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.



Showing posts with label Mike Lacey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Lacey. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: SHAKE


As it has already been mentioned here a few times, Shake the elephant was one of the two mascots of SHIVER AND SHAKE who appeared regularly on the front cover of the paper. Shiver also had his own strip in full colour on the front page of the mock pull-out comic named after him. The nice little strip illustrated by Mike Lacey depicted humorous episodes from the daily life of the chubby lovable character who often failed to realise how heavy he was and didn’t know his own strength.



Shake didn’t miss a single week but was temporarily reduced to half-a-page and rendered in b/w in issues 53 to 55 when colour pages were allocated to Frankie Stein mini pull-out booklet. Terry Bave stepped in for Mike Lacey on one occasion in issue No. 76. The feature survived merger with Whoopee! and continued there on a regular basis for nearly two years until the end of February 1976, initially as front page strip of the Shiver & Shake section, later simply as a regular WHOOPEE! strip.





Saturday, March 2, 2013

SPOOK AND ELEPHANT – SHIVER AND SHAKE COVER STARS AND HOSTS



The weird origins of the two characters have been covered on this blog here and here so I will briefly mention that a strip with the title of SHIVER AND SHAKE first appeared in COR!! comic where it showed adventures of a spook named Shake and an undead cavalier named Shiver. The COR!! strip was discontinued in February 1973 but when Shiver and Shake comic came out a month later, the spook made a comeback renamed as Shiver (after his companion in the COR!! strip) while his previous name was given to his new pal – the elephant dressed in what looked like school uniform.

Drawn by Mike Lacey, the pair appeared regularly on the front cover of SHIVER AND SHAKE and hosted their respective sections inside the paper. Initially the front covers were split along the middle with Shiver appearing on the left and Shake on the right, presumably to emphasise the rivalry of the two sections (let us not forget that the comic was imitating its sister publication Whizzer and Chips that pioneered and successfully exploited the two-comics-in-one gimmick). Later in the run the split cover format was dropped in favour of a single large illustration showing the antics of both characters. Here are some examples of split covers, followed by a couple of nice samples of the later trend:


A small number of covers were sort of split in half but actually consisted of two panels with the two characters appearing in both: 


Front cover domination of the spook and tusker pair lasted for fifty-two weekly issues (exactly one year) until No. 53 when they were ousted and permanently replaced by Frankie Stein. That said, the star characters retained their position on the front covers of all Holiday Specials and Annuals that carried their name (except 1974 Holiday Special and 1976 Annual when they stepped down for Frankie Stein).

The two cover stars hosted their own sections inside the paper. In practice this meant that they appeared on the pages of their respective reader participation features urging readers to send their contributions in exchange for cash prizes. The images and messages were always the same: 


Besides, on a few occasions Shiver and Shake featured in promotional messages urging readers to place their regular orders:


In issue 41 they can be seen side-by-side in this competition announcement:


Readers could also follow weekly adventures of both cover stars: Shiver was one of the main characters in The Duke’s Spook illustrated by Arthur Martin, whereas Shake had the prime slot on the cover of his own section, illustrated by Mike Lacey. Both features will receive dedicated posts when their turn comes but in the meantime, here are examples of both strips:


The spook and the elephant had a full page each but Shake had the luxury of full colour presentation. This doesn’t mean that the tusker enjoyed preferential treatment because the spook had the advantage of starring in yet another weekly strip - the Shiver Givers, so actually the paper had more of Shiver than of Shake. Again, The Shiver Givers will be covered separately in due course, but here is a taste:


On a number of occasions both characters crossed over in other strips inside the paper, such as Match of the Week in issues No 6 and 20:


The Shiver Givers in issues 37 and 45:


… and Wizards Anonymous in issue 27. Here are both pages of this interesting episode, illustrated by Brian Walker:


Friday, December 21, 2012

BUSTER CHRISTMASES. PART FOUR: THE NINETIES



One can’t help noticing that the editors of BUSTER believed in introducing major changes every five years and had a fixation on years ending with a zero and a five. 1990 saw another logo change that happened to be the last in the paper’s life and is also my least favourite one. The cover of the first Christmas issue of the nineties looks like Mike Lacey’s, all the later ones are by Jimmy Hansen. 






Buster became a fortnightly in 1995 (remember what I said about years ending with zeros and fives?):






The last Christmas episode was a sad reprint of the story from the 1992 Christmas edition of the paper. It was also the penultimate issue of BUSTER.



My next couple of festive posts will be dedicated to Christmas episodes of a long-running character in BUSTER whose name starts with an “F”. Can you guess who?