During the
run of Shiver and Shake Frankie
Stein grew increasingly popular with the readers: 1 ½ pages in the first three issues
soon became 2 full pages (issues 4 - 48), then 3 full pages (issues 49 – 52),
then front cover plus 3 full pages inside (issues 53 – 55) and finally front
cover plus two full pages inside (issues 56 - 78). All in all, that’s 161.5 inside
pages in black and white and 26 front covers in full colour.
First
birthday of the paper (No. 53 dated March 9th, 1974) was marked with Frankie
Stein’s promotion to the front cover (Frankie retained the position from that
issue until the end of the run) and a 4-part Frankie Stein’s Mini Monster
Mini-Book in issues 53-56 (March 9th – March 30th, 1974) in which he got
front and back covers alongside with this nice little 8-page story:
Weekly
episodes usually told a self-contained story but there were two occasions when
the plot continued over two weeks. The first was in issues No. 36 and 37 (Nov.
10th and Nov. 17th, 1973) in which Dad takes Frankie on holiday to an exotic
island in hope that he will be eaten by cannibals. They end up on a British
battleship and are offered a free cruise back home to England but Frankie sinks
the ship and Dad gets the blame. Here’s a nice sequence from the set:
The second
was in issues No. 41 and 42 (Dec. 15th and Dec. 22nd, 1973) – this time Prof.
Cube tries to get rid of Frankie with the aid of a time machine but Frankie
safely returns to 1973 and brings back Professorus Cubius, Prof. Cube’s
ancestor from Roman times. Now it’s the two of them trying to get rid of
Frankie, with predictable consequences…
Here is a
short list of episodes that I find particularly interesting in one way or
another:
- No 50 (Feb.
16th, 1974) – Frankie’s birthday party with
guests from other Shiver strips
- No. 56
(March 30th, 1974) – Prof. Cube shows his warm
feelings towards Frankie
- No. 61
(May 4th, 1974) – Prof. Cube tells the shrink
about his normal day with Frankie
- No. 71
(August 10th, 1974) – Frankie’s and Prof. Cube’s
holiday snapshots from 1970 – 1973 (i.e. years preceding the launch of Shiver and Shake)
- No. 73
(August 24th, 1974) – Frankie gets kidnapped and
his captors end up offering Dad cash to take him back (just like in the
classic short story The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry).
- No. 75
(September 7th, 1974) – Frankie Stein is about to
receive knighthood and Prof. Cube reveals the bootlicking and vainglorious
side of his personality
Robert
Nixon was responsible for nearly all of Frankie Stein art in SHIVER AND SHAKE,
barring a few sets drawn by Frank McDiarmid and several Ken Reid reprints from Wham! Here is the list of issues with
such ‘black sheep’ episodes:
- Issue
No. 29 (September 22nd, 1973) – illustrated by Frank
McDiarmid
- Issue
No. 30 (September 29th, 1973) –
single-page episode from WHAM! No. 136 rearranged to fit two pages, Micky
not removed
- Issue
No. 31 (October 6th, 1973) – illustrated by Frank
McDiarmid
- Issue
No. 32 (October 13th, 1973) – consists of two episodes by
Ken Reid from WHAM! No. 74 and 37, Micky removed from the latter and
wasn’t originally present in the former
- Issue
34 (October 27th, 1973) – illustrated by Frank
McDiarmid
- Issue
48 (February 2nd, 1974) – the instalment consists of
two episodes by Ken Reid from WHAM! No. 18 (half a page chopped off) and
51, Micky removed from both
- Issue
54 (March 16th, 1974) –
illustrated by Frank McDiarmid.
Although
Frank McDiarmid contributed only four episodes of Frankie Stein in the
weeklies, he deserves special praise because his sets offer an excellent
version of the character different from Bob Nixon’s. The episodes burst
with violent energy comparable to that of Ken Reid’s sixties original. I can’t
help wondering if Nixon and McDiarmid worked from scripts written by the same
writer because the stories look so different. Here is the complete two-page
episode from SHIVER AND SHAKE No. 29 cover-dated 22nd September, 1973:
It is
interesting to note how Prof. Cube’s son Micky is scrupulously removed from Ken
Reid’s artwork in reprints of old WHAM! episodes, although he must have slipped
the editors’ attention in Shiver and
Shake issue No. 30 (September 29th, 1973). I wonder why they considered
it OK to leave him intact in reprints included in Shiver and Shake annuals and specials.
An
interesting piece of trivia can be found in Shiver
and Shake issue No. 6 (April 14th, 1973) where Frankie Stein set was
re-drawn by Bob Nixon from Ken Reid’s original version in WHAM! No. 156,
possibly to fill two pages (the original was a one-pager). The example would
fit well in the Detective Work series that I did earlier on this blog. Below are matching pairs of panels from the two sets:
Given the
popularity of the feature, it was not surprising that Frankie Stein confidently
survived the incorporation of Shiver and
Shake into Whoopee! in the
Autumn of 1974. He appeared prominently and regularly throughout the 10-year
run of Whoopee! illustrated by
Robert Nixon and several other artists, including Brian Walker. Being a star of
the comic, Frankie Stein featured on pull-out posters and in cut-out minibooks.
In addition to episodes in WHOOPEE! weeklies as well as Shiver and Shake and WHOOPEE! annuals and holiday specials, the
friendly monster got his own Whoopee!
Frankie Stein holiday special
(as many as 8 editions were published in the period 1975-1982) and even his own
annual – the Book of Frankie Stein
(2 editions in 1976 and 1977). At one point he even became too big for just one
comic and took the position of ‘Honorary Editor’ of Monster Fun Comic where he hosted Letters to Frankie,
appeared in Frankie's Diary feature, presented Ticklish Allsorts page and
occupied front covers of a few Monster
Fun Comic Annuals. I’ll not cover the publications and features here
because this series is focused exclusively on SHIVER AND SHAKE, but IMHO
Frankie Stein is one of the characters in UK comics history who deserves a
thick coffee table book collecting his adventures from the pages of WHAM!,
SHIVER AND SHAKE and at least the first few years of WHOOPEE!
