GUEST APPEARANCES AT SCREAM INN – I SPY LOOK-ALIKE

Shiver and Shake merged into Whoopee! in October 1974 and Scream Inn was one of the strips that found its way into the new paper with the clumsy title of Whoopee! and Shiver & Shake. 

The first guest appearance in Scream Inn can be found soon after the merger, in the issue cover-dated 26 October 1974 (No. 34), and it was quite an unusual one indeed. That week’s guest looked a lot like I Spy from SPARKY comic published by DCT. I believe this is one of very few examples in British comics when a character appeared in a rival publication produced by the competitor. Brian Walker illustrated I Spy starting from SPARKY issue No. 300 (17 October 1970), so the inclusion of a look-alike into the episode of Scream Inn in Whoopee! and Shiver & Shake (published by IPC) must have been a cheeky experiment on his part. Here is the episode, followed by the three-page set of I Spy from SPARKY, the first one by Brian Walker.

While we are on the subject of SPARKY’s I Spy and cheeky sneak-ins by Brian Walker, who is that bespectacled bloke in the top right corner of this panel of Scream Inn from Shiver and Shake issue 51 (February 23rd, 1974)?

GUEST APPEARANCES AT SCREAM INN - SERIES INTRO

I like it when characters make guest appearances in other features. I may be mistaken, but Scream Inn may very well be the champion in this category, at least as far as IPC comics are concerned. The general setting of the strip with Innkeeper welcoming a fresh guest every week offered a perfect frame for including virtually anybody and anything into the story.

A quick look through my notes tells me there were at least 13 episodes with such guest appearances, so I thought it might be fun to do a series of blogposts and show them all! I will start it in a few days, but until then here’s a nice exchange of visits between two Whoopee! star characters – Scared-Stiff Sam and Frankie Stein from the issue of Whoopee! & Shiver and Shake cover-dated 5th April, 1975:

SWEENY'S A WINNER!

Sweeny Toddler, the demonic baby who brought lots of fun to generations of children in the UK over a number of decades, first appeared in SHIVER AND SHAKE in 1973. I covered the SHIVER AND SHAKE period of the strip in an old post HERE.

This time let’s retrace Sweeny’s path from SHIVER AND SHAKE to the new comic with the clumsy title of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE.

WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE was 32 pages thick at the time. It seems like a lot of space to fill, but Whoopee! had a strong lineup of characters as it were, and it had to accommodate quite a few refugees from SHIVER AND SHAKE who were too popular to be discontinued with the demise of their home comic (Frankie Stein, Scream Inn and a few others), so re-arrangements were inevitable and competition was tough.

Sweeny Toddler didn’t make a straightforward leap to the new comic – it had to prove its strength by participating in a poll. The Editor selected 8 strips and invited readers to vote in a Pick-A-Strip competition. Most of the entrants were either WHOOPEE!’s own (presumably less successful) features – Pop Snorer, Little Miss Muffit, Snap Happy and The Upper Crusts and the Lazy Loafers, or those from SHIVER AND SHAKE - The Desert Fox, Grimly Feendish and Sweeny Toddler. This is what Sweeny’s entry looked like in WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE cover-dated 23rd November, 1974:

Results were announced in the issue cover-dated 22nd March, 1975:

… and Sweeny Toddler proudly returned to the spotlight a week later in the Easter issue of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER AND SHAKE cover-dated 29th March, 1975:

It would have been interesting to see the vote count. Perhaps it was a close call for Sweeny? Was there a chance that he would have faded into oblivion, had the runner-up received a few more votes in its favour?.. 

All Images 2016 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

FRAMED KEN REID PIECE

I have a few pieces of original comic artwork that are well-worth to be framed and displayed on my wall but so far I’ve only got round to mounting one – a World-Wide Weirdie by Ken Reid.  I thought it would be nice to put the original and the printed version side by side, so here’s the result:

Ken Reid inscribed the name and address of the author of the idea on the back of his drawing. I asked the frame shop to cut a hole in the mounting board so as to expose the hand-written text on reverse :

In the image below I have pasted the two versions ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ to give you an idea about the size of the original (assuming you are familiar with the size of WHOOPEE! comic :) )