A LOOK AT SHIVER AND SHAKE STRIPS: FRANKIE STEIN (PART TWO)

During the run of Shiver and Shake Frankie Stein grew increasingly popular with the readers: 1 ½ pages in the first three issues soon became 2 full pages (issues 4 - 48), then 3 full pages (issues 49 – 52), then front cover plus 3 full pages inside (issues 53 – 55) and finally front cover plus two full pages inside (issues 56 - 78). All in all, that’s 161.5 inside pages in black and white and 26 front covers in full colour.

First birthday of the paper (No. 53 dated March 9th, 1974) was marked with Frankie Stein’s promotion to the front cover (Frankie retained the position from that issue until the end of the run) and a 4-part Frankie Stein’s Mini Monster Mini-Book in issues 53-56 (March 9th – March 30th, 1974) in which he got front and back covers alongside with this nice little 8-page story:

Weekly episodes usually told a self-contained story but there were two occasions when the plot continued over two weeks. The first was in issues No. 36 and 37 (Nov. 10th and Nov. 17th, 1973) in which Dad takes Frankie on holiday to an exotic island in hope that he will be eaten by cannibals. They end up on a British battleship and are offered a free cruise back home to England but Frankie sinks the ship and Dad gets the blame. Here’s a nice sequence from the set:

 

The second was in issues No. 41 and 42 (Dec. 15th and Dec. 22nd, 1973) – this time Prof. Cube tries to get rid of Frankie with the aid of a time machine but Frankie safely returns to 1973 and brings back Professorus Cubius, Prof. Cube’s ancestor from Roman times. Now it’s the two of them trying to get rid of Frankie, with predictable consequences…

Here is a short list of episodes that I find particularly interesting in one way or another:

• No 50 (Feb. 16th, 1974) – Frankie’s birthday party with guests from other Shiver strips
• No. 56 (March 30th, 1974) – Prof. Cube shows his warm feelings towards Frankie
• No. 61 (May 4th, 1974) – Prof. Cube tells the shrink about his normal day with Frankie
• No. 71 (August 10th, 1974) – Frankie’s and Prof. Cube’s holiday snapshots from 1970 – 1973 (i.e. years preceding the launch of Shiver and Shake)
• No. 73 (August 24th, 1974) – Frankie gets kidnapped and his captors end up offering Dad cash to take him back (just like in the classic short story The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry).
• No. 75 (September 7th, 1974) – Frankie Stein is about to receive knighthood and Prof. Cube reveals the bootlicking and vainglorious side of his personality

Robert Nixon was responsible for nearly all of Frankie Stein art in SHIVER AND SHAKE, barring a few sets drawn by Frank McDiarmid and several Ken Reid reprints from Wham! Here is the list of issues with such ‘black sheep’ episodes:

• Issue No. 29 (September 22nd, 1973) – illustrated by Frank McDiarmid
• Issue No. 30 (September 29th, 1973) – single-page episode from WHAM! No. 136 rearranged to fit two pages, Micky not removed
• Issue No. 31 (October 6th, 1973) – illustrated by Frank McDiarmid
• Issue No. 32 (October 13th, 1973) – consists of two episodes by Ken Reid from WHAM! No. 74 and 37, Micky removed from the latter and wasn’t originally present in the former
• Issue 34 (October 27th, 1973) – illustrated by Frank McDiarmid
• Issue 48 (February 2nd, 1974) – the instalment consists of two episodes by Ken Reid from WHAM! No. 18 (half a page chopped off) and 51, Micky removed from both
• Issue 54 (March 16^th, 1974) – illustrated by Frank McDiarmid.

Although Frank McDiarmid contributed only four episodes of Frankie Stein in the weeklies, he deserves special praise because his sets offer an excellent version of the character different from Bob Nixon’s. The episodes burst with violent energy comparable to that of Ken Reid’s sixties original. I can’t help wondering if Nixon and McDiarmid worked from scripts written by the same writer because the stories look so different. Here is the complete two-page episode from SHIVER AND SHAKE No. 29 cover-dated 22nd September, 1973:

 

It is interesting to note how Prof. Cube’s son Micky is scrupulously removed from Ken Reid’s artwork in reprints of old WHAM! episodes, although he must have slipped the editors’ attention in Shiver and Shake issue No. 30 (September 29th, 1973). I wonder why they considered it OK to leave him intact in reprints included in Shiver and Shake annuals and specials. 

An interesting piece of trivia can be found in Shiver and Shake issue No. 6 (April 14th, 1973) where Frankie Stein set was re-drawn by Bob Nixon from Ken Reid’s original version in WHAM! No. 156, possibly to fill two pages (the original was a one-pager). The example would fit well in the Detective Work series that I did earlier on this blog. Below are matching pairs of panels from the two sets:

 

Given the popularity of the feature, it was not surprising that Frankie Stein confidently survived the incorporation of Shiver and Shake into Whoopee! in the Autumn of 1974. He appeared prominently and regularly throughout the 10-year run of Whoopee! illustrated by Robert Nixon and several other artists, including Brian Walker. Being a star of the comic, Frankie Stein featured on pull-out posters and in cut-out minibooks. In addition to episodes in WHOOPEE! weeklies as well as Shiver and Shake and WHOOPEE! annuals and holiday specials, the friendly monster got his own Whoopee! Frankie Stein holiday special (as many as 8 editions were published in the period 1975-1982) and even his own annual – the Book of Frankie Stein (2 editions in 1976 and 1977). At one point he even became too big for just one comic and took the position of ‘Honorary Editor’ of Monster Fun Comic where he hosted Letters to Frankie, appeared in Frankie's Diary feature, presented Ticklish Allsorts page and occupied front covers of a few Monster Fun Comic Annuals. I’ll not cover the publications and features here because this series is focused exclusively on SHIVER AND SHAKE, but IMHO Frankie Stein is one of the characters in UK comics history who deserves a thick coffee table book collecting his adventures from the pages of WHAM!, SHIVER AND SHAKE and at least the first few years of WHOOPEE!

A LOOK AT SHIVER AND SHAKE STRIPS: FRANKIE STEIN (PART ONE)

Frankie Stein was a big star of SHIVER section. His strip was the first that the young reader would find on opening a copy of the paper. Frankie happens to be one of my favourite characters in British comics and half-way through writing this piece I realised it may become too long, so I decided to split it and do two posts instead.

Frankie Stein by Ken Reid

The editors introduced Frankie in the first issue of SHIVER AND SHAKE without bothering to explain his origins, and few readers recalled that the character had made his debut nearly a decade ago in the 4th issue of Wham! dated 11th July, 1964, alongside with his maker Professor Cube who hoped to create a little pal and a real live playmate to his son Micky but the scientific exercise went radically wrong. Crazy and occasionally violent adventures of Frankie Stein the friendly monster, Professor Cube and his son Micky continued in Wham! for more than three years totalling up to 142 weekly episodes, the vast majority illustrated by Ken Reid. Towards the end of the run of WHAM! the appearances of Frankie Stein became less frequent and finally ceased altogether after Wham! issue No. 166 dated 19th August, 1967. Thus, Frankie Stein’s new debut in the pages of SHIVER AND SHAKE was after a five-and-a-half year break. Below is a representative example of the old version of the strip from WHAM! No. 109 (17th March, 1967) in which Frankie reunites with Dad and Micky after a long stay away from home:

Although Mr. Reid was around and working for IPC at the time, the illustrator’s duties were assigned to Bob Nixon. Maybe it was because Mr. Reid was too busy drawing other features, or perhaps the editors believed readers would find Bob Nixon’s cuddly new Frankie more appealing than Mr. Reid’s old-school diabolical version – we’ll never know for sure. Whatever the reasons, Mr. Nixon did an excellent job as the illustrator and I have no doubt that his version of Frankie Stein is deeply ingrained in the memories of many fans who followed Frankie’s adventures in the 70s and beyond.  Here is the first episode of the new series from SHIVER AND SHAKE issue No. 1:

New artist wasn’t the only change: character lineup of the revamped feature was ‘optimised’ by dropping Prof. Cube’s son Micky who used to be a regular in WHAM! series. For truth’s sake it has to be noted that Micky was a secondary character anyway and didn’t have a real role to play in the plot because the conflict was usually between Frankie and Prof. Cube. It wasn’t uncommon for Micky to be absent from weekly WHAM! episodes; as a matter of fact, in the last 16 episodes in WHAM! Micky is seen only once!

Frankie Stein and his Dad Professor Cuthbert Cube lived at Mildew Manor in the village of Puddleditch. They were a pair of truly weird characters: Frankie was a dumb but lovable creature with a tiny brain and a huge muscular body who didn’t know his own strength; Professor Cube was forever sorry for inventing Frankie and employed his imagination and scientific talents devising wicked schemes to get rid of his son. Below is an example from issue 23 (August 11th, 1973). I may be imagining things, but to me it looks as if Mr. Nixon got some outside help on some of the panels in the top half of the first page:

As a character, Frankie is plain and simple: he is kind-hearted and always in a jolly enthusiastic mood, but naïve and blissfully unaware of his own hideousness. Despite Prof. Cube’s never ending diabolical plots, Frankie has warm feelings towards Dad and the thought that his inventor might be trying to get rid of him hardly ever crosses his mind. Pretty much a clueless dimwit.

Professor Cube’s personality is by far more complex than Frankie’s. Strange as it may sound, but he tries hard to be a good parent: he buys Frankie’s groceries, sees him off to school, gives him pocket money, takes him to the Zoo, the circus, the pictures, the seaside and even on overseas holidays, mends his shoes, tells him bedtime stories, bakes his birthday cake, etc. But Professor Cube is forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown because Frankie is a glutton who eats him out of house and home, and a clumsy brute who costs thousands in repair bills. Therefore Prof. Cube’s mind is always busy devising cunning and violent schemes to get rid of his son, and he is unscrupulous in the choice of his means. Everything goes – explosives, bombs, landmines and all sorts of Professor’s own ingenious inventions – mechanical gadgets, potions, concoctions, etc. Prof. Cube tries to get rid of Frankie by enlisting him in the army, shipping him off to Timbuctoo packed in a box, turning him to the Zoo as a ‘Wild Man’, pushing him off a train going at full speed, getting him a job as a stuntman, putting him into orbit around the Earth, sending him off to cannibals’ island, transporting him to the past with the aid of a time machine, setting Frankie up with a female robot and switching her to nag-mode in hope she will drive Frankie out of town and even kidnapping Shiver artist to take control of that week’s story. Needless to say, Dad’s schemes always misfire and turn against him in the form of property damages or physical suffering. The episode below is from issue No. 46 cover-dated January 19th, 1974:

The paradox is that most of Prof. Cube’s misery comes from his efforts to do away with Frankie. If it weren’t for his failed mad schemes, Dad would only have to put up with Frankie’s gluttony, his habit of forgetting to use the doors and breaking through the walls too often, and being a general embarrassment to Dad. Misfired schemes, however, push Prof. Cube deeper into despair and frustration because they often result in damages of a grand scale, destruction of Mildew Manor and Professor Cube’s bodily injuries. And still, Prof. Cube is torn by dual emotions of hate and remorse for being so mean to Frankie, as can be seen in this episode in issue No. 56 (March 30th, 1974) where Professor Cube speaks openly about his feelings:

 

Come back soon for Part Two.

SPOOK AND ELEPHANT – SHIVER AND SHAKE COVER STARS AND HOSTS

The weird origins of the two characters have been covered on this blog here and here so I will briefly mention that a strip with the title of SHIVER AND SHAKE first appeared in COR!! comic where it showed adventures of a spook named Shake and an undead cavalier named Shiver. The COR!! strip was discontinued in February 1973 but when Shiver and Shake comic came out a month later, the spook made a comeback renamed as Shiver (after his companion in the COR!! strip) while his previous name was given to his new pal – the elephant dressed in what looked like school uniform.

Drawn by Mike Lacey, the pair appeared regularly on the front cover of SHIVER AND SHAKE and hosted their respective sections inside the paper. Initially the front covers were split along the middle with Shiver appearing on the left and Shake on the right, presumably to emphasise the rivalry of the two sections (let us not forget that the comic was imitating its sister publication Whizzer and Chips that pioneered and successfully exploited the two-comics-in-one gimmick). Later in the run the split cover format was dropped in favour of a single large illustration showing the antics of both characters. Here are some examples of split covers, followed by a couple of nice samples of the later trend:

A small number of covers were sort of split in half but actually consisted of two panels with the two characters appearing in both: 

Front cover domination of the spook and tusker pair lasted for fifty-two weekly issues (exactly one year) until No. 53 when they were ousted and permanently replaced by Frankie Stein. That said, the star characters retained their position on the front covers of all Holiday Specials and Annuals that carried their name (except 1974 Holiday Special and 1976 Annual when they stepped down for Frankie Stein).

The two cover stars hosted their own sections inside the paper. In practice this meant that they appeared on the pages of their respective reader participation features urging readers to send their contributions in exchange for cash prizes. The images and messages were always the same: 

Besides, on a few occasions Shiver and Shake featured in promotional messages urging readers to place their regular orders:

In issue 41 they can be seen side-by-side in this competition announcement:

Readers could also follow weekly adventures of both cover stars: Shiver was one of the main characters in The Duke’s Spook illustrated by Arthur Martin, whereas Shake had the prime slot on the cover of his own section, illustrated by Mike Lacey. Both features will receive dedicated posts when their turn comes but in the meantime, here are examples of both strips:

The spook and the elephant had a full page each but Shake had the luxury of full colour presentation. This doesn’t mean that the tusker enjoyed preferential treatment because the spook had the advantage of starring in yet another weekly strip - the Shiver Givers, so actually the paper had more of Shiver than of Shake. Again, The Shiver Givers will be covered separately in due course, but here is a taste:

On a number of occasions both characters crossed over in other strips inside the paper, such as Match of the Week in issues No 6 and 20:

… The Shiver Givers in issues 37 and 45:

… and Wizards Anonymous in issue 27. Here are both pages of this interesting episode, illustrated by Brian Walker: