So, are you a Whizz Kid, or a Chip-ite
"Whizzer and Chips" which first appeared in 1969 (coincidentally almost exactly 40 years ago, it had a cover date of 18th October) and kept running until 1990 (When it merged with another comics called "Buster"). It had a fun little gimmick in that it pretended to be two comics in one "The Whizzer" and "Chips", and readers could decide which they wanted to be, a "Whizz Kid" or a "Chip-ite" (Which is NOT a subset of the Mennonites) and sometimes characters from one set of stories would sneak into the other comic for a "raid".
Leader of the Whizz Kids, was Sid, with his snake Slippy, leader of the Chip-ites was the accident prone "Shiner".
Like the other weekly comics in this series, there were multiple stories per issue, with most of them being the slapstick humour variety. The rule for comics like this was take an idea, no matter how insane, and run with it as long as possible. The short length meant that a single punchline joke could be explored to the maximum...
We start with the cover of this issue, from April 1978, and which features the aforementioned "Sid's Snake", a Sid goes to see what turned out to be the Flying Grayson's last performance... Oh wait, wrong franchise...
I loved Sid's snake, something about the way Slippy was almost smiling in a good natured fashion was nice, though I occasionally did wonder what a python THAT size ate, before I realised the old answer "Whatever it damn well wanted to."
Next up,, the store that sells ANYTHING... literally...
Then we switch to the action adventure of "Whizz" Wheels, one of those precocious kids who adapts to any situation thanks to his amazing skills at... ummm... riding a bicycle. But in this case he has the secet weapon that he's riding... ummmm... a penny-farthing....
Not only that, he's cycling a pennyfarthing in FLARES! Ah, the 70's...
Well, I'm sold.. I'm sure he probably cycled hard enough to FLY after the mystery aircraft...
And we move on to Chips, featuring Shiner, who has a cheerfully open approach to physical violence and self harm that's way ahead of the curve (or maybe I'm overanalysing.
Ha ha ha.. see it's funny because it's VIOLENT! (Perhaps this sort of thing is why Itchy and Scratchy rarely makes me laugh, but early Tom and Jerry has me in stiches)
Next up, one I fondly remember. Forget that little goody-two shoes Casper, Harry is the sort of slacker ghost I'd probably be...
And to show there is NO idea too insane for these titles, here are a couple, where you barely need to see more than the introductory panels, or ever just the title panel, to see that
This one is based entirely on the notion of a pun on Bovver boots
And this one is about a guy whose hat allows him to, apparently, redirect all his mental energy towards solving a problem...
Then we have the good old fashioned morality tale of someone who's three inches tall", that never gets old....
And finally, I had to include this from the promo for the next issue... I'm sure ALL the cool skateboarding dudes play harmonica!