A LOOK AT COR!! STRIPS: SHIVER AND SHAKE

The name of the next strip - Shiver and Shake - will probably sound familiar to many fans because later it was lent to a new IPC children’s humour comic. In COR!! Shiver was a spectre cavalier with a detachable head, a ball and chain on his leg and a sword driven right through his chest who got his pleasure from scaring mortals. His companion Shake was a spook whose main obsession was food. The two inhabited an empty house and were desperate for people to move in. Both had their own reasons: Shiver was anxious to have someone to scare, while Shake saw tenants as providers of grub. This represented a conflict of interests of sorts and Shake usually tried to stop Shiver from scaring the tenants off. Their combined and often clashing efforts inevitably drove everybody out and the two had to wait a whole week for someone new to show up. 

From COR!! issue dated 2nd September, 1972  (No. 118)

The story was given a proper ending in the last installment when the old house was demolished. Shiver moved to a ghost train set-up where he could scare people all day long, not just once a week; Shake landed in a kitchen of a posh restaurant to stay as the resident ghost. 

IMHO the strip had strong potential and the main reason why it was discontinued was probably because the title as well as the characters were earmarked for the new comic launched merely one month after the last installment in COR!! 

From COR!! issue dated 30th December, 1972 (No. 135)

A strange thing happened to Shake the COR!! spook when Shiver and Shake comic was launched in 1973: his spooky self was renamed Shiver and became the cover star as well as the main character in a new strip called The Duke's Spook. In the SHIVER AND SHAKE comic (but not in the Duke’s Spook strip) he acquired a new companion in the shape of an elephant carrying the spook’s old name – Shake…

Shiver the COR!! spectre cavalier was also revived in the SHIVER AND SHAKE comic under the name of Suffering Sam in the long running IPC feature Scream Inn. His other two (nameless) incarnations in the SHIVER AND SHAKE comic were in the strip called Adrian’s Wall where he appeared in the role of a cavalier bricked-up inside a wall, and later in The Ghost's Revenge where he starred as a proper spectre. Quite confusing, isn’t it?..

The COR!! Shiver and Shake was illustrated by Arthur Martin. It started on 29th July, 1972 (No. 113) and continued for merely half a year until 3rd February, 1973 (No. 140), having missed just one week (it did not appear in the issue dated 20th January, 1973 (No. 138)).

Two sample covers of the new comic SHIVER AND SHAKE