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 Shiver and Shake Holiday Specials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shiver and Shake Holiday Specials. Show all posts

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:

Friday, September 20, 2013

1977 SHIVER & SHAKE HOLIDAY SPECIAL



The 1977 Sh&Sh Holiday Special cost 30 p. It sported a busy cover by Mike Lacey and was 64 pages thick. Here’s what was inside: Shiver by Terry Bave, Horrornation Street by Tom Williams, The Hand by Les Barton, Mirth Shakers gags (two 2-pagers, some gags signed by Crocker), The Ghost’s Revenge, Grimly Feendish (2 sets, a two-pager signed by Paul Ailey and one reprint from Smash!), Desert Fox (by someone else rather than Terry Bave), The Shake Squad (2 sets,  reprints of The Lion Lot by Leo Baxendale from Lion comic), Freddie Fang the Werewolf Cub (reprints from COR!! comic, two in full colour and two in b/w, all by Reg Parlet), Wizard Prang and Demon Druid (2 reprints from Smash!/Pow! by Mike Brown); Memory Game puzzle by Terry Bave featuring different Shiver and Shake characters, The Duke’s Spook, Sports School by Jim Watson, Scatty Bat (2 reprints from Whizzer and Chips), Lolly Pop by Sid Burgon, Beach Baffler spot-the-difference puzzle by Tom Williams featuring Horrornation Street characters and more, Webster by Terry Bave; Sweeny Toddler centresperead in full colour by Tom Paterson, Spot the Difference puzzle, Toby’s Timepiece (adventure tale, 5 pages), Moana Lisa, Ghouldilocks,  Frankie Stein in “Air Crafty” (4-pager), Fixer, Mirth-Shaking Inventions, Tough Nutt and Softy Centre (a three-pager by Norman Mansbridge), Shake by Terry Bave.

There was a number of small surprises in the magazine. Paul Ailey illustrated and signed one episode of Grimly Feendish and did quite a good job drawing it, IMHO:

 

As many as three strips – Moana Lisa, Ghouldilocks and Fixer (six pages all together) were drawn by a new artist whose style I haven’t seen in Shiver and Shake before. Was it Barrie Appleby?

Moana Lisa
Ghouldilocks
Fixer

The 4-page set of Frankie Stein (in which Professor Cube tried to sneak off for his holiday while Frankie played with model planes) is by an artist whose name I don’t know:


This Holiday Special includes the second story of Toby’s Timepiece – the adventure tale about a boy who owned an amazing watch which held the secret of time travel. The crazy story of how he came to possess the timepiece had appeared half-a-year ago in 1977 Shiver and Shake annual and I covered it in detail in my previous post HERE. In this one Toby’s class go on a treasure hunt arranged by their teacher but Toby suddenly finds himself in the past and runs into some serious pirates and a real treasure. The trouble with the timepiece is that Toby appears to have no clue how it works – this time its magical powers are activated by an accidental jolt against a rock. One gets an impression that once the magical powers are at work, they can transport Toby anywhere they want in time and space, the clueless boy has no control over them whatsoever. On the other hand, he can easily return to the place and time where he left from. Anything can happen in the bizarrely illogical world of poorly-written children’s mystery adventure comics…

Both instalments of The Shake Squad were reprints from Lion where the single-panel full-pagers were drawn by Leo Baxendale. I haven’t seen originals in Lion but I doubt if they were in colour. They do look very nice in this Holiday Special. I showed one last year in my London Olympics series HERE, and here is the other one:

 
I will finish this post about 1977 Shiver and Shake Holiday Special with the Memory Game puzzle. Terry Bave drew this large panel with lots of different Shiver and Shake characters. See how many you can recognise:


As an off-topic post scriptum, I will mention that the recently closed Compal auctions offered one Shiver and Shake-related item - the original of the cover illustration for the issue dated 14th September, 1974 (No. 76).  Indian ink on cartridge paper. 17 x 16 ins. ONCE AGAIN, it was incorrectly described as something that Bob Nixon drew for WHOOPEE! in the early 80s.  The buyer paid £72 and I happen to be the unhappy underbidder… Here is the artwork and its printed version: