Winker Watson

Winker Watson is a British comic strip, created by Eric Roberts, which ran in the British comic book magazine The Dandy for almost half a century. It debuted in 1961 and only terminated its run in 2007. It was revived in 2012.

Winker first appeared in the 1961 Dandy Book (published September 1960), and then appeared in the weekly Dandy on 1 April 1961 in issue Number 1010, and was quickly established as a character of great wit and appeal. Probably modeled on the Greyfriars stories and on Harry Wharton, Winker is a pupil of the Third Form of Greytowers Boarding School, he is known as the "wangler" of the school, constantly playing tricks and avoiding unpleasant school activities, much to the chagrin of his teacher Mr Clarence Creep (known to the boys as Creepy). Creep also has a sister called Agnes, who runs the nearby Trinity Hall Girls School, constructed in 1989 after the previous one burnt down. Around that area there also seems to be a St Jennifer's School for Girls, though this may just be a continuity error. Greytowers is next door to a police training school, although this was later reportedly abandoned and derelict.

Winker Watson is a rare breed for a kids comic, as his stories are often continuous from issue to issue, including the long-running saga of his uncle Arnold arriving as Physical Training instructor and Winker's endless attempts to get rid of him. There was also the long-running story dealing with the unjust expulsion of Winker's younger brother Wally, and the elder sibling's attempts to keep him in the school until the end of term so their parents would know nothing until he had been exonerated. A third example is that of Mr Creep's own secret stowaway; the teacher's good-for-nothing twin brother John, who was on the run and needed somewhere to stay, forced his brother to let him hide in his own quarters within the school. Other storylines involved Slasher Scragg (a delinquent boy recruited by the school staff and posing as a pupil to act as their spy on Winker's activities) and 'the phantom of Greytowers' (an elusive figure causing trouble for which Winker and his friends often got the blame; it turned out to be a teenage boy in hiding after escaping from a young offenders' institute). The early 90s saw perhaps the most bizarre running story of the strip's history, as Greytowers was invaded by aliens, who used mind control powers to take over several characters and tried to cast the school adrift in space, until Winker used the aliens' allergy to pig swill to defeat them. Stories throughout 2003 and 2004 were reworkings of 1970s scripts concerning Winker's schemes to foil the plans of Robin Boodle, a consistently annoying rich boy, and who had been renamed Darby Doshman (in the late 1980s, there was a similar reworking in which the rich boy became Jonathan Dosh). At the same time, Classics from the Comics was reprinting the Robin Boodle strips, sometimes in the same week. An old days storyline of a circus moving in next to the school was also redone, although it is unknown if any specific strips were reworked.

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