WHOOPEE!’s SPOOKTACULAR 7 by BRIAN WALKER - PART TWO - 1978

Here’s Part Two of my account of the ‘cases’ dealt with by the Spooktacular 7 (formerly known as the crew of Scream Inn). This blogpost covers all WHOPPEE! issues for 1978 till the end of April - leaving the rest for Part Three.

7th January 1978   ● S7 provide music at the New Year party when the Canal Road Band gate-crash the party (singer does his impression of Johnny Rotten)

14th January 1978  ● Evil waxworks owner Professor Kreeps tries to turn S7 into exhibits of his chamber of horrors but Cyril the spider saves the day

21th January 1978  ● Number one stages a practice alarm and the practice session pays off because S7 accidentally bust a burglar:

28th January 1978  ● S7 are hired by the owner of a winter sports centre in Scotland to deal with a blackmailing winter sports guide writer (a three-pager – the only one in the weekly series!)...

4th February 1978  ● S7 are hired to return a boy who had run away 40 years  ago to join a circus...

11th February 1978  ● S7 deal with a mysterious invisible intruder who's been taking things from Grotty Grange

18th February 1978  ● S7 deal with a gang of Chinese Canaries smugglers:

25th February 1978 ● S7 deal with a cunning Medium named Madam Kazumpa

4th March 1978     ● Sergeant tricks S7 into signing into recruits but then the spooks scare him into tearing up their papers

11th March 1978   ● S7 deal with a gang of bag snatchers in Gassworks Alley:

18th March 1978  ● S7 are hired to protect a racehorse from being doped before the big race tomorrow

25th March 1978  ● Werewolf at Lady Svivering's manor house

1st April 1978       ● Eggs'pert diamond smugglers...

8th April 1978    ● S7 are summoned to the Palace cinema to redecorate it and experience transport problems getting there...

15th April 1978   ● Fortune teller tells to stop today's water speed-record attempt

22 April 1978      ● S7 are hired to watch the eggs laid by a very rare spotted-mug hawk from being stolen by crooked egg collectors...

29 April 1978    ● S7 are assigned to find a lost explorer Dr. Livingroom who went to Amazon find a lost tribe of the Tintacs...

Final Part will follow shortly…

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

Click on the POWER PACK banner in the right-hand column and get your copy of the POWER PACK OF KEN REID - the deluxe two-volume set of Ken’s strips in WHAM!, SMASH! and POW! comics of the ‘60s.

 

WHOOPEE!’s SPOOKTACULAR 7 by BRIAN WALKER in 1977

SCREAM INN was an excellent strip by Brian Walker that started in SHIVER AND SHAKE in 1973 where it ran for 79 weeks, totalling 158 pages (plus two guest-appearance pages in The Wizards Anonymous strip), and continued in WHOOPEE! after the two comics merged in 1974, totalling 153 weekly episodes, or 306 pages. I covered both runs in my two series on this blog (Part One of the SHIVER AND SHAKE series can be found HERE, and Part One of the WHOOPEE! series – HERE; further installments of both series can be found by clicking ‘newer post’ at the bottom of the two links above).

After SCREAM INN concluded in WHOOPEE! for 1st October 1977, the ghostly gang returned a week later in a new strip called SPOOKTACULAR 7, lasting 42 weekly two-page installments, till WHOOPEE! cover-dated 22nd July, 1978. Most of the original SCREAM INN magic (which largely came from the fact that it was a reader-participation feature where fans could suggest candidates who could try spending a night at the haunted establishment and winning a million pound) was gone, but Brian Walker’s brilliant artwork still made the strip shine. In the last part of my old WHOOPEE! series I said I would cover SPOOKTACULAR 7 later on, so here we go.

Fans of SCREAM INN will know that in the last episode Innkeeper won the prize of £ 1,000,000, and the glorious series ended with this teaser:

The new strip was called ‘SPOOKTACULAR 7’, and although the title suggests it was inspired by the popular American film, in fact it is a lot like Reg Parlett’s ‘HIRE A HORROR’ and ‘RENT A GHOST’ in IPC sister publications. In the new series, the old SCREAM INN motto ‘We’re Only Here for the Fear’ was replaced by a sign that read ‘S.O.S. Send Our Spooks Service’ but otherwise things stayed more or less the same. Here’s the front cover of WHOOPEE! with the first episode of SPOOKTACULAR 7, followed by the complete two-pager introducing the S7:

This post is the full account of the ‘mirth filled missions’ of SPOOKTACULAR 7 in 1977. The next post – or maybe two – will cover the antics of the lovable spooks in 1978, till the strip was put to rest. Always remember, that:

8th October, 1977            ● The Magnificent Seven film inspires Innkeeper to form THE SPOOKTACULAR 7. S7 deal with a school bully (as shown above); SCREAM INN had already dealt with one in WHOOPEE! for 5th July 1975…

15th October 1977           ● S7 help a store deal with its shoplifting problem; the issue of WHOOPEE! also offered an Innkeeper cut-out mask:

22nd October 1977          ● S7 help husband get rid of hiccups...

29th October 1977           ● S7 deal with a mystery thief amongst staff in the fairground ghost train

5th November 1977        ● S7 are called out to deal with a ferocious foreman at the new building site

12th November 1977      ● S7 are called out to a beauty competition finals to deal with some local ruffians who turn up to cause trouble:

19th November 1977      ● S7 deal with a tyrannical traffic warden

26th November 1977     ● S7 recover a stolen Egyptian Mummy – along with dozens of treasures – from a wicked owner of the museum of stolen goodies

3rd December 1977        ● S7 deal with a pesky park keeper

10th December 1977      ● S7 act as replacements for injured players in a football match and stand up to tough opposition and foul play...

17th December 1977      ● S7 help out Witch's nephew Charlie who's gone into show biz to be an escapologist but can't really do the tricks by himself:

24th December 1977      ● S7 help Lord Hardup get rid of some unwanted guests – a wealthy family who rented a suite in his castle but wouldn't pay or leave

31st December 1977       ● Xmas episode: S7 teach Fred Cratchit's great-grandson a lesson for trying to take revenge on Ebenezer Scrooge's grandson by forcing him to work on Christmas:

Part Two will follow shortly…

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

Click on the POWER PACK banner in the right-hand column and get your copy of the POWER PACK OF KEN REID - the deluxe two-volume set of Ken’s strips in WHAM!, SMASH! and POW! comics of the ‘60s.

 

 

SCREAM INN IN... THE DANDY!

 

The year was 1989, around Halloween. 12 years had passed since Brian Walker’s last episode of Scream Inn in WHOOPEE! comic. But then out of the blue Innkeeper and his crew made a surprise appearance in THE DANDY cover-dated 4th November 1989 published, of course, by IPC’s competition – DC Thomson! 

A few things had changed since the haunted establishment was last seen more than a decade ago: the sign above the door was gone, and the grand prize of a million pound had shrunk to a mere tenner. Resident spooks had lost their haunting zeal and Smasher easily claimed the prize but Brian Walker clearly had fun going down the memory lane. The pair of spiders was there, as was the centipede and the mysterious evil eyes in the dark corners. Smasher’s snail cheekily commented in the last panel – “Do you ever get the feeling 'I’ve been here before?'...” For some reason, the artist didn’t sign the page with his full name…

 

BRIAN WALKER'S SCREAM INN IN WHOOPEE! - PART THREE (YEAR 1977)

 

Here comes the third - and final - part of Scream Inn guestbook, documenting who and when called at the spooky establishment in 1977 in a bid to win the prize of a million quid.

January 1, 1977         · Sleeping Beauty

January 8, 1977         · Tortoise

January 15, 1977       · Blacksmith

January 22, 1977       · Attila the Hun

 

January 29, 1977       · Red Indian Chief – situation appears to be desperate so the Innkeeper calls his dear old buddy Jack Frost for help 

February 5, 1977       · Lumberjack

February 12, 1977     · A Beautiful Lady Ghost

February 19, 1977     · The Pied Piper

February 26, 1977     · Sidney the Spider – a reader nominates one of the in-house spiders as candidate for the grand prize:

March 5, 1977            · Henry the Eighth – King's treasury is a bit low and he needs the million, but the ghosts of his nagging wives scare him away. 

March 12, 1977          · Road Mender

March 19, 1977          · William Shakespeare – the greatest playwright of all time ends up writing for WHOOPEE! The episode has the last invitation card for readers to suggest a character to spend a night in the haunted bedroom. I like the frame of the card, with the portraits of the Scream Inn Gang. I don't think I've come across the name of the Union-Jack centipede anywhere else - turns out he went by Longfellow (see the bottom of the frame): 

March 26, 1977          · A Speaking Grandfather Clock– this was one of the most unusual characters to call at the Inn… The Scream Inn’s own grandfather clock offers his advice how to get rid of the old tick-tock. 

April 2, 1977              · Psychiatrist. The first panel below shows the Innkeeper as a young lad:

April 9, 1977              · Film Star Berk Reynolds

April 16, 1977            · Thumpty Dumpty. In this Easter episode Humpty Dumpty’s descendant meets his very old ancestor and glues himself inside the broken nutshell in the process of putting it together.  

April 23, 1977            · Professor Nuttymug, builder of the ghost exterminating machine. Scream Inn’s own Iron Maiden Irma (who was known as Old Agata in the SHIVER AND SHAKE run) saves the day. In the first panel below Bertie calls the contraption ‘box of tricks’. Brian Walker’s fans will know Boxatricks – a strip that he illustrated in BUSTER comic, but it didn’t start before August 1979.

April 30, 1977            · R.A.F. Helicopter Pilot

May 7, 1977               · Cowboy

May 14, 1977             · Potter

May 21, 1977             · Caveman

May 28, 1977             · Ghost Train Driver – I hoped it was going to be the vampire from Brian Walker’s old strip in WHOOPEE!, but it looks like it was someone else: 

June 4, 1977               · Clown. The episode features one of Cooky’s pets. The octopus went by Okky in the SHIVER AND SHAKE run though: 

June 11, 1977             · Strong Ghost

June 18, 1977             · James Bond Junior - Agent 003 1/2

June 25, 1977             · Paddy McGinty's Goat 

July 2, 1977                · Smiler – The only guest appearance of a fellow WHOOPEE! character in 1977 – see the full episode HERE.

July 9, 1977                · Ice Cream Man

July 16, 1977              · Jake the Peg - With an Extra Leg. Luckily for the Innkeeper, Cooky’s pet octopus Olly has even more legs. 

July 23, 1977              · The Invisible Man

July 30, 1977              · Big Game Hunter

August 6, 1977           · Famous American Cop

August 13, 1977         · Laughing Policeman

August 20, 1977         · Gymnast 

August 27, 1977         · Company Sergeant Major

September 3, 1977     · Lad Who Bends Things and Makes Them Move Just by Concentrating

September 10, 1977   · Poet Called Lear Who's Got Nothing to Fear

September 17, 1977   · Robert the Bruce

September 24, 1977   · Giant Snail - a heavily-armed man-operated Mechanical Job. It reminds me of one of the monsters in Major Jump Horror Hunter strip in MONSTER FUN COMIC… 

October 1, 1977         · The Innkeeper wins one million pounds. It was the last of the 153 weekly two-pagers in WHOOPEE! comic. Scream Inn gang returned a week later in a new strip called Spooktacular 7 that lasted 42 episodes, till WHOOPEE! cover-dated 22nd July, 1978. Most of the original magic had gone but Brian Walker’s brilliant artwork still made Spooktacular 7 shine, and I plan to cover it in my next blogpost, which hopefully won't take me long to compose. In the meantime, here’s the last episode of Scream Inn: 

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd