WHOOPEE!’s SPOOKTACULAR 7 by BRIAN WALKER in 1977

SCREAM INN was an excellent strip by Brian Walker that started in SHIVER AND SHAKE in 1973 where it ran for 79 weeks, totalling 158 pages (plus two guest-appearance pages in The Wizards Anonymous strip), and continued in WHOOPEE! after the two comics merged in 1974, totalling 153 weekly episodes, or 306 pages. I covered both runs in my two series on this blog (Part One of the SHIVER AND SHAKE series can be found HERE, and Part One of the WHOOPEE! series – HERE; further installments of both series can be found by clicking ‘newer post’ at the bottom of the two links above).

After SCREAM INN concluded in WHOOPEE! for 1st October 1977, the ghostly gang returned a week later in a new strip called SPOOKTACULAR 7, lasting 42 weekly two-page installments, till WHOOPEE! cover-dated 22nd July, 1978. Most of the original SCREAM INN magic (which largely came from the fact that it was a reader-participation feature where fans could suggest candidates who could try spending a night at the haunted establishment and winning a million pound) was gone, but Brian Walker’s brilliant artwork still made the strip shine. In the last part of my old WHOOPEE! series I said I would cover SPOOKTACULAR 7 later on, so here we go.

Fans of SCREAM INN will know that in the last episode Innkeeper won the prize of £ 1,000,000, and the glorious series ended with this teaser:

The new strip was called ‘SPOOKTACULAR 7’, and although the title suggests it was inspired by the popular American film, in fact it is a lot like Reg Parlett’s ‘HIRE A HORROR’ and ‘RENT A GHOST’ in IPC sister publications. In the new series, the old SCREAM INN motto ‘We’re Only Here for the Fear’ was replaced by a sign that read ‘S.O.S. Send Our Spooks Service’ but otherwise things stayed more or less the same. Here’s the front cover of WHOOPEE! with the first episode of SPOOKTACULAR 7, followed by the complete two-pager introducing the S7:

This post is the full account of the ‘mirth filled missions’ of SPOOKTACULAR 7 in 1977. The next post – or maybe two – will cover the antics of the lovable spooks in 1978, till the strip was put to rest. Always remember, that:

8th October, 1977            ● The Magnificent Seven film inspires Innkeeper to form THE SPOOKTACULAR 7. S7 deal with a school bully (as shown above); SCREAM INN had already dealt with one in WHOOPEE! for 5th July 1975…

15th October 1977           ● S7 help a store deal with its shoplifting problem; the issue of WHOOPEE! also offered an Innkeeper cut-out mask:

22nd October 1977          ● S7 help husband get rid of hiccups...

29th October 1977           ● S7 deal with a mystery thief amongst staff in the fairground ghost train

5th November 1977        ● S7 are called out to deal with a ferocious foreman at the new building site

12th November 1977      ● S7 are called out to a beauty competition finals to deal with some local ruffians who turn up to cause trouble:

19th November 1977      ● S7 deal with a tyrannical traffic warden

26th November 1977     ● S7 recover a stolen Egyptian Mummy – along with dozens of treasures – from a wicked owner of the museum of stolen goodies

3rd December 1977        ● S7 deal with a pesky park keeper

10th December 1977      ● S7 act as replacements for injured players in a football match and stand up to tough opposition and foul play...

17th December 1977      ● S7 help out Witch's nephew Charlie who's gone into show biz to be an escapologist but can't really do the tricks by himself:

24th December 1977      ● S7 help Lord Hardup get rid of some unwanted guests – a wealthy family who rented a suite in his castle but wouldn't pay or leave

31st December 1977       ● Xmas episode: S7 teach Fred Cratchit's great-grandson a lesson for trying to take revenge on Ebenezer Scrooge's grandson by forcing him to work on Christmas:

Part Two will follow shortly…

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

Click on the POWER PACK banner in the right-hand column and get your copy of the POWER PACK OF KEN REID - the deluxe two-volume set of Ken’s strips in WHAM!, SMASH! and POW! comics of the ‘60s.

 

 

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 - TIMOTHY TESTER

Time for the second guest appearance at Scream Inn that can be found in SHIVER AND SHAKE No. 52 cover-dated March 2nd, 1974.

This is quite an unusual example: firstly, it was in fact Scream Inn that appeared in another strip; secondly, the strip itself was a guest from Shiver and Shake’s sister comic: Timothy Tester ran for quite a while (1972 – 1979) in WHIZZER AND CHIPS. The illustrator and presumably the writer of Timothy Tester was Cliff Brown who lived not far from Scream Inn artist Brian Walker. In his interview for GOLDEN FUN fanzine (Winter 1979) Brian Walker said that Cliff would come over to Brian’s studio for a day each week and they’d go over the script of Scream Inn together. It looks like that week they spent more time together because the two pages below are clearly the result of a joint effort!

CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS AT SCREAM INN - PART TWO

The Christmas of 1974 was unfortunate for Scream Inn: by then its home comic Shiver and Shake had folded and was absorbed by WHOOPEE!; to make things worse, the publication of the new combined comic was disrupted by industrial action of the printers, hence no Christmas issue of WHOOPEE AND SHIVER & SHAKE in 1974…

This next festive episode of Scream Inn is from the issue of WHOOPEE! cover-dated 27th December, 1975:

There was also an episode of Scream Inn in the SHIVER AND SHAKE Annual 1976 (published for the Christmas of 1975). Although it didn’t contain direct references to Christmas (such as a fir-tree or Christmas decorations), I believe it is safe to assume that the presence of snow and the overall festive mood, in addition to that fact that the episode was in an Annual packed with Christmas goodness, suggests that the Innkeeper and his crew were celebrating the Holiday Season (rather than a birthday or something else):

Come back soon for Part Three of X-mas celebrations at Scream Inn!

All Images 2015 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.