A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: GHOULDILOCKS

Ghouldilocks was one of the four ‘Super fun features’ to join SHIVER AND SHAKE lineup from the issue dated August 4th, 1973 (alongside Charlie Williams, Wizards Anonymous and Grimly Feendish). In the advertisement a week before her premiere in SHIVER AND SHAKE she was introduced as Shiver’s own little ‘ghoul’:

Ghouldilocks, aka Ghouldi, was a girl spook who could go through things like walls, people’s bodies, etc. and had a detachable head (after Shiver the ghost, Suffering Sam of Scream Inn and Sir Headley Deadly of Horrornation Street, she was the fourth character in Shiver and Shake who could juggle her head around). Towards the end of the run she also developed the ability to turn invisible at will. Ghouldi’s adventures usually involved playing tricks on people who mistreated her, or dealing with bullies and crooks. I liked how a UK Comics forum member once described her as ‘The Minnie the Minx of the afterlife”. 

The strip ran in Shiver and Shake issues 22 – 67 (August 4, 1973 - June 15, 1974, except in No. 54 dated March 16, 1974) and was part of SHIVER section. At first Ghouldilocks had a permanent slot on page 8 after Scream Inn; later on it got transferred to the back of the paper and appeared regularly on page 30 (overleaf of Horrornation Street). The artist was the excellent Stan McMurtry.

Ghouldilocks originally appeared in the late sixties in JAG comic where it enjoyed a short run of only 18 weeks from October 19th, 1968 until the last tabloid-sized JAG dated Feb. 15th, 1969 and was also illustrated by Stan McMurtry. The second series in SHIVER AND SHAKE used the original masthead and reprinted 5 episodes of the JAG run (the reprints were in Shiver and Shake issues 22, 23, 24, 25 and 46).