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:

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: THE DESERT FOX

World War II history buffs will know that The Desert Fox was the nickname given by the British to Erwin Rommel, German Field Marshal and commander of the Afrika Korps. Editors of SHIVER AND SHAKE picked it as the title of a strip that had its scene set in the desert of North Africa during WWII and depicted the antics of a… fox. The sneaky crafty animal was running back and forth between German (sometimes Italian) and British (sometimes Aussie or French Foreign Legion’s) camps raiding army grub stores. Occasionally he wandered off into an Arab town and pinched food from the natives too.

The Desert Fox didn’t take sides and lived by the motto “All is Fair in Grub and War” but his thieving plots sometimes had side effects such as preventing an enemy attack or causing commotion that the enemy mistook for a surprise attack.

On rare occasions the Fox got rewarded (with food of course) for bringing about an unexpected outcome, but most of the time troops on both sides were busy trying to catch the notorious trickster. Their efforts, however, were usually doomed, as were their rations, because The Desert Fox just couldn’t be outfoxed. 

The feature appeared in the first issue of SHIVER AND SHAKE and continued until issue 74, missing three weeks inbetween (it was not included in issues 55, 71 and 72). Tom Williams was the original artist until issue 19 when Terry Bave took charge (Terry Bave also illustrated the episodes in issues 12 and 17). Starting from issue 32 it was moved from the inside pages of SHAKE to the back cover of the section and given the privilege of full colour presentation (except in issues 34, 53 and 54 when it turned b/w for a while).