A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: THE DESERT FOX

World War II history buffs will know that The Desert Fox was the nickname given by the British to Erwin Rommel, German Field Marshal and commander of the Afrika Korps. Editors of SHIVER AND SHAKE picked it as the title of a strip that had its scene set in the desert of North Africa during WWII and depicted the antics of a… fox. The sneaky crafty animal was running back and forth between German (sometimes Italian) and British (sometimes Aussie or French Foreign Legion’s) camps raiding army grub stores. Occasionally he wandered off into an Arab town and pinched food from the natives too.

The Desert Fox didn’t take sides and lived by the motto “All is Fair in Grub and War” but his thieving plots sometimes had side effects such as preventing an enemy attack or causing commotion that the enemy mistook for a surprise attack.

On rare occasions the Fox got rewarded (with food of course) for bringing about an unexpected outcome, but most of the time troops on both sides were busy trying to catch the notorious trickster. Their efforts, however, were usually doomed, as were their rations, because The Desert Fox just couldn’t be outfoxed. 

The feature appeared in the first issue of SHIVER AND SHAKE and continued until issue 74, missing three weeks inbetween (it was not included in issues 55, 71 and 72). Tom Williams was the original artist until issue 19 when Terry Bave took charge (Terry Bave also illustrated the episodes in issues 12 and 17). Starting from issue 32 it was moved from the inside pages of SHAKE to the back cover of the section and given the privilege of full colour presentation (except in issues 34, 53 and 54 when it turned b/w for a while).