The first
Shiver and Shake Special was quite extraordinary because it was a CHRISTMAS Holiday Special. It had 96
pages and cost 18 p.
Here is the
breakdown of the contents (black colour is for SHIVER section and blue is for SHAKE; underlined are the
features that didn’t appear in the weeklies): The Duke’s Spook, Soggy the Sea
Monster, Grimly Feendish (4 episodes), Ghouldilocks (3 episodes),
Christmas
Creations (4 instalments), Frankie Stein (5 episodes), Horrornation
Street, Menace of the Ghost Ship, Scatty Bat (2 episodes),
The
Hand (2 episodes), Sweeny Toddler, Wiz War (2
episodes), The Shiver Givers, Shake (+ Shake’s Christmas Surprise), Mirth-Shaking
Christmas Inventions (2 instalments), The Desert Fox, Damsel in
Distress, Lolly Pop, Mirth Shakers (2 instalments), The
Fixer, Moana Lisa, Match of the Season: Santa’s Team v Jack Frost, Tough Nutt
and Softy Centre, Sample Simon, Scream Inn, Ye Haunted Lake, Ed
(2 episodes) and Webster.
The Special
was structured after the weeklies: it had the spook and the elephant on the
front and a Creepy Creation (on this occasion – a Christmas Creation) on the
back, while SHAKE section was framed by full-colour Shake strip on the front
and a beautiful Shake’s Christmas Surprise on the back, also in colour. All
characters were in their usual sections. Here is the front page of the Shake section:
For me, the
highlights were Ken Reid’s Christmas Creations – three in full
colour and one in black and white, and the 4-page Christmas set of Scream
Inn (Scream Inn Welcomes Ebenezer Scrooge). Here is one of the Christmas
Creations, followed by the masthead and the final panel of Scream
Inn:
All 5 instalments of Frankie
Stein were reprints of episodes of the original series in WHAM! by Ken
Reid (from WHAM! issues 131, 28 (with half a page of the original episode unceremoniously chopped
off), 35, 34 and 157).
Match of the Season was a nice variation
of Match
of the Week. Here is the opening panel with a crowd of Shiver and Shake characters in the
background:
A number of
strips were unfamiliar to readers of the weeklies, all but one were reprints. Menace of the Ghost Ship was a
16-page adventure thriller by Eric Bradbury that in fact was a heavily doctored
reprint of Maxwell Hawke and the Ghost Ship that ran in Buster back in 1965. In the Shiver and Shake version Maxhwell Hawke
the famous ghost hunter became Stirling Steel, while Hawke’s pretty assistant
Jill Adair from Buster had a sex
change and turned into Mark Tyme. Below are two opening pages from the Special,
followed by the first episode of the original series in tabloid-size Buster dated 3rd April 1965:
Wiz War was a
reprint of the strip about two rival wizards Wizard Prang and Demon Druid that
originated in POW! and continued in SMASH!
Scatty Bat was a
reprint of Batty Bat from the early Whizzer
and Chips; the reprints appeared in Shiver
and Shake specials and annuals but not in the weeklies.
Ed was the
only new strip but was actually a poorly drawn space-filler about a headless
cavalier.
All in all,
the Special made a very attractive package.
