1976 SHIVER
AND SHAKE Annual cost 95 p. and was 144 pages thick. Here is the list of strips
and features included in the book. Red
indicates the strip that wasn’t familiar to readers of Sh&Sh weeklies or
earlier annuals and specials.
Spooks and
Ladders game; Webster by Terry Bave, (3 episodes, two
in full colour), Horrornation Street by Tom Williams (3 episodes, one in full
colour); Demon Differences (Spot the difference puzzle featuring the
Scream Inn); The Hand (2 episodes by the regular
Sh&Sh artist), Grimly Feendish by Tom Paterson (5 episodes); Frankie
Stein (a 4-pager by Robert Nixon and one Ken Reid reprint from WHAM!); Ghouldilocks;
The
Duke’s Spook (4 episodes); Wizard Prang and Demon Druid by Mike
Brown (4 reprints from Smash!/Pow!);
Scatty
Bat (2 reprints from WHIZZER AND CHIPS); The Shiver Givers (two 2-pagers
my Mike Lacey); Creepy Car (4 episodes, including two by Frank McDiarmid); Scream
Inn (a 4-pager by Brian Walker);
Shake (6 episodes: two in full colour (including a 2-pager) and
three in b/w by Mike Lacey, one in b/w by Terry Bave); Moana Lisa (3 episodes,
one in full colour and two in b/w by Peter Davidson); The Desert Fox by Terry
Bave (4 episodes, two in full colour); Sports School by Jim Watson (4
episodes, two in full colour); Tin Tramp and Tinker (4 episodes,
including two in full colour); Sweeny
Toddler by Leo Baxendale (2 episodes); Mirth Shakers gags (2
instalments); Tough Nutt and Softy Centre by Norman Mansbridge; Blunder
Puss by Jim Crocker (3 episodes); Lolly Pop by Sid Burgon (2
episodes); The Forest Legion (6 pages in b/w); Astro-Nut
(in full colour, by The Forest Legion artist); The Ghost’s Revenge; Ghoul
Getters by Bob Nixon (3 pages in full colour); Frankie Stein’s A-Maze-ing Brain
maze by Robert Nixon.
The book
followed the structure of the weeklies, i.e. SHAKE was inside SHIVER, framed
by blocks of colour pages on both ends. Both sections featured their regular
strips, just like in the not-so-distant old days when the comic was up and
running. When the Annual came out, the weekly had already bit the dust and any
survivors migrated to Whoopee!
Check out this panel from the Annual in which Shake fights with some dude over a
copy of his new favourite comic:
1976 SHIVER
AND SHAKE was the only Sh&Sh annual with Frankie Stein as the cover star. To
me, it is one of the most (if not the most) scrumptious IPC annual covers ever.
Frankie Stein also features prominently inside the book: Bob Nixon contributed a
4-page set and Frankie Stein’s A-Maze-ing Brain maze; as a bonus, the annual
contains a reprint of one old Frankie Stein episode by Ken Reid
from WHAM! No. 81 cover-dated 1st January, 1966. As was the custom, the original
one-pager was cropped and re-arranged to fill two pages in the Annual and Micky’s
presence was removed (this time it was an easy job because he only appeared in
a single panel in the original). Check out the old episode from WHAM! and
the reprint from the Annual below and see if you can spot more differences:
 |
| From WHAM! No. 81, 1st January, 1966 |
 |
| From SHIVER AND SHAKE 1976 Annual |
In the new Frankie
Stein episode by Robert Nixon, Prof. Cube tried (and failed) to get rid
of his dreaded son by shrinking him to a safe size with a ray-gun. Mr. Nixon also
illustrated the episode of Ghoul Getters Ltd. in the Annual. By
a strange coincidence, plan “S” that Dad and his lad Arnold put into action this
time involved the use of a special monster-shrinking ray gun to shrink the
giant polar bear down to normal size. The shrinking ray-gun thing is a bit too repetitive, don’t you
think?
The book offers
a nice collection of familiar strips by the regular artists from Shiver and Shake weeklies as well as earlier Annuals
and Holiday Specials. Terry Bave contributed as many as 15 pages of Webster,
The
Desert Fox and Shake artw0rk; Mike Lacey drew 10
pages of Shake and The Shiver Givers; Tom Williams’ input
was 10 pages of Horrornation Street, Jim Watson illustrated 8 pages of Sports
School, Jim Crocker, Peter Davidson and Sid Burgon contributed 6 pages of
their regular strips each.
The Forest
Legion foiled Boss’ and Butch’s cunning plot once again in a 6-pager
illustrated by an artist whose style looks a tiny bit like Alf Saporito's to me, but it's hardly him. Here are two last
pages of the set:
Astro-Nut was the only strip in this Annual that readers of
Sh&Sh weeklies, specials and annuals hadn’t seen before. Readers of this blog pointed out that Astro-Nut was a reprint of Milkiway
from the early years of BUSTER (later reprinted as Monty Muddle in SMASH!). BUSTER index says art was by Nadal / Juan Rafart.
The Shiver Givers appeared
twice in the Annual. Below is the masthead of the first set (in which Squelch plays a
new disc by Freddie Fang and the Werevolves (remember the character from COR!!?) and
the stomping staff members crash through the floor plastering Shiver artists working below), and the
last panel of the second one (in which Scream Inn’s Cooky rids the offices
of mice with 500 year old Gorganzola), both by Mike Lacey:
Another
strip that is well-worth mentioning is Creepy Car, particularly the two
nice episodes by the excellent Frank McDiarmid. Here is one:
There are
as many as five new Grimly Feendish episodes in the Annual, all are lovely new
2-pagers by Tom Paterson. Here is one:
A Shiver and Shake annual wouldn’t be
complete without Scream Inn. In this one Scream Inn features in the
Demon Differences puzzle (it is in fact the last panel of the set from the final
issue of Shiver and Shake weekly
- the French Onion Seller episode, with speech balloons removed):
…plus a
4-pager in which an unscrupulous bloke gate-crashes the New Year party at Scream
Inn and faces the consequences. As always, Brian Walker’s artwork is a treat to
the eye:
