But who cares? Because it was Bananaman you read the Nutty for. Remember the fan fare when he changed his costume? His epic fight with Appleman? Doctor Doom? Ah, happy days. This was the sort of comic-strip character small boys had been waiting for. A muscle-bound hero with laffs. It all went pear-shaped when that crap cartoon series was made about him. Remember it? The Goodies supplied the voices (a triumphant return to the BBC!) and every sodding episode he was pitted against the boring General Blight. And as these things do this feed over into the comic itself. By this time B'man was on the centre pages (the Wild Rovers had been taken out into a metaphorical wood and metaphorically shot) and it all got a bit turgid with General Blight turning up every week to menace our hero. Eventually Nutty merged with Dandy. And Bananaman only continued in those occasional DC Thompson pocket-books. What a waste...

OINK (1986 - 88)
Greatest Comic Ever Made edited by Uncle Pigg and full of comic strips like Tom Thug (left school, went on dole, then moved to Buster and sent back to school), Pete and his Pimple (anti-comic strip later most Beano-ish thing in comic), Horace Ugly Face Watkins (really badly drawn parody of comic strip later turned into horrendous soap opera apread half the comic with no jokes where it explored the real emotional issues of a boy shunned by society (no, really it did)) and Burp, which stopped making sense after about ten weeks and became unfathomable set of images, which span off surrealist Mr Bignose who would look scary in pre-Reeves and Mortimer three panel strip. All this plus much, much more including regular cartoons drawn by Marc 'Lard' Riley who also appeared in hand coloured photo stories set in estate in Altrincham, interviews with John Peel and the Cult, self indulgent articles where readers sent in references to Oink in local press (normally referring to it as vile downmarket rag) and many TV parodies, plus Frank Sidebottom's Fantastic Page (highlight - exercises you can do in your dressing gown). First 18 months of fortnightly issues featured very very loose theme each issue which quickly became unworkable (one of the last - 'surrealism' issue). Went weekly at beginning of 88 but was cut to 24 pages and seemed to go a bit childish, then four months later reinvented as monthly 'magazine' with new logo and 'new' all over cover when it was trying to be Viz and alienated youth audience with far too many cultural references.Upon closure, spun off into disappointing CITV series Round the Bend with slightly neutered ripoffs of Oink characters in cartoon form, then Tom Thug, Pete's Pimple and Weedy Willy moved to Buster. Latter two dropped after six months and former shadow of former self as lovable rogue not socially inadequate psychopath. On the whole, though, a work of genius.

REVOLVER (early '90s)
'Dan Dare', 'Rogan Josh', 'Happenstance & Kismet', crappy girl's story, 'Purple Haze'. Revolver - the hip 90s British comic. The ill-fated sister title of 'Crisis', was where it was at. More playful and ''funky' then Crisis, Revolver was loved up, less earnest, and therefore much better. Grant Morrison's 'Dan Dare' was a little unimaginitive but far more respectful to the spirit of the original then the re-launched Eagle ever was. 'Rogan Josh' and 'Purple Haze' were not entirely successful attempts to embody the pop music zeitgeist. Revolver never really took off, and perhaps suffered from the disappointment comics readers had experienced with Crisis. It was not long before the inevitable merge between the two. Fleetway had learnt their lesson. Comics are for kids!

ROY OF THE ROVERS (1976-1993)
UNMISSABLE football adventure compendium - spun-off from Tiger - anchored by the saga of ageless, blond-mulleted striking sensation turned canny player-manager Roy Race. Roy steered Melchester Rovers through European triumphs and cup finals aplenty, with plenty of last-minute hat-tricks, adventures and kidnappings. When Racey was shot in 1981, a record-breaking 14-0 win from Rovers woke him from his coma, a moment that still causes at least one grown male to go all misty-eyed. Ahem. Trademark of the Racey strips were the comments from fans 50 yards apart, in lieu of exposition (as satirised by Billy The Fish): 'What's Racey doing taking off Blackie Gray?' '...It looks as if he's going to bring on our new Spanish signing Paco Diaz' '...Racey's unleashed his Rocket!' (insert David Beckham gag here). Never really recovered by bringing in two members of Spandau Ballet as new signings in 1985, despite killing off half the team in a terrorist bomb blast the following year. Other great ROTR stories included 'The Safest Hands In Soccer', 'Millionaire Villa' (!), 'Tommy's Troubles', 'The Marks Brothers' and 'The Hard Man', featuring the antics of Danefield United's Johnny Dexter (surely the template for Tony Adams) who had the ability to do diving headers*horizontally. His boss, Eastern European Viktor Boskovic, predated the trend for continental coaches by a good 15 years.

SCOOP (late '70s)
Sports-heavy boys' paper which came with a sports diary on the 1st issue and a large football badge where you could change the pictures of players of the day (Trevor Francis, Mick Mills etc.) on the second the story I can remember the most about was "This goalies got guts" about Ben "Lieper the keeper" Lieper a goalie for a team who I can't quite remember the name of although I seem to recall he had the same hairdo as Roy Race, the team also featured hardman Dave "savage" Savage (where did ipc get their ideas from?). There was also a story about a racing driver (various motor sports) and his mechanic, the driver I can't recall, but the mechanic was Ron "greasy" Tanner. Also if I remeber correctly there was a fairly long running story about a broke speedway rider who found a bike called tiger? that 2 or 3 of it's previous riders had been killed by riding, so to keep up the great inspirational form the story was called "Tiger Rider" I think this one ended woth the bike exploding (without the rider) after a last minute struggle to make the last payment on the riders widowed (where do these cliches end?) dads farm, an irony about buying the farm lost on a pre-teen reader.

SCOUSE MOUSE/ACE (most of the 80s)
Some scouser (not Neil Buchanan, hopefully) came up with this character in the early 80s, a sort of blend of Dangermouse and Tarby. As well as constant airing on the walls of the Royal Liverpool Hospital Children's Ward, at least one small publisher put it into comic format for about four months. Originally called 'Ace!', it reverted to simply 'Scouse Mouse' after a few months. Oddly, major player Fleetway found itself publishing a comic based around the character in 1988. It appeared that only two artists drew the entire comic which may explain why it joined Whizzer and Chips after five issues. Called, brilliantly, 'Whizzer and Chips with Scouse Mouse', only him and a smartarse dog named 'Fido Fax' survived, the latter lasting about five weeks. Scouse Mouse disappeared after about six months, not the least because it was entirely different from everything else in the comic in terms of style, stories, language (I'm sure there was some swearing in it once). Still massive on Merseyside, one suspects.

SHIVER AND SHAKE ('70s)
Knock-off comic which was basically Topper, but with a kind of horror theme to the strips - for instance, 'Consternation Street' (do you see?), "Fun Fear" (haunted fairground), "Sweeney Toddler" (baby from hell), and in particular 'Creature Teacher' - a kind of Bash St Kids except the teacher, instead of having a head, had a huge bulbous eye! (Nice idea!). The title characters were a ghost (Shiver) and an elephant in, for some reason, a schoolboy outfit (Shake).

SMASH (late '60s)
Little-remembered hotchpotch of strips which included the following characters: Bad Penny, Grimly Feendish, Man from B.U.N.G.L.E. and Danger Mouse ( a small white mouse with a DM on his chest, existing way, way before the Cosgrove-Hall franchise monster of the early '80s - a possible secret origin for the David jason-voiced superhero?) The annual, winningly, was priced at 10/6. That's value.

SPEED (1970s - early '80s)
Action weekly which eventually merged with Tiger (which was winningly renamed Tiger and Speed for a while). Tiger strips such as Death Wish and Skid Solo originated in this comic.

SPIKE (1970s)
"The NO 1 Mag for Boys". Issue No 1 had a free model aeroplane inside. It featured Iron Barr - enormously built, salt-of-the-earth, cheeky chappie scrap merchant Charlie Barr who found he could do better than 'The Rovers' current goalkeeper and signed to them for nothing. Like Pat Jennings, Iron Barr Scored a goal from his own line in one instalment and in another dribbled the ball right up into the other half and scored again. Incredible. Oddly enough, the team featured old LimpAlong Leslie again. Then there was Ghost in the Cockpit - a spitfire pilot who gets his plane into trouble but is then saved from the point of death by the ghostly presence of a pilot who'd died in the plane some time before... The Man in Black too - an improbable tale of an athlete calling himself Smith who turns up to events at the last minute to break world records and then goes into hiding until the next one. A reporter befriended him and found that Smith was actually called Wilson, was over 200 years old and had been given the elixir of eternal life. There was also Ticker Tait, who was on the run having been given a heart which was actually a bomb.

STAR LORD (1976-8)
Contained 'Time Quake'. It is funny the amount of comics that were welded onto more profitable titles back then. When two comics merged you knew the writing was on the wall for the comic title that appeared after the 'and' as in 2000 AD 'and' Starlord. cf. 2000AD.

TIGER (permanantly trapped in some kind of post-war reverie until 1986)
NO doubt launched as a thrilling adventure paper for boys in the '50s, Tiger was revitalised in the '80s as an, erm, thrilling adventure etc. Everyone remembers Billy's Boots, the tale of useless footballer Billy Dane, who owned old-time hero Dead Shot Keens old boots, which magically transformed Dane into a twinkle-toed genius. But Billy's dozy old gran was forever throwing them out, giving them to charity etc, usually on the eve of the big cup final. Cripes! Hotshot Hamish was a stereotyped Scottish football star. Then there was Death Wish, the story of Blake Edwards, some kind of stuntman who was hideously scarred in an accident and now wore a mask while he engaged in all kind of hair-raising danger-mongery in an effort to make his wish come true. Sintek was a globe-trotting sporting robot with an unscrupulous agent (who writes this stuff?), not forgetting redskin wresler Johnny Cougar and formula one ace Skid Solo. Merged with Eagle (qv) in 1986.

TRIFFIK (1992)
Somewhat 'racier' version of the Beano launched by some small company (as in 'Proud producers of polymorphine benzalate ... and Triffik!') in February 92. Some decent artists turned out the strips, although I can't remember any of them. What I do know is that the publishers showed little regards for artwork, as whichever strip found itself on the back page that week (entirely random) normally got a huge barcode stuck over crucial part of final panel. 13 weeks, I believe.

TV COMIC (1970s)
Featured a great strip about a poor kid with a crap skateboard who got transformed into a rocket powered skate kid with matching suit etc, who went about saving folk in the now trad. 'littlest hobo' style, but without the dog and with more contrived "If only someone can raise the money to save the orphanage by winning the skateboard race" plotlines.

TV TORNADO (1960s)
Short-lived, garish TV-spinoff comic for fickle readers easily impressed by bright colours. This comic featured such bizarre 'attractions as: Magnus Robot Fighter. Some muscular dope in a skirt who flew about lying on a single mattress. Wrestled robots for some obscure reason. Tarzan. Tedious adventures of the Ape man, quite possibly derived from the Ron Ely TV series. Daktari was in it too. Couldn't help feeling that when it came to action-packed comic strips, this comic had missed the point.

VALIANT (1950s - )
All-round boys' actioner featuring strips like Captain Hurricane, a Royal Marine commando who had superhuman strength, and would wind himself up into a "ragin' fury" and single-handedly take out entire machine gun nests of nasty Japs or Jerries. He had a batman called Maggot Malone as well.

WARLORD (1970-early '80s)
Rock-solid war strips, a la Battle, with characters such as 'Lord Peter Flint' and 'Sergeant Ryker' (a black US Army Sergeant who's storylines were riddles with the most outrageously racist comments, the like of such you only here on a Tarenteno film these days. And who could forget 'Union Jack Jackson'. Every boy of the Warlord generation learnt all the German they needed to know from this one, e.g. 'Gott in himmel' and 'for you Tommy ze var is over'.

WHIZZER AND CHIPS (1970s - )
Two comics in one! Supposedly 'rival' comics as well, rather like the Guardian and Telegraph bound together by one staple. The idea was to pledge allegiance to either Whizzer, headed by Sid and his snake (Whiz-kids), or to the more raffish Chips, under the tough aegis of permanenlty-blackeyed child boxer Shiner (Chip-ites). And then, presumably, separate the two comics and trow the 'other' one away. Characters often tended to the 'made up during lunchtime session in local pub' type, often conforming to the Viz staple of rhyming couplets, eg. Colonel Blink (the short-sighted gink), or Jimmy Jinx (and what he thinks).

WIZARD ('70s)
Standard boys' adventure fare, pretty much in the same vein as Victor, with not much going for it, to be honest.

COLLECT THEM ALL!

Britcomix of the 1970s carried advertising that was a million miles away from the "X-ray spex"/Lie detector coupon deceits of their Yank counterparts, but there was still a fair amount of less-than-subtle shystering going on in the inside back pages...