In my opinion, in 1978 WHOOPEE! was beginning to loose some of its appeal. Scream Inn had ended last year in the issue dated 1st October, 1977, replaced for the time being by Spooktacular 7 – still drawn by the excellent Brian Walker and featuring the same old happy gang of spooks – but readers’ story ideas were no longer used. As 1978 rolled on, Spooktacular 7 was put to rest after the issue dated 22nd July, 1978, as was Ken Reid’s World-Wide Weirdies after the issue of 21st October, 1978. Fans of ‘Orrible Hole, Creepy Car, Fun Fear and Evil Eye saw less of their favourite strips because t ..read more

In 1977 IPC were again generous with their WHOOPEE! pull-outs – as many as 15 issues had something special in them. The first two numbers (1st and 8th January) had a pull out calendar.  This is how the calendar was advertised in the last issue of 1976:  Ken Reid made it up to the readers for being unavailable to draw the previous year’s calendar, and contributed this impressive 2-part poster, with an evil-looking Sun and a spooky planet for each month.  Assembly instructions were included with the second part of the calendar: WHOOPEE! issue cover dated 12th Febr ..read more

I recently acquired a copy of SPARKY No. 620 – the last issue that I needed for my complete set of this interesting title. I shared my joy on Twitter and on a few FB comics groups, and mentioned that I was after a complete copy of issue 110 because mine had its centre pages missing. Two fellow collectors responded to my appeal, and that elusive issue is now on its way to me from the UK! I will celebrate this achievement by resuming my series of SPARKY back covers featuring the MOONSTERS by Bill Ritchie. A few years ago I did a string of galleries of all SPARKY front covers with the Moonste ..read more

In 1976 WHOOPEE! celebrated the New Year with a two-part Creepy Calendar in the vein of the comic’s World-Wide Weirdies pin-up series, printed in the first two issues of the year: World-Wide Weirdies were normally drawn by Ken Reid, but worries over his divorce proceedings made Ken unable to work at the time, so the job was given to Robert Nixon: Instructions to the readers were provided on the Letters page: WHOOPEE! issue of 6th March, 1976 celebrated the 2nd birthday of the paper (it was issue No. 102). The occasion was marked with the introduction of a new logo, three new stri ..read more

The third and final part of my account of the ‘cases’ dealt with by The Spooktacular 7, formerly known as the crew of Scream Inn, covers WHOPPEE! issues  starting with the first one for May 1978 and ending with the issue for 22 July 1978 – the last weekly comic to feature The Spooktacular 7. The strip also appeared in a few Annuals that I will cover later on. May 6, 1978   ● Suffering Sam has hypnotic effect on the evil Dr. String-glove at Shudderbone Castle. May 13, 1978 ● S7 get a call to rescue a giant kitty from a giant tree at research station May 20, 1978  ● S7 stop a sin ..read more

Here’s Part Two of my account of the ‘cases’ dealt with by the Spooktacular 7 (formerly known as the crew of Scream Inn). This blogpost covers all WHOPPEE! issues for 1978 till the end of April - leaving the rest for Part Three. 7th January 1978   ● S7 provide music at the New Year party when the Canal Road Band gate-crash the party (singer does his impression of Johnny Rotten) 14th January 1978  ● Evil waxworks owner Professor Kreeps tries to turn S7 into exhibits of his chamber of horrors but Cyril the spider saves the day 21th January 1978  ● Number one stages a practic ..read more

SCREAM INN was an excellent strip by Brian Walker that started in SHIVER AND SHAKE in 1973 where it ran for 79 weeks, totalling 158 pages (plus two guest-appearance pages in The Wizards Anonymous strip), and continued in WHOOPEE! after the two comics merged in 1974, totalling 153 weekly episodes, or 306 pages. I covered both runs in my two series on this blog (Part One of the SHIVER AND SHAKE series can be found HERE, and Part One of the WHOOPEE! series – HERE; further installments of both series can be found by clicking ‘newer post’ at the bottom of the two links above). After SCREAM INN co ..read more

  THE MYSTERY OF THE OLD WELL was adventure ten in FUDGE THE ELF series created, written and illustrated by Ken Reid. It first appeared in THE MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS between August 20, 1951 and May 10, 1952, and was reprinted as SPECK AND THE MICROMEN between March 13, 1976 and 27 November 1976. The version that I have photocopies of is the reprint one, and according to FUDGE THE ELF index at the back of FUDGE IN BUBBLEVILLE edition published by Savoy Books in 1981, text captions were re-set and occasionally rewritten, and four panels were omitted. The original story consisted of 672 pa ..read more

  The year was 1989, around Halloween. 12 years had passed since Brian Walker’s last episode of Scream Inn in WHOOPEE! comic. But then out of the blue Innkeeper and his crew made a surprise appearance in THE DANDY cover-dated 4th November 1989 published, of course, by IPC’s competition – DC Thomson!  A few things had changed since the haunted establishment was last seen more than a decade ago: the sign above the door was gone, and the grand prize of a million pound had shrunk to a mere tenner. Resident spooks had lost their haunting zeal and Smasher easily claimed the prize but Bria ..read more

  Here comes the third - and final - part of Scream Inn guestbook, documenting who and when called at the spooky establishment in 1977 in a bid to win the prize of a million quid. January 1, 1977         · Sleeping Beauty January 8, 1977         · Tortoise January 15, 1977       · Blacksmith January 22, 1977       · Attila the Hun   January 29, 1977       ·Red Indian Chief – situation appears to be desperate so th ..read more