welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.



Monday, September 30, 2013

1978 SHIVER AND SHAKE HOLIDAY SPECIAL



1978 SHIVER AND SHAKE Holiday Special cost 35 p. and was 64 pages thick.

CONTENTS: Shake (2 episodes by Terry Bave), Horrornation Street (a 3-pager by Tom Williams), Holiday Haunts (gags by Jack Clayton), Creepy Car (by Jim Crocker), Grimly Feendish (a 3-pager by Paul Ailey, signed), The Shake Squad by Leo Baxendale (3 reprints of The Lion Lot from LION comic), Pest of the West (5 reprints from WHAM!), Freddie Fang the Werewolf Cub (4 reprints from COR!! by Reg Parlett), The Desert Fox (a 2-pager in full colour by Terry Bave), Puzzle-Time (by Tony Goffe), The Duke’s Spook, Sports School (by Jim Watson), Lolly Pop (a 3-pager), Bad Penny (2 reprints from SMASH! by Leo Baxendale), Webster, The Ghost Train Game in full colour on the centrespread, Moana Lisa (a new episode by Barrie Applieby), The Haunts of Headless Harry (by Mike Lacey), Frankie Stein (a 3-pager by the artist whose name I don’t know), The Fixer (new episode by Barrie Appleby), Sweeny Toddler (two pages in full colour by Paul Ailey), Tough Nutt and Softy Centre (a 3-pager by Norman Mansbridge), Shivery Puzzles to Shake-Up Those Brains (2 pages of puzzles by Les Barton), Mirth Shakers (two pages of gags by Tony Goffe), Ghouldilocks (2-pager by Barrie Appleby), Shiver (on the back page in full colour by Terry Bave).

Two more reprints were added to the package this time, both from old Power Comics: Pest of the West was from WHAM! and Bad Penny from SMASH! 



Mike Lacey contributed a nice episode of The Haunts of Headless Harry – a strip that had enjoyed a brief run in the revamped SMASH! in the early seventies so I am not sure if it was a reprint or new material:


Speaking of new strips, Barrie Appleby was once again in charge of Moana Lisa, Ghouldilocks and The Fixer. The three-page episode of Frankie Stein was by the same unknown artist who illustrated it in the 1977 Holiday Special. In this edition Professor Cube takes Frankie to the seaside hoping that something dreadful will happen to him there. And happen it does but it’s not Frankie who’s the victim:


Grimly Feendish gets an idea to dress as a dangerous man-eating shark and scare everybody off the beach so that his gang can pinch all the rich pickings left behind by the panicked holiday makers. The plan works well but look what happens as the gang try to make their escape by sea:


The Grimly Feendish set wasn’t Paul Ailey’s only contribution to the 1978 SH&SH Holiday Special. He also illustrated this episode of Sweeny Toddler:



Generally speaking, there is nothing very interesting to note about this edition. It was an unremarkable package with seaside holidays as the dominant theme. One thing that caught my eye is the large number of page-wide last panels that different artists drew in their various strips:

1 comment:

  1. That Grimly Feendish strip is the only time (I think) I've ever seen Paul Ailey sign his work.

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