A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: LOLLY POP

The first inside pages of SHAKE section were reserved for Lolly Pop, a strip named after one of the two main characters – billionaire owner of countless factories and businesses of all kinds, forever anxious to make more ‘brass’. Pop was the perfect miser and penny-pincher as far as other people were concerned and he’d never spare a penny for the modest needs of his lad Archie. Judging by his own words, Pop had lived a rough childhood of deprivation and was reluctant to share his wealth with anyone, not even his son.

Weekly episodes usually followed the same basic pattern: Archie would ask Lolly Pop to buy him something he desperately needed (like a pair of new shoes so that he could go to a friend’s party because his old pair leaked) but skinflint Pop would refuse, telling him that he’d never had the luxury when he was a lad. Archie would then try to do without the goods or secretly help himself to tiny bits of Pop’s wealth but would inevitably find himself in situations that resulted in disproportionate damages to Pop. The damages could have been easily avoided, had the meanie forked out at the very start. In the end Pop usually bought Archie a lot more than he had initially asked for, in hope to avoid trouble in the future.

Archie never caused trouble deliberately: he was kind of jinxed with bad luck and could always be trusted to accidentally pull the wrong lever that put factory machinery in some crazy mode, etc. Pop didn’t take long to realize that allowing Archie to set foot in any of his factories and business premises was a sure recipe to disaster. Therefore he tried to prevent Archie from getting anywhere near by using alarms, hiring private detectives and even the army to keep the lad away. Since his precautions usually led to nothing, more and more weekly episodes ended with enraged Pop’s attempts to get physical on Archie.

As can be seen from the three examples shown above, Lolly Pop was illustrated by as many as three different artists. Reg Parlett (although initially I assumed it was Arthur Martin but the comments below and some further research confirmed I was mistaken), Robert Nixon and Sid Burgon took turns drawing the strip for nearly a year until issue 43 that marked the point from which Sid Burgon took over as the sole illustrator (except for one occasion when he was ghosted by someone else in issue 62). Among the things that I like about Sid Burgon’s Lolly Pop are the large detailed panels depicting the catastrophic effects of Archie’s meddling. They became an attribute of the strip later on in WHOOPEE! but some early examples can also be found in SHIVER AND SHAKE:

Lolly Pop belonged to the category of class warfare strips that were so common in IPC comics of the 70s. The feature occupied the first two inside pages of SHAKE section (except in issues 53-56 when the regular order was upset by Frankie Stein Mini pull-out booklet and Lolly Pop suddenly found itself in SHIVER section towards the end of the paper), so presumably the editors had high expectations for the strip. They proved to be correct: Lolly Pop continued throughout the run of SHIVER AND SHAKE and migrated to the combined WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE where it appeared regularly until 1985 when WHOOPEE was absorbed by WHIZZER AND CHIPS which then became its third home, although I don’t know for how long.

I will sign off with a couple of oddities from the SHIVER AND SHAKE run of Lolly Pop. The lovely set from issue 71 is unusual because Archie proves to have inherited some of Pop’s entrepreneurial skills: 

... while the fragment with the rude finger from SHIVER AND SHAKE issue 47 speaks for itself:

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: SHAKE

As it has already been mentioned here a few times, Shake the elephant was one of the two mascots of SHIVER AND SHAKE who appeared regularly on the front cover of the paper. Shiver also had his own strip in full colour on the front page of the mock pull-out comic named after him. The nice little strip illustrated by Mike Lacey depicted humorous episodes from the daily life of the chubby lovable character who often failed to realise how heavy he was and didn’t know his own strength.

Shake didn’t miss a single week but was temporarily reduced to half-a-page and rendered in b/w in issues 53 to 55 when colour pages were allocated to Frankie Stein mini pull-out booklet. Terry Bave stepped in for Mike Lacey on one occasion in issue No. 76. The feature survived merger with Whoopee! and continued there on a regular basis for nearly two years until the end of February 1976, initially as front page strip of the Shiver & Shake section, later simply as a regular WHOOPEE! strip.

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: WHO'D KILL COCKNEY ROBIN?

Who’d Kill Cockney Robin? was a suspense thriller that I found a real pain to read because I could hardly believe how embarrassingly poor and unconvincing the script was. It started off in a promising way with this 4-page introduction that took up the last two pages of SHIVER before SHAKE section and another two after:

The plot is simple and effective: the mystery wannabe murderer unleashes a series of unsuccessful attempts on young Cockney Robin’s life in the enclosed and claustrophobic setting of the old mansion. In the end of each weekly instalment the clumsy villain drops a random personal item as he flees the scene of another failed murder attempt, leaving a clue to his identity. The growing number of clues eventually leads to the uncovering of the shady plotter by Cockney Robin.

The way in which the writer develops the story and characters, however, is lame and unconvincing, a clear case of overdoing things for dramatic effect. The sweets baron looks like a real skinflint, a very unlikely candidate to bequeath his multi-billion business to a tea boy whom he’s come “to admire and respect”. Then the crowd of grim and frustrated co-workers suddenly find themselves trapped inside an old mansion like a herd of submissive sheep in a barn. It looks as if they are resigned to spend the rest of their lives there, wandering pointlessly around like a pack of zombies and squabbling over trifles. Their efforts to contact the outside world for help are half-hearted and ineffective. So are the would-be murderer’s attempts on Robin’s life that are often so “sophisticated” that they border on absurdity:

The story unfolds against a backdrop of continuous bullying and name-calling of the young Robin by begrudging adult co-workers who are unable to accept that the ex-tea-boy is their new boss:

However, the herd of sheep that they are, they obediently line up and hold their palms up for examination at Robin’s command:

The final episode comes across as completely schizophrenic: impressed by Cockney Robin’s detective skills and appalled at Silas Scrogg's evil plots, the employees kneel down to pledge their eternal loyalty to the new boss…

I am not a fan of adventure serials in IPC children’s humour comics of the 70s but this one stands out as particularly over-the-top IMHO. Of course, the story was written for the young reader of the day and I should know better than to scrutinize the script and rant over its alleged faults. In all likelihood many readers were thrilled by the yarn and enthusiastically recorded the weekly clues :) 

On a positive note, the story had a well-conceived structure: nine clues were dropped over the period of nine weeks and by that time Cockney Robin already knew who the would-be killer was. Readers should have known too, if they had collected all the correct clues. 50 one-pound prizes were up for grabs but not for naming Robin's attacker. Readers were asked to list all the nine clues instead:

The story reached its climax next week in issue 10 and the correct clues as well as the murderous conspirator’s identity were finally revealed in the final episode in issue 11 (see the complete episode above). Names of the 50 lucky prize winners were announced 5 weeks later in issue 16:

Illustrated by Tom Kerr, the story ran for eleven weeks in SHIVER section (issues 1 to 11). The first episode was 4 pages long and all the subsequent ones were three-pagers.

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: BIDDY'S BEASTLY BLOOMERS

With Scream Inn covered in detail and out of the way, let us now turn to page 8 of Shiver and Shake No. 1 and take a look at Biddy’s Beastly Bloomers. The one-pager illustrated by Sid Burgon depicted adventures of a little girl Biddy and three odd-looking carnivorous flowers that planted themselves in the garden and were at the root of all the trouble to come. The cunning food-grabbing plants were on a permanent grub alert, ready to munch and chop any food they could get at, be it sausages, bacon, sweets or fruit. Biddy’s working-class Dad quickly came to dislike them and plotted different schemes to get rid of the creepy creepers but always ended up in trouble.

Biddy’s Beastly Bloomers had a very short run in SHIVER AND SHAKE issues 1 to 19 and was part of SHIVER section where the feature appeared on page 8. The total number of episodes came to 17 because it didn’t appear in issues 7 and 11.