Wonder
Weekly
Publisher: Esso
Format: Weekly anthology
First Issue: Wonder Weekly #1 (5th July 1968)
Last Issue: Wonder Weekly #52 (27th June 1969)
Absorbed: None
Absorbed into: None
Strips: The Adventures of
Wonder Boy and Tiger, Bossy Boots, The
Castaway Circus, Chop Chop the Karate King, Gulliver Travels, The Holy Terrors,
Hovercraft Patrol, The Nitwits,
Scatters, Work Shy Willie
Comments: Wonder Weekly was a promotional comic
produced by petrol
company
Esso and available at their garages (gas stations, for the Americans
in the audience). If you click on the link in this paragraph, you can
watch a television advert for it.
 The
Adventures of Wonder Boy and Tiger was the cover strip
of Wonder Weekly. Whenever someone was in danger Tiger's whiskers
would waggle to direct their flying "super space carpet" to the
problem, and upon landing "Boy" as he was generally known would
seek to resolve the problem while the every hungry cat would race
off in search of food. However, when Boy inevitably found himself
in over his head and called for help, then Tiger would sense this
(even if well out of earshot) and automatically transform into the
far bigger and more muscular "Tiger Cat" to come to Boy's rescue.
Their recurring foe was the yellow-skinned and villainous Doctor
Fang.
|
Bossy
Boots was a young girl who constantly tried to tell
everyone around her what to do. Her reputation was so bad in her
home town that people fled when they heard she was approaching.
However her schemes always ended with her receiving a just
comeuppance.
|
The Castaway Circus were a troupe of
circus performers who had been shipwrecked on the remote Crocodile
Island. Their members included Bippo the clown, twin child
acrobats Billy and Bunty, strongman Samson, human cannonball Zero,
animal handler Tarzan, and Slim the stiltwalker.
|
Chop
Chop the Karate King was a Chinese master of the
martial arts with a penchant for chopping things. Nothing was
impervious to his lethal hands, not even tree trunks or pillar
boxes; he even chopped the getaway car being used by a group of
bank robbers clean in half lengthways. Since he appeared in the
late 1960s he also had some unfortunately stereotypical speech
mannerisms.
|
Gulliver
Travels was about a young boy by the name of Gulliver
who carried around a small army of tiny "Mini-Men" in a matchbox
as he made his way from country to country.
|
The
Holy Terrors were a group of troublesome school
children who constantly made their teacher's life miserable, in
the vein of the Bash Street Kids.
|
 Hovercraft
Patrol was an adventure strip that ran in the colour
centre pages of Wonder. It starred two operatives, Storm (black
hair, flying HC-2) and Hardy (blond, flying HC-1), who flew
missions for the Crime Combat Force (a government agency - though
it's abbreviated CPC and CPP in different issues), rescuing people
in trouble and catching spies. They reported to Colonel Barton.
|
The
Nitwits were extremely dim and inept criminals. From left to
right in the adjoining picture, they were Slim (a.k.a. Lefty), two
I've yet to identify (wearing the cap, and the portly one in the
sleeveless jacket), getaway driver Maxie and their boss, Slick
Nick.
|
Scatters
was a man obsessed with safety, officiously stepping in to warn
others of dangers while simultaneously causing disasters in his
wake.
|
Work
Shy Willie was a young boy who just wanted to laze his days
away, resulting in an ongoing battle with his father, who kept
trying to find ways to get his son to do some work. Willie's
efforts to avoid work often ended up taking more effort than would
have been needed to simply do the jobs his father asked him to.
|
First Posted: Circa 13/10/2019
Last updated: 05/11/2023
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