The
first Frankie Stein Summer Special
came out in the summer of 1975, it was 80 pages thick and cost 25 p. As could
be expected, Frankie Stein was the star of the magazine and featured on both
covers, 36 inside pages and the pull-out colour poster – that’s 40 pages, or
exactly one half of the paper. Less than three quarters of the Frankie Stein stuff
was new material while the rest was reprints. There were 9 pages of old school Frankie
Stein drawn by Ken Reid for WHAM! issues 71, 79, 155 and 61. As was the custom
at IPC, Mr. Reid’s original one-pagers were cut up and rearranged to spread
over two or even three pages with resized and often heavily doctored frames
and weird alterations of text. Interestingly, they didn’t bother to white Micky
out. Here are some examples of original frames in WHAM! and the matching 'enhanced’
ones in this Frankie Stein Summer
Special side-by-side:
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| WHAM! original |
 |
| "Processed' version in the Summer Special |
 |
| WHAM! original |
 |
| "Processed' version in the Summer Special |
 |
| WHAM! original |
 |
| 'Processed' version in the Summer Special |
The
scene by Bob Nixon used on the bright pull-out poster of Frankie diving in the
sea was originally drawn for the cover of SHIVER AND SHAKE dated 27th April,
1974 (No. 60):
 |
| Pull-out poster in the Summer Special |
Both
spot-the-difference puzzles (Trouble in Store and High
Street Havoc) were also reprints from SHIVER AND SHAKE: the former was
in fact Bob Nixon’s drawing for the cover of Shiver
and Shake dated 11th May, 1974 (No. 62), while the latter was borrowed
from the episode of Frankie Stein which first appeared in Shiver and Shake dated 9th March, 1974
(No. 53).
Let’s
leave reprints alone for a while (more will be mentioned later) and look at the
new material included in this first Frankie
Stein Summer Special.
Robert
Nixon was the biggest contributor. He drew two Frankie Stein stories – a
4-pager and a 5-pager. In the first one Prof. Cube and Frankie go on holidays
and Prof. Cube makes two unsophisticated and predictably unsuccessful attempts
to rid himself of ‘the big lunk’ – first by encouraging Frankie to surf on a
dangerous rocky beach and then by plotting to use him as shark bait. Here is a
frame from the story which is a simpler version of the lavish front cover
artwork:
The
story is also interesting because in it Mr. Nixon used
the-evil-conscience-vs-the-good-conscience technique which Ken Reid exploited
so well in his Dare-A-Day Davy strips in POW! in the late 60s.
In
the second Frankie Stein story Prof. Cube tries to get rid of Frankie by
sending him off to an army summer camp which looks a lot like a Konzentrationslager but ends up at the receiving end of discipline:
Frank
McDiarmid’s contribution was a nice six-page story of Prof. Cube and his Ancestors
which I showed in its entirety not so long ago, you can view it HERE. I have
included it into the page count of Frankie Stein strips because the friendly
monster features in the strip opposite Dad.
Jim
Crocker illustrated a simple one-page Frankie Stein story on the back page:
Five
sets of the feature called Frankie’s Travels drawn by Sid
Burgon were a nice addition to the package. They were Frankie’s postcards sent from
different tourist spots around the Globe. Here is an example:
The
remaining Frankie Stein-related pages which qualify as new material were
puzzles and gags. Artie Jackson illustrated two pages of Frankie’s Fun Break jokes
while Les Barton drew two pages of Frankie Stein’s Holiday Fun
which look similar to Ticklish Allsorts in the
then-current MONSTER FUN COMIC:
The
other half of this Frankie Stein Summer
Special was filled with reprints of non-Frankie Stein material. There
are 24 pages of Mervyn’s Monsters – a strip which enjoyed a relatively brief
run in BUSTER in 1968 and was illustrated by Leo Baxendale. Mervyn was a loopy
lad who controlled a bunch of squelchy thingies known as the super spies of
M.U.M. – Mervyn’s Undercover Monsters, and reported to Major Rhode at London
H.Q. Their enemy was Mush – chief of the hostile organization known as
C.R.U.S.H. (no explanation of what the abbreviation stood for was offered) and his cronies such as the potty professor Pottz and Abdul the
Mighty. Both sides had an endless arsenal of electronic spying devices,
disguised weapons and all kinds of crazy super-modern secret agent gadgets.
The
Haunts of Headless Harry and Ghost Ship were borrowed
from the SMASH! of the early 70s. They were represented in the Summer Special with
4 one-pagers each, some were coloured in. I am not sure who the artists were:
In
the mid-70s the holiday specials of IPC children’s comics still had adventure
serials in them. In the first edition of Frankie
Stein Summer Special it was 8 pages of Crabbe's Crusaders drawn by Carlos Cruz. The original run of the
strip appeared in BUSTER where it started in January 1969 and continued for
more than a year. The story was about four orphaned lads who were shipwrecked
on an island and met Professor Pankhurst Crabbe, the nuclear scientist who had
escaped 'the war-mongering fools of the world' and set up the Headquarters for
the Furtherance of Peace on the island.
Professor Crabbe has means to watch every trouble spot on Earth and the
four youths become his crusaders for peace with the mission to combat this
strife… In the story which is reprinted in the first FRANKIE STEIN HOLIDAY
SPECIAL Crabbe’s Crusaders go on their first assignment and help the people of
the Pacific island of Cortago overthrow a cruel dictator.
All
in all, the Special was on the heavy side of reprints – a bit unusual for a
first edition. I have counted 53 pages of reprints and only 27
pages of new material!
