About Krazy

Krazy

Krazy, also known as Krazy Comic, was a British weekly humour comic for children, published in London, England, by IPC Magazines. It ran from 16 October 1976 to 15 April 1978, a total of 79 issues, before being merged into its stablemate Whizzer and Chips. Although its life was short even by the standards of 1970s British comics, Krazy was noted at the time and has been remembered since for trying to push IPC's humour titles in a looser, more anarchic direction — and for launching Cheeky, the buck-toothed prankster who proved popular enough to win a comic of his own.

The comic was built around the Krazy Gang, a group of children living in Krazy Town, and it filled the spaces between its strips with small jokes, gags and illustrations scattered at random through the pages. That density of incidental humour, together with playful devices such as a disguised back cover, gave Krazy a distinctive identity among the many IPC humour weeklies of the period.

Launch and Format

Krazy was published weekly, appearing every Monday. Its first issue was dated 16 October 1976 and came with a free gift of novelty false teeth, a typical launch inducement for a British children's comic of the era. The first issue's contents set out the formula: the Krazy Gang in their own strip and in a Kidnap Capers story, 'Ello, It's Cheeky, Handy Andy, Scaredy Cat, Paws, Big Game Hunter, Ray Presto, Fit Fred and Sick Sid, plus features such as a Krazy Dictionary and a framing piece asking whether the reader was Krazy or Krazy Not.

The publishers were Fleetway and IPC Magazines, the dominant force in British juvenile comics alongside DC Thomson. Krazy arrived in a crowded market of humour titles that included Whizzer and Chips, Whoopee!, Cor!! and Buster, and its survival depended on the same newsagent sales that sustained — or ended — all of them.

The Disguise Cover

One of Krazy's most fondly remembered devices was its disguise back cover. The back page was designed to look like something innocuous, such as the cover of a diary or a brochure, so that a reader could hold the comic in class or at home and appear to be reading something respectable. The joke acknowledged, and cheerfully encouraged, the reality that comics were often read where they were not supposed to be read.

The gag was played with variations: on one April Fool's Day issue the front cover itself was printed upside down. The disguise covers have become one of the details most often recalled by former readers, and they capture the comic's editorial stance — it presented itself as a mildly subversive ally of the child reader against the authority of parents and teachers.

The Krazy Gang

The central strip was The Krazy Gang, drawn by cartoonist Ian Knox, which followed the exploits of a group of children in Krazy Town. Gang members included Ed, Blue, Liz, Brainy, Sporty and Cheeky, along with Freaky, an alien character depicted as a small flying saucer with three eyes and prominent teeth. The gang format gave the comic its title, its cover stars and a framework from which other strips could spin off.

Two such spin-offs ran within Krazy itself. Pongalongapongo featured Pongo Snodgrass, the gang's unhygienic, bullying antagonist, in adventures of his own. 'Ello, It's Cheeky gave the gang's mischievous, buck-toothed prankster a solo strip, drawn by Frank McDiarmid. It was Cheeky, of the whole gang, who broke out.

Cheeky and Cheeky Weekly

Within a few months of Krazy's launch, Cheeky's popularity had outgrown his supporting role. In October 1977 IPC launched Cheeky Weekly, a comic of his own, with Frank McDiarmid drawing much of the new title as well as its star. Cheeky Weekly adopted an unusual continuing format in which Cheeky moved through his day meeting a cast of recurring characters and introducing the other strips, rather than appearing only in disconnected short stories.

Cheeky Weekly ran for 117 issues, until 2 February 1980, when it was merged into Whoopee!. Cheeky annuals appeared every year from 1979 to 1985, with summer and holiday specials in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The spin-off's longer life meant that, for many readers, Cheeky became better known than the comic that created him — a common pattern in British comics, where a strong character could outlive several parent titles.

The Other Strips

Around the Krazy Gang, the comic carried a broad slate of humour strips. The 12½p Buytonic Boy was a parody of television's bionic heroes, its hero defined by the modest price in his name; after Krazy closed, the strip continued in Whizzer and Chips, where it ran until 1986. Birdman and Chicken spoofed superheroes, Hit Kid and Kid Comic played with familiar comic archetypes, and Micky Mimic, Ray Presto and Handy Andy supplied the quick-gag strips on which weekly humour comics depended.

Other regulars included Detective Fumbly's (Nut) Case Book, unusual in being a text story with a single illustration rather than a conventional strip; Over-Helpful Helen, about a well-meaning young woman whose interference in other people's affairs drove the comedy; Scaredy Cat; Fit Fred and Sick Sid; Paws; and Big Game Hunter. Artists who worked on the comic included Robert Nixon and Terry Bave, both mainstays of IPC humour titles, alongside Ian Knox and Frank McDiarmid.

Specials and Annuals

As was standard for IPC titles, Krazy was supported by seasonal spin-offs. Krazy Holiday Specials were published from 1977 to 1983, continuing for five years after the weekly comic itself had closed — evidence that the title retained enough recognition with readers and retailers to justify summer publications long after its regular run ended. Such specials typically mixed new material with the established characters, and they kept the Krazy Gang before the public while the characters' main home became Whizzer and Chips.

Merger with Whizzer and Chips

Krazy's last issue was dated 15 April 1978. From 22 April 1978 it was merged into Whizzer and Chips, one of IPC's longest-running humour titles, following the industry practice by which a cancelled comic's name and most popular strips were absorbed into a surviving stablemate to retain as many readers as possible. The Krazy Gang themselves survived the merger and continued in their new home, as did the Buytonic Boy.

The merger was not entirely seamless for the characters. Freaky, the gang's alien member, was quietly dropped after the move, a change later remarked on by readers who wrote to comics magazines about it; the gang's adventures in Whizzer and Chips settled into a more conventional style, with storylines such as burglar hunts replacing some of the earlier strangeness. In retrospect, Krazy is often described as IPC's attempt at a next step forward for its juvenile humour line — a title that took marginally bigger chances than its rivals but failed to secure the sales to continue independently.

Place in 1970s British Comics

Krazy's 79 issues place it among the many short-lived IPC launches of the 1970s, a decade in which the publisher tested new humour titles frequently and closed or merged those that did not meet sales expectations within their first two years. What distinguished Krazy was its presentation: the scattered jokes and illustrations between strips, the disguise covers, and a gang of characters designed to carry spin-offs. Graham Kibble-White's reference work The Ultimate Book of British Comics, one of the standard sources for the title's dates and history, records it as part of that fast-moving Fleetway landscape.

The decade's context matters to Krazy's story. Television was eroding children's reading time, production costs were rising, and publishers relied on mergers to consolidate readerships. A title could be well liked — as Krazy evidently was by its readers — and still be folded into a stronger seller.

Legacy

Krazy's legacy rests chiefly on three things. It created Cheeky, whose own weekly outlasted it and whose annuals ran into the mid-1980s. It preserved, in the Krazy Gang and the Buytonic Boy, strips that continued for years inside Whizzer and Chips. And it is remembered affectionately in retrospectives and collectors' guides to British comics for its disguise covers and its slightly wilder tone, a small but genuine landmark in IPC's 1970s humour output.