Character A - Z

B


BEAT YOUR NEIGHBOUR

Beat Your Neighbour was an ongoing battle between two neighbours, which originally began in issue one Knockout comic on 12th June 1971! It was a very popular strip, so when Knockout merged with Whizzer and Chips in June 1973, this set of neighbours went with it (moving into the Whizzer section)!

Naturally, one pair were skinny and had dark hair, whereas the others were fat and bald, or maybe sometimes illustrated with 3 or 4 strands sticking out the front! The kids always wore the same clothes as to what their dads wore, except they wore shorts whereas the adults wore trousers (except for a few examples, i.e. when they went to the beach - but they still wore matching trunks)!

[This is actually a page from a Knockout comic.]
Also you may notice that the neighbours are on the opposite houses in the title box as to what they are in the actual strip! Of course, it wasn't all based at home, but most of them were!

Here's a few examples of title boxes. The neighbours are always on the wrong side!

The whole concept behind the story was very simple: to beat the neighbour! Here's an example from the 1983 annual. One person got some skates, so the other got some ski's. Jealous, they responded with a sled, who responded with a sled and a dog team! They got a snow scooter, so the others responded with a snow plow. Only there's no snow to play with all these things! You can see where this is going...

O


ODD BALL

Odd Ball, a crazy sphere who certainly lived up to his name, began in the first issue of Whizzer and Chips, where he was originally illustrated not by his creator Terry Bave but by Bumpkin Billionaire's scribbler Mike Lacey! Terry Bave would of course draw him for most of the characters run!He was a true, noble Whizz-Kid, guilty of many raids over the comics life! He also eats grass, and in the firt issue where this is revealed Nobby states "Coo - I've got me a real Odd-Ball! It's alive... AND it won't cost me anything to feed it! It eats grass!"

This lively ball was eating grass for years and years (along with a few sweets as well, of course!), as a strip from 1989 revealed!

So, where does our round red pal come from? Well it all started on the plantet Bounce, where two 'spring heeled' inhabitants were enjoying a popular ball game (football by the looks of it). Suddenly one of them kicks it so hard it actually leaves the planet, hit's the head of a passing astronaught and land's right in the middle of Nobby Noodle's footy match!

Odd-Ball was very noble not only to being a Whizz-Kid but also as a pal to Nobby! Throughout the years he would morph into all kinds of bizzare shapes to help and cheer up Nobby, and even get revenge on the bullies or some "Crummy Chip-ites"!

The duo were so popular that they replaced the also popular Joker on the back cover and appeared in full colour! When the comic revamped in 1988, they were moved inside and appeared in just black, white, red and yellow. For a few weeks the back cover was dominated by adverts, but then the comics returned! Several characters took the spot, including Lazy Bones, Sweet Tooth and Bobby's Ghoul. But by April 1989, Odd Ball and Nobby were back, where they would remain until the comic ended!

[It was confirmed on the letter's page that, even though Greedy Greg annoyed Sweet Tooth and various other Whizz-Kid's, he was certainly not a Chip-ite!]

Odd Ball would survive Whizzer and Chip's 21 year run, and even survive the merge into Buster, where he would remain until the end of the Fleetway Funnies in 2000! But how did it all end? As most of you probably know, on the back page of Buster's final issue, Jack Edward Oliver came up with a way to end most of the comics characters. And how did Odd Ball go? Well - see for yourself!