A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: CREEPY CAR

Advertisement in SHIVER AND SHAKE No. 70

Creepy Car was a motor ghost and the spirit of an old car that was sent to the scrapyard. Here is the first episode that tells us about its origins:

The car ghost that we know from the brief run in SHIVER AND SHAKE wasn’t one of those spooks that were fond of scaring people. It was a weak little phantom that saw no fun in being one because other cars would drive right through it so it was always in search for a quiet place where it wouldn’t be bothered. Being a ghost, it preferred to ‘park’ inside other vehicles. Needless to say, it always chose the wrong places.

Creepy Car was introduced in SHIVER AND SHAKE 71 and lasted for 9 weeks until the final issue. It was part of SHIVER. The illustrator was the excellent Reg Parlett. The strip made it to the combined new paper and enjoyed a long run in WHOOPEE!  until the first issue of 1980, first as a weekly strip, and from 1979 – as part of the Ghostly Go Round feature that was introduced as the popularity of the horror comedy genre began to fade and the weekly rotation of the once-popular strips Evil Eye, Fun Fear, Creepy Car and ‘Orrible Hole started.

Creepy Car is also the last on the list of 'proper' strips in SHIVER AND SHAKE which means that all of the paper’s features have now been accounted for in this blog! The next post will deal with the Star Guest feature and a few remaining bits and bobs, and then it I will turn to SHIVER AND SHAKE holiday specials and annuals.

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: THE HAND

The Hand first appeared as Monster Hand in Hire A Horror strip in COR!! comic dated 27th November, 1971 (No. 78). IPC must have liked the idea because less than two years later it was developed into a weekly strip for the new SHIVER AND SHAKE. 

The main character was a giant hairy left human hand with a mind of its own. Although readers could see it, the Hand was apparently invisible to its fellow strip characters. At first the Hand couldn’t decide if it wanted to go around scarring folk or helping them but eventually it became a full-time goody that always sided with the weak, the poor and the disadvantaged.

The Hand started in the first issue of SHIVER AND SHAKE and continued in SHIVER section until the very last edition, missing just two issues in between (Nos. 73 and 77). The original artist was Reg Parlett who illustrated the strip until issue 39 (except in issue 33 when it was drawn by Les Barton).

Later on other artists took over. I can recognise Frank McDiarmid in issue 49 and Tom Paterson in issues 53 and 56. The majority of the later episodes were by an artist whose name I don’t know. I would appreciate if someone could identify him for me because he illustrated at least one more strip in Shiver and Shake:

The Hand didn’t make it to WHOOPEE! but it did make two appearances in the comic: you can find the Hand in the pre-merger WHOOPEE! No. 20 where it appeared as the Star Guest from SHIVER AND SHAKE (illustrated on that occasion by Frank McDiarmid) and then in the second combined issue of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE (No. 33) where it had two pages in the second part of the pull-out mini book.  

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: LOLLY POP

The first inside pages of SHAKE section were reserved for Lolly Pop, a strip named after one of the two main characters – billionaire owner of countless factories and businesses of all kinds, forever anxious to make more ‘brass’. Pop was the perfect miser and penny-pincher as far as other people were concerned and he’d never spare a penny for the modest needs of his lad Archie. Judging by his own words, Pop had lived a rough childhood of deprivation and was reluctant to share his wealth with anyone, not even his son.

Weekly episodes usually followed the same basic pattern: Archie would ask Lolly Pop to buy him something he desperately needed (like a pair of new shoes so that he could go to a friend’s party because his old pair leaked) but skinflint Pop would refuse, telling him that he’d never had the luxury when he was a lad. Archie would then try to do without the goods or secretly help himself to tiny bits of Pop’s wealth but would inevitably find himself in situations that resulted in disproportionate damages to Pop. The damages could have been easily avoided, had the meanie forked out at the very start. In the end Pop usually bought Archie a lot more than he had initially asked for, in hope to avoid trouble in the future.

Archie never caused trouble deliberately: he was kind of jinxed with bad luck and could always be trusted to accidentally pull the wrong lever that put factory machinery in some crazy mode, etc. Pop didn’t take long to realize that allowing Archie to set foot in any of his factories and business premises was a sure recipe to disaster. Therefore he tried to prevent Archie from getting anywhere near by using alarms, hiring private detectives and even the army to keep the lad away. Since his precautions usually led to nothing, more and more weekly episodes ended with enraged Pop’s attempts to get physical on Archie.

As can be seen from the three examples shown above, Lolly Pop was illustrated by as many as three different artists. Reg Parlett (although initially I assumed it was Arthur Martin but the comments below and some further research confirmed I was mistaken), Robert Nixon and Sid Burgon took turns drawing the strip for nearly a year until issue 43 that marked the point from which Sid Burgon took over as the sole illustrator (except for one occasion when he was ghosted by someone else in issue 62). Among the things that I like about Sid Burgon’s Lolly Pop are the large detailed panels depicting the catastrophic effects of Archie’s meddling. They became an attribute of the strip later on in WHOOPEE! but some early examples can also be found in SHIVER AND SHAKE:

Lolly Pop belonged to the category of class warfare strips that were so common in IPC comics of the 70s. The feature occupied the first two inside pages of SHAKE section (except in issues 53-56 when the regular order was upset by Frankie Stein Mini pull-out booklet and Lolly Pop suddenly found itself in SHIVER section towards the end of the paper), so presumably the editors had high expectations for the strip. They proved to be correct: Lolly Pop continued throughout the run of SHIVER AND SHAKE and migrated to the combined WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE where it appeared regularly until 1985 when WHOOPEE was absorbed by WHIZZER AND CHIPS which then became its third home, although I don’t know for how long.

I will sign off with a couple of oddities from the SHIVER AND SHAKE run of Lolly Pop. The lovely set from issue 71 is unusual because Archie proves to have inherited some of Pop’s entrepreneurial skills: 

... while the fragment with the rude finger from SHIVER AND SHAKE issue 47 speaks for itself: