A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: SHAKE

As it has already been mentioned here a few times, Shake the elephant was one of the two mascots of SHIVER AND SHAKE who appeared regularly on the front cover of the paper. Shiver also had his own strip in full colour on the front page of the mock pull-out comic named after him. The nice little strip illustrated by Mike Lacey depicted humorous episodes from the daily life of the chubby lovable character who often failed to realise how heavy he was and didn’t know his own strength.

Shake didn’t miss a single week but was temporarily reduced to half-a-page and rendered in b/w in issues 53 to 55 when colour pages were allocated to Frankie Stein mini pull-out booklet. Terry Bave stepped in for Mike Lacey on one occasion in issue No. 76. The feature survived merger with Whoopee! and continued there on a regular basis for nearly two years until the end of February 1976, initially as front page strip of the Shiver & Shake section, later simply as a regular WHOOPEE! strip.

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: WHO'D KILL COCKNEY ROBIN?

Who’d Kill Cockney Robin? was a suspense thriller that I found a real pain to read because I could hardly believe how embarrassingly poor and unconvincing the script was. It started off in a promising way with this 4-page introduction that took up the last two pages of SHIVER before SHAKE section and another two after:

The plot is simple and effective: the mystery wannabe murderer unleashes a series of unsuccessful attempts on young Cockney Robin’s life in the enclosed and claustrophobic setting of the old mansion. In the end of each weekly instalment the clumsy villain drops a random personal item as he flees the scene of another failed murder attempt, leaving a clue to his identity. The growing number of clues eventually leads to the uncovering of the shady plotter by Cockney Robin.

The way in which the writer develops the story and characters, however, is lame and unconvincing, a clear case of overdoing things for dramatic effect. The sweets baron looks like a real skinflint, a very unlikely candidate to bequeath his multi-billion business to a tea boy whom he’s come “to admire and respect”. Then the crowd of grim and frustrated co-workers suddenly find themselves trapped inside an old mansion like a herd of submissive sheep in a barn. It looks as if they are resigned to spend the rest of their lives there, wandering pointlessly around like a pack of zombies and squabbling over trifles. Their efforts to contact the outside world for help are half-hearted and ineffective. So are the would-be murderer’s attempts on Robin’s life that are often so “sophisticated” that they border on absurdity:

The story unfolds against a backdrop of continuous bullying and name-calling of the young Robin by begrudging adult co-workers who are unable to accept that the ex-tea-boy is their new boss:

However, the herd of sheep that they are, they obediently line up and hold their palms up for examination at Robin’s command:

The final episode comes across as completely schizophrenic: impressed by Cockney Robin’s detective skills and appalled at Silas Scrogg's evil plots, the employees kneel down to pledge their eternal loyalty to the new boss…

I am not a fan of adventure serials in IPC children’s humour comics of the 70s but this one stands out as particularly over-the-top IMHO. Of course, the story was written for the young reader of the day and I should know better than to scrutinize the script and rant over its alleged faults. In all likelihood many readers were thrilled by the yarn and enthusiastically recorded the weekly clues :) 

On a positive note, the story had a well-conceived structure: nine clues were dropped over the period of nine weeks and by that time Cockney Robin already knew who the would-be killer was. Readers should have known too, if they had collected all the correct clues. 50 one-pound prizes were up for grabs but not for naming Robin's attacker. Readers were asked to list all the nine clues instead:

The story reached its climax next week in issue 10 and the correct clues as well as the murderous conspirator’s identity were finally revealed in the final episode in issue 11 (see the complete episode above). Names of the 50 lucky prize winners were announced 5 weeks later in issue 16:

Illustrated by Tom Kerr, the story ran for eleven weeks in SHIVER section (issues 1 to 11). The first episode was 4 pages long and all the subsequent ones were three-pagers.

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: BIDDY'S BEASTLY BLOOMERS

With Scream Inn covered in detail and out of the way, let us now turn to page 8 of Shiver and Shake No. 1 and take a look at Biddy’s Beastly Bloomers. The one-pager illustrated by Sid Burgon depicted adventures of a little girl Biddy and three odd-looking carnivorous flowers that planted themselves in the garden and were at the root of all the trouble to come. The cunning food-grabbing plants were on a permanent grub alert, ready to munch and chop any food they could get at, be it sausages, bacon, sweets or fruit. Biddy’s working-class Dad quickly came to dislike them and plotted different schemes to get rid of the creepy creepers but always ended up in trouble.

Biddy’s Beastly Bloomers had a very short run in SHIVER AND SHAKE issues 1 to 19 and was part of SHIVER section where the feature appeared on page 8. The total number of episodes came to 17 because it didn’t appear in issues 7 and 11.

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: SCREAM INN (PART 4)

Rounding up this 4-part Scream Inn series, here is a page of Brian Walker’s original Scream Inn artwork for SHIVER AND SHAKE No. 62 (11th May, 1974). The piece is huge – it is four times the size of the printed page. The logo is a glossy photo print, so is the poster at the entrance, both glued to the paper. The logo has come off and there is the name of the author of the story idea written underneath, presumably by Mr. Walker himself. The stamp on the back shows issue number and date, alongside with the artist’s address and phone number.

In his interview for GOLDEN FUN Mr. Walker told the interviewer he took a long time over his work. He used a variety of nibs and preferred drawing on one sheet Bristol board that was virtually no thicker than paper. He liked it because it rolled up easily and he could get four or five pages rolled up inside a 1 ¼ inch plastic drain pipe in order to send them off to IPC. A friendly plumber kept pipe cut-offs for him. Here are some panels close-up for your enjoyment:

I wonder if any of my readers could enlighten me as to the dotting technique used by Mr. Walker to make grey shadows in his artwork? Looking at the printed version I assumed it was printwork but panels of the original page above suggest differently.