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Look what just arrived for me this morning - the very first WHIZZER & CHIPS Holiday Special from 1970. A bit of shading on the cover, but apart from that, a nice solid copy. I would've had this as a kid no doubt, so it's good to own it once again and to be able to relive halcyon days of yore. One thing that's always puzzled me is why some of these mags were called 'Summer Specials', while others (like this one) were called 'Holiday Specials'. Does anyone know the reason? I'll be showing some of the contents later, so don't stray too far now, okay? In the meantime, below is the inside 'cover' of the Chips section to whet your appetite.
12 comments:
I find it interesting how often British comics consolidate instead of "tossing out the baby with the bath water" full cancellations.
Chips into Whizzer, Pow! into Wham!, and Ranger into Look And Learn are three examples that have cropped up here in just the last few weeks. I like that better than the all-or-nothing approach we more typically see over here.
Actually, Whizzer & Chips was launched that way, as two comics in one, the same as Shiver & Shake which came out around three-odd years later. It was just a gimmick to make kids think they were getting more for their money, though the so-called 'two comics in one' only had the same amount of (combined) pages as 'single' issues of other IPC titles. (And it was Wham! into Pow!, but I know what you meant.)
I knew Shiver & Shake started as a combined title, but that cover blurb led me to think that Chips was a familiar title to readers of the time. Oops.
I thought it was Wham! & Pow!, not Pow! & Wham! Must have gotten confused on the sequence order - Wham! Pow! Knockout!
;)
It's easy to get confused with Pow! & Wham!, 3. The combined comic went by that name, but the combined Annuals (there were two of them) were called Wham! & Pow! and came out a few years after the comic had ceased. They also had no recognizable content to that of the comic.
That makes sense. Far more often than not, my first exposure comes through the annuals. I grab all that pass my way, and use them as a launch point in my explorations.
Incidentally, there's another copy of this W&C Holiday Special currently on eBay, 3 - just in case you're interested.
Hard to find in tip top condition, so well done
Ta, though to be honest, the Special isn't all that special, being a bit lacklustre unfortunately. However, still nice to have it.
I know that Alan Class comics didn't have dates on the covers so he could sell unsold stock to seaside vendors who could then sell them all the year round - maybe some of the specials were called Holiday rather than Summer for similar reasons?
Yeah, but holidays, just like Summer, don't last all year round, DS, and most folk usually take (or used to back then) their holidays during the Summer. I'm still puzzled.
I always preferred them to be called Summer Specials rather than Holiday Specials, but I can't give any good reason why. Maybe just the association with hot weather, I suppose.
I also preferred them being called Summer Specials, but I suppose that's only because that's what they were called when I first encountered them.
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