1985 SHIVER & SHAKE ANNUAL

1985 SHIVER & SHAKE ANNUAL didn’t lose any more pages (the page-count is 96 as before) but the price went up by 30 p, reaching £2.25. On the positive side, the proportion of pages printed on quality paper got bigger.

CONTENTS: Sweeny Toddler (2 episodes by Tom Paterson), Blunderpuss (2 sets by Terry Bave, one in full colour), The Duke’s Spook (2 reprints), Lolly Pop (one in full colour and one in b/w), Webster (two episodes: a reprint and one possibly new, both by Terry Bave), Ghoul Getters Ltd (2 episodes by Trevor Metcalfe, one in full colour), Are You’re a Scaredy Cat (rating game with art by J. Edward Oliver), Puzzles and Posers (4 one-page instalments), Frankie Stein (2 episodes by Brian Walker: a 3-pager and a 4-pager), Shake (3 sets by Terry Bave and one in full colour by Mike Lacey (reprint)), Ghouldilocks (2 reprints, art by Stan McMurtry), Toby’s Timepiece (a 5-pager), Horrornation Street (2 sets – one by Tom Williams and one in full colour by Crocker), The Hand (2 episodes by Les Barton), Moana Lisa (2 sets by Peter Davidson), Desert Fox (2 episodes by Terry Bave), Ghost’s Revenge (2 episodes), Sports School (2 sets by Jim Watson), Grimly Feendish (2 episodes by Martin Baxendale, one in full colour), Shiver’s Ghoul School (2-pages, a text story with illustrations by Terry Bave), ‘Orrible Hole (2 episodes by Jim Crocker), Shake Your Memory puzzle (art by J. Edward Oliver), Tough Nutt and Softy Centre (reprint, art by Norman Mansbridge), The Forest Legion (4 pages), Shiver (in full colour by Terry Bave), A Haunting Experience dice game.

I find it strange they were still putting out annuals 10 years after SHIVER AND SHAKE weekly folded… The editors, however, deserve praise for not relying on reprints too much.

The book had bright colourful inside covers: a busy set with lots of elephants and ghosts (i.e. Shakes and Shivers) drawn and signed by Mitch:

… and A Haunting Experience dice game:

Let’s take a quick look at some of the features included in this Annual.  

Ghoul Getters Ltd. got rid of two ghosts – first an old lady ghost that haunted a nice gentleman’s house, and then a skeleton in a lady’s closet.

In Lolly Pop Archie asks Dad for a pocket calculator but gets a broken abacus that is good for nothing else but playing marbles; some counting beads fly over the fence, hit Lolly Pop’s central computer and drive all factory production lines mad. 

In the second episode Archie wishes he had a record player but gets an old-fashioned wind-up gramophone instead; he then tries to get some decent records at Pop’s Record Factory, with the usual outcome. Sid Burgon drew the first set and I believe Nigel Edwards is the artist responsible for the other one, check out the last page below:

In Frankie Stein Professor Cube is still trying to get rid of Frankie. He pretends he’s caught a rare disease and tells Frankie that the only cure is in the leaves of a small plant found only in the South American jungles. Manipulative Dad knows that Frankie will immediately volunteer to fetch some to cure him, and will hopefully disappear forever.  But Frankie returns much sooner than Prof. Cube hoped he would…

In the second episode Prof. Cube takes Frankie on a skiing holiday in Switzerland hoping to loose him on a bob-sleigh run, a ski-slope or during a mountain climbing trip. Not this time either…

Prof. Cube enjoys a rare and brief moment of happiness,
believing he's finally got rid of Frankie.
I love Brian Walker's clean and bold brushstrokes!

In Toby’s Timepiece Toby is on a bus, he is on his way to play football in another town. The bridge across the river is down and the sudden jolt of the stopping bus sets the time piece into operation. The boy finds himself in a Plymouth-to-London stage-coach, sharing it with a posh couple. The stage-coach is stopped by Black Jake the highway man who robs the couple and grabs Toby to shake some sense into him. The two of them have a quick journey across time until they land in the age of the dinosaurs. The macho highwayman panics and runs away, dropping the loot. One jolt of the magic watch later Toby is back at the stage-coach where he returns the valuables to the rich couple who repay him with a free ride to the destination of his choice. The stage-coach takes Toby to the town of the football game where he travels back to his own time in 1985 and joins his team.

The Forest Legion drive out a team of tree fellers and road builders from their forest. The strip got a new artist again, but I don’t know his name.

I will finish this blogpost about 1985 SHIVER AND SHAKE Annual with Grimly Feendish. Both sets were by Martin Baxendale and it is nice to see Leo Baxendale’s son take over the strip created by his Dad two decades ago. 

In the first episode Grimly’s aides kidnap Santa and Grimly goes live on TV to demand lots of money in exchange for his freedom. Unfortunately for Grimly, his silly assistants hid Santa’s sleigh in the police car park thinking that there could be no safer place for it… The cops follow the tracks in the snow, find Grimly’s hideout and set Santa free. As his punishment, Grimly has to go down millions of chimneys across the land to deliver presents on Santa's behalf.

The second episode is called Grimly Feendish’s Circus of Crime. Here it is in full: