SHIVER AND SHAKE – 2 COMICS IN 1... DOUBLE THE FUN!

Shiver and Shake arrived on the newsstands nearly 40 years ago, the first issue had the cover date of 10th March, 1973. It joined the family of IPC children’s funnies of which there were four until then – COR!!, WHIZZER AND CHIPS, KNOCKOUT and BUSTER, the latter aimed at a slightly older age group. 

Front cover of the first issue

Shiver and Shake was an attempt to exploit two concepts that were going down well with the young buyer of comics in the UK at that time: horror comedy was becoming increasingly popular in IPC comics, and the Whizzer and Chips concept of two comics in one was proving a big success. The new comic was a combination of the two: it was a ‘two in one’ paper that had horror comedy as the dominant theme.

The name of the new publication must have rung a few bells to readers of COR!! because a strip with the same name appeared in the comic for half a year in 1972-73. You can read a review of the strip in one of my COR!! posts here. The review also attempts to explain the complicated mutations that led to Shake the comic strip spook becoming Shiver the cover star of the new paper and lending its original comic strip name to an elephant, his cover co-star in SHIVER AND SHAKE the comic. The section of SHIVER the spook represented the ‘main’ comic, while that of SHAKE the elephant was the ‘pull-out’ section. Unlike Sid and Shiner in WHIZZER AND CHIPS, both SHIVER AND SHAKE cover stars got along nicely and there was hardly any rivalry between them, so the whole two-comics-in-one gimmick was a bit fabricated.

Inside, the new paper offered a strong roster of strips and characters.  The editors saw the focus on horror comedy as a good excuse to revive several monster characters from the bygone days. First and foremost was Frankie Stein created by Ken Reid for WHAM! nearly a decade ago and last seen in 1967. The second was of course Grimly Feendish – another Odhams old-timer from WHAM! and later SMASH! The best-forgotten of the ‘oldies’ was probably Ghouldilocks that had enjoyed a brief appearance in the short-lived JAG comic in the late 6os. One great thing about the resurrections was that they were all new episodes rather than reprints of old material (with the odd exception). SHIVER AND SHAKE played the horror theme for all it was worth with a whole array of new strips such as Horrornation Street, The Duke’s Spook, The Hand and Soggy the Sea Monster. Two of the new horror comedy strips deserve a special mention because they were so successful that they continued elsewhere for years after SHIVER AND SHAKE folded. I am referring to The Scream Inn and Sweeny Toddler.  Ken Reid contributed Creepy Creations on the back page, warming-up to do the long-running series of World-Wide Weirdies pinups in WHOOPEE! later on.

The ‘scary’ stuff was mostly in the Shiver section of the comic. The Shake pull-out section was more in the traditional vein of IPC children’s funnies. Two of the strips stood out as really good: Lolly Pop and Match of the Week, the latter occupied the centre pages and was undoubtedly one of the highlights of the paper. The package was spiced-up with mystery adventure serials in the Shiver section, a total of 6 during the run of the comic.

Artwork was contributed by IPC’s top talent: Robert Nixon (SHIVER AND SHAKE is my personal favourite period of his work), Mike Lacey, Terry Bave,  Sid Burgon, Tom Paterson, Tom Williams, Ken Reid, Norman Mansbridge, Brian Walker and others.

All, in all, the comic was full of excellent strips and reviewing them here will be great fun. The comic may have been conceived as an imitation of Whizzer and Chips, but it was a lot more than that. To me, it stands out amongst its contemporaries because of the robust line-up of fresh characters. Whizzer and Chips had a much longer life than Shiver and Shake but looking at random issues of the two titles from 1973 or 1974, I can say that if I had to choose, I’d have certainly supported the latter with my pocket money.

Here are the bare facts:

Published every Monday by IPC Magazines Ltd., Fleetway House, Farrington Street, London EC4A 4AD

First issue: Monday 10th March, 1973

Last issue: Monday 5th October, 1974

The period covers 83 weeks but only 79 issues were published: none appeared in July 1974 due to strike action by certain printers that IPC were using at the time.

The issues weren’t numbered on the front cover, but Creepy Creations on the back were. Differently from the majority of other IPC comics, this offers the convenience of referring to individual issues by the number rather than the date.

Format: 22 x 28 cms (traditional IPC comics size).

Priced 4p

Printed by Fleetway Printers

Page count:

-          issue Nos. 1 to 43: 36 pages

-          issue Nos. 44 to 79: 32 pages

Free gifts and pull-outs:

Issue No. 1 – 10th March, 1973: Free Practical Joke - which one will YOU get? - Trick Stick of…Liquorice / Joke…Pencil / Joke Chocolate Biscuit / Trick…Tea Spoon

Issue No. 2 – 17th March, 1973: Super Spooky Screamer

Issue No. 3 – 24th March, 1973: Free Glow Fun Stickers

Issue No. 53 – 9th March, 1974: Frankie Stein's Mini Monster Comic Book Pt. 1

Issue No. 54 – 16th March, 1974: Frankie Stein's Mini Monster Comic Book Pt. 2

Issue No. 55 – 23rd March, 1974: Frankie Stein's Mini Monster Comic Book Pt. 3

Issue No. 56 – 30th March, 1974: Frankie Stein's Mini Monster Comic Book Pt. 4

Annuals: 13 editions from 1974 till 1986

Holiday Specials: 8 editions from 1973 till 1980

Merged into WHOOPEE! that became WHOOPEE! and SHIVER AND SHAKE on 12th October, 1974. The last combined issue of WHOOPEE! and SHIVER AND SHAKE had the cover date of 18th October, 1975 (No. 82).

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

With the New Year just a few hours away, I will end this string of Holiday Season posts with my personal favourite Shiver and Shake annual cover. It serves as a nice intro to the series about Shiver and Shake comic that I hope to do in 2013.  By happy coincidence, the year marks the 40th anniversary since the comic first appeared.  

Happy New Year everyone!

CONFUSION WITH THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Today I’ll do something I don’t normally do on this blog and volunteer a few personal details. Some of my readers may know that I live in Lithuania. When I was a kid it was still part of the mighty old Soviet Union, a country where they tried to do away with Christmas. Why? Because it is a religious holiday and stern builders of Communism weren’t supposed to be religious or celebrate Christian holidays. They celebrated New Year big time instead. I’m not saying us kids didn’t enjoy ourselves back then – New Year festivities and Father Frost was always a highlight of the season at home, at the kindergarten and at school. 

That's my three-year-old self at a New Year's
party in the kindergarten some 40+ years ago.

There was this cute little rhyme that every boy and girl of my generation knew and still knows by heart. Here is my English translation (a word-by-word one but you’ll have to trust me that it does sound sweet in Lithuanian): Branchy fir-tree / Green fir-tree / Shaggy bear visits her in the woods / Woodpeckers pecker at her slender trunk / Pupils dress her on New Year’s eve. Not a word about Christmas, see?

 

The reason I am writing this is because the other day I came across a short article about the rhyme. It turns out that it no longer goes down well with the kids of today because they dress their Christmas trees on Christmas and not the New Year’s eve. In order for the rhyme to make sense to kids, some kindergarten teachers changed the last line by dropping New Year and replacing it with Christmas. Word-by-word, the line now goes like this:  ‘Pupils dress her on the night before Christmas.’ The teachers had to use the wording ‘the night before Christmas’ rather than ‘Christmas eve’ to make it rhyme in Lithuanian, but created another problem – kids still find it illogical because normally they don’t decorate their Christmas trees at night…   Of course, children have their own ways of explaining things. The article quotes a little boy who has memorized the ‘new’ version of the rhyme and knows from his parents and teachers that Christmas was sort of banned back in the day. Here is what he had to say: ‘Folks weren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas in the old days, but now its OK, as long as we do it at night and the Russians can’t see us’. I am not sure if my English readers will grasp the humour of this comment but it had me laughing out loud when I read it.

While I am on the subject of the old days, I might also reveal that many Christmases ago I used to be a freelance cartoonist and my comics appeared regularly in the national humour magazine for three years or so. Below are proof-prints of a New Year tale that I drew to a short story of a famous Lithuanian writer who wrote in the age when there was no Christmas. The strip was drawn and printed in 1991. I drew the original on A4 size paper in ink and water colours and lettered it too. I won’t bother with translation but here is a brief synopsis of the plot: village kindergarten teacher asks the janitor to dress as Santa and hide in the old closet to surprise the kids. The troubles begin on New Year’s Eve when a new closet is delivered to the kindergarten and the old one with the janitor dozing inside is loaded onto a truck to be taken to the dump. Having travelled some distance out of the village, the truck runs out of fuel and the poor janitor breaks free. He tries to ask his acquaintance for help but she doesn’t recognize him. The janitor can’t take off his beard because it is glued. Embarrassed by the silly looks he shuns people but runs into his nephew who takes him to the nearby village where the locals are gathered in the club to see in the New Year. The janitor wishes the villagers a Happy New Year on behalf of his village and gives presents to the local kids. Grateful and impressed by the neighbors’ initiative, villagers drive him back to his village in the morning…