1973 SHIVER AND SHAKE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY SPECIAL

The first Shiver and Shake Special was quite extraordinary because it was a CHRISTMAS Holiday Special. It had 96 pages and cost 18 p.

Here is the breakdown of the contents (black colour is for SHIVER section and blue is for SHAKE; underlined are the features that didn’t appear in the weeklies): The Duke’s Spook, Soggy the Sea Monster, Grimly Feendish (4 episodes), Ghouldilocks (3 episodes), Christmas Creations (4 instalments), Frankie Stein (5 episodes), Horrornation Street, Menace of the Ghost Ship, Scatty Bat (2 episodes), The Hand (2 episodes), Sweeny Toddler, Wiz War (2 episodes), The Shiver Givers, Shake (+ Shake’s Christmas Surprise), Mirth-Shaking Christmas Inventions (2 instalments), The Desert Fox, Damsel in Distress, Lolly Pop, Mirth Shakers (2 instalments), The Fixer, Moana Lisa, Match of the Season: Santa’s Team v Jack Frost, Tough Nutt and Softy Centre, Sample Simon, Scream Inn, Ye Haunted Lake, Ed (2 episodes) and Webster.

The Special was structured after the weeklies: it had the spook and the elephant on the front and a Creepy Creation (on this occasion – a Christmas Creation) on the back, while SHAKE section was framed by full-colour Shake strip on the front and a beautiful Shake’s Christmas Surprise on the back, also in colour. All characters were in their usual sections. Here is the front page of the Shake section:

For me, the highlights were Ken Reid’s Christmas Creations – three in full colour and one in black and white, and the 4-page Christmas set of Scream Inn (Scream Inn Welcomes Ebenezer Scrooge). Here is one of the Christmas Creations, followed by the masthead and the final panel of Scream Inn:

 

All 5 instalments of Frankie Stein were reprints of episodes of the original series in WHAM! by Ken Reid (from WHAM! issues 131, 28 (with half a page of the original episode unceremoniously chopped off), 35, 34 and 157).  

Match of the Season was a nice variation of Match of the Week. Here is the opening panel with a crowd of Shiver and Shake characters in the background:

 

A number of strips were unfamiliar to readers of the weeklies, all but one were reprints.  Menace of the Ghost Ship was a 16-page adventure thriller by Eric Bradbury that in fact was a heavily doctored reprint of Maxwell Hawke and the Ghost Ship that ran in Buster back in 1965. In the Shiver and Shake version Maxhwell Hawke the famous ghost hunter became Stirling Steel, while Hawke’s pretty assistant Jill Adair from Buster had a sex change and turned into Mark Tyme. Below are two opening pages from the Special, followed by the first episode of the original series in tabloid-size Buster dated 3rd April 1965:  

 

 

Wiz War was a reprint of the strip about two rival wizards Wizard Prang and Demon Druid that originated in POW! and continued in SMASH! 

Scatty Bat was a reprint of Batty Bat from the early Whizzer and Chips; the reprints appeared in Shiver and Shake specials and annuals but not in the weeklies.  

Ed was the only new strip but was actually a poorly drawn space-filler about a headless cavalier.

All in all, the Special made a very attractive package.