Saturday, July 13, 2013

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: MENACE OF THE ALPHA MAN




Menace of the Alpha Man was a suspense mystery tale that stretched out for 18 weeks in issues 53 to 70 (March 9 - August 3, 1974) and was the longest of all adventure serials in SHIVER AND SHAKE. Just as all but one of them, it offered attentive readers a chance to win themselves some cash. The illustrator was Eric Bradbury. This is how it was advertised in SHIVER AND SHAKE issue No. 53 a week before the premiere:


Let’s take a look at the plot. Doctor Frank Carter was a scientist at Greystone Research Laboratories – a top-secret research establishment in the Scottish Highlands, who had just finished developing a secret and dangerous formula. The scientist was on a rock-climbing trip with his daughter Penny when he was abducted and kidnapped by a masked muscular villain who called himself Alpha Man and wore a chequered skin-tight costume decorated with letter symbols. Alpha Man was after the secret invention but as he was taking Doctor Carter away in his Chinook-type helicopter, the scientist managed to pass the reel with the formula to his daughter and told her to save it no matter what. Jamie Robertson, a local 16 year old lad, came to Penny’s rescue and saved her from the menacing Alpha Man. The two formed a team. The girl knew her father had been expecting the ‘international crook’ to come after him and remembered how once he had told her that if anything happened to him, a letter in his desk would explain everything and tell her what to do.  Jamie and Penny found the letter and this is what it said:


The villain sure had a manic fixation on letters! Although this wasn’t in the letter, Penny somehow knew they had to collect eight letters and arrange them into a man’s name consisting of two four-letter words.

As the story developed over the weeks, the two youngsters survived a series of vicious and crafty plots and attacks by Alpha Man and slowly collected the letters that they needed to reveal the name of the villainous crook and confront him in the final show-down. Strange as it may sound, the more letters they collected, the longer their list of suspects became. It  included Major Bret Shaw, head of security at Greystone Laboratories (Penny remembered how he and her father took an instant dislike to each other when they first met and how he was always prying into Dad’s work)...


... Bert Gash, the local poacher and the least suspicious of the lot...


... Herb Sant, toy shop owner in the little fishing village of Tannoch where Jamie’s home was and where most of the action took place; he became a suspect because of his name and also because one of Alpha Man’s attacks came in the form of nasty mechanical toys... 


... and Thab Rees, the caretaker of the sinister Tannoch castle (a very aggressive type who hated kids snooping around the ruins)...


The list of suspects became complete in issue 63 when the young heroes were still two letters away from the set of eight. Here is how their list looked:


Jamie and Penny got their last letter in this thrilling ghost-packed episode in issue 68:


It was high time to announce the WHO IS THE ALPHA MAN? competition:


In the next issue (No. 69) Jamie and Penny found out the name of the villain (but didn’t share it with readers of SHIVER AND SHAKE who were busy sending in their competition entries). They realised they had to catch him red-handed with that infernal costume of his. Jamie decided time had come to use the secret formula so he put Doctor Carter’s reel into a battery-operated cassette player, hoping to use it against Alpha Man. The scene of the final show-down was set at the sinister Tannoch castle. In the last episode (in the issue cover-dated August 3rd, 1974 that came out after a four-weeks’ interruption due to industrial action) the two youngsters demonstrated the effect of the top-secret formula, exposed the true identity of Alpha Man and rescued Penny’s Dad from captivity:


The list of clue words and names of the lucky prize-winners were printed in issue 76:


Five years later the strip was reprinted in CHEEKY WEEKLY comic (issue dates from 3rd March till 30th June, 1979). 


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