POW! and WHAM! - First merged issue (1968)

The merging of Pow! and Wham! in January 1968 was a clear indication that all was not well with the Odhams line of 'Power Comics'. Other mergers would follow and by the end of the year only Smash! would remain out of the five titles. A sad state of affairs for a much-loved line of comics but they continued to deliver the goods right up until the end.

The merged Pow! and Wham! actually resulted in a fairly strong line-up. Here are examples from the 32 pages of that first issue (No.53, retaining Pow's numbering)...

Pages two and three served as a great introduction to the strips, bringing new readers up to speed...

Reprints of Spider-Man had proved to be Pow's most popular strip so naturally that continued in the merger. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko at their finest...

Georgie's Germs was one of the handful of strips to survive from Wham! and fitted into Pow! perfectly. Art by Cyril Price...

After Spider-Man the second most popular strip in Pow! was Mike Higgs' The Cloak. A fantastic humour-adventure spy/fantasy serial in Mike's distinctive style. I've never met any fan of Pow! who didn't like the strip, and it's easy to see why from this excellent spread. Anything could happen in The Cloak strip!

Horror/sci-fi serial Experiment X featured in the centre pages. That logo is one of my favourites. Very eerie.

Pow! often reprinted some of the complete five page sci-fi strips from Marvel's early sixties Tales of Suspense, Strange Tales and the like, resized into two page stories. This issue gave us The Little Green Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko...

The ad for the next issue promoted the free stickers. Remember those? 

Sammy Shrink by Terry Bave was another survivor from Wham! Although perhaps one of the more conservative strips in 'Power Comics' Sammy Shrink proved very popular and was even revived for a much longer run years later in the IPC funnies. 

This first merge issue also saw the start of a brand new adventure thriller; The Two Faces of Janus. A gripping but somewhat daft tale about a man wrongly accused of a crime just because he looks evil due to a curse. Francisco Fuentes was the artist of the strip but I'm not sure he drew this opening episode as it appears to be signed "Ayhau". 

The Tiddlers and The Dolls was an unusual merging of two strips into one! The Tiddlers from Wham! joined Pow's The Dolls of St. Dominics for a weekly battle of the sexes. Art by Mike Lacey... 

Reprints of The Fantastic Four also came over from Wham! into the merged comic. Script by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby. (For some reason, Odhams deleted the credits on the Marvel reprints. Probably because it wasn't a tradition in British comics to run credit boxes at the time.)

On the back page, the brilliant Dare-A-Day Davy, another Pow! favourite, by the fantastic Ken Reid...

So there you have it. A good comic full of variety, and a favourite of many in the sixties. Evidently not too many though, as it only lasted another 36 weeks or so before merging into Smash! but while it was around it was a memorable comic!

SHIVER AND SHAKE No.1 (1973)

With the success of Whizzer and Chips as a faux 'two in one' comic, IPC tried it again with football adventure comic Score 'n' Roar in 1970 (see here) and once more in 1973 with Shiver and Shake. Neither proved to be anywhere near as popular as Whizzer and Chips but they did contain some worthwhile content. Here's a selection of a few pages from Shiver and Shake No.1, dated 10th March 1973...

The concept of Shiver and Shake was that 20 page Shiver contained funny horror/monster strips and 16 page Shake carried, well, humour strips without a horror theme. The cover (above) was by Mike Lacey, featuring the hosts of each comic, Shiver the ghost and Shake the elephant. 

The first notable thing about Shiver is that it kicked off with a revamp of Frankie Stein, a character last seen in Wham! in 1967 and a few Wham! Annuals that followed. However this version was a more subdued Frankie than Ken Reid's edgy original, and the comedy was much lighter in tone, as was the norm at IPC. Nevertheless, Robert Nixon did a very nice job on the artwork. 

Scream Inn, with distinctive, atmospheric art by Brian Walker, was a superb strip, and was later adapted into a board game! Walker used hatching, cross-hatching and Letratone to great effect here...

Shiver featured one adventure strip, and the prolific Tom Kerr was the ideal choice as illustrator. Who'd Kill Cockney Robin was a mystery serial, with a clue in every episode for the reader to deduce who was trying to kill the title character. 

The character who'd become one of the biggest hits with readers was Sweeny Toddler, who made his debut towards the back of the comic. Created by the wonderful Leo Baxendale...

The back page presented us with something marvelous. The start of a series of monster pin-ups by Ken Reid! Creepy Creations No.1 was The One-Eyed Wonk of Wigan, with readers invited to submit their own ideas for Ken to draw in future editions. 

The 16 page middle section featured Shake No.1, with the cover strip by Mike Lacey. 

Inside Shake, veteran artist Reg Parlett gave us the arrival of Lolly Pop, a character who would outlast the comic and survive in other comics.

On the back page of Shake was Moana Lisa with art by Peter Davidson. 

The first issue of Shiver and Shake took the unusual step of giving readers a choice of four different free gifts. The ploy to get people to buy more than one 
copy convinced me for one, and I went for the trick rubber pencil and the plastic 'chocolate' biscuit. I've mislaid the rubber pencil, but here's a photo of the trick biscuit and the free gift wrappers...

Shiver and Shake lasted for 79 issues before merging into Whoopee! in 1974, but it's still fondly remembered today by collectors. 

WHAM's 50th Wham-iversary

Wham! No.3, the earliest one in my collection.

Thanks to George Shiers on his Wacky Comics blog for the reminder that it's been 50 years this week since Wham! No.1 was in the shops. Although cover dated the weekend of June 20th, the actual on-sale day would have been the 16th, or probably the 15th June 1964.

I didn't discover Wham! until issue 77, dated 4th December 1965, so it had been around quite a while before then. Once I read that issue though I was hooked! I liked Dandy and Beano, but their new rival Wham! was wilder, dafter, and more unpredictable.

Wham! had also gained Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid of course, and their contributions to Wham! were always the highlights of the comic. Let's take a look at some of their memorable pages...

Early Eagle-Eye, Junior Spy episode from Wham! No.14 (19th Sept.1964) by Leo Baxendale...

From the same issue, Georgie's Germs, also by Baxendale...

The first episode of the short-lived Jasper the Grasper by Ken Reid from Wham! No.42 (3rd April 1965)...

It's worth mentioning that although some people think Leo Baxendale drew almost everything in Wham!, that obviously wouldn't have been physically possible so numerous other artists were brought in to follow Leo's style. Leo tended to sign most pages he drew, so that's a good guide if the styles are confusing, but usually Leo's pages are quite distinctive anyway. (Unfortunately some people still mis-credit him for pages done by his imitators.) 

Ken Reid had a break at times from drawing his Frankie Stein strip, which was then handed to others. Here's the episode where Ken returned to drawing the strip in Wham! No.109 (16th July 1966) after another artist had been drawing the strip from issues 89 to 108...

Following The Hulk's debut in Wham's sister comic Smash! in May 1966, The Fantastic Four followed in Wham! No.112 (6th August 1966). It's debatable whether these Marvel reprints were a benefit to Wham! as they elbowed out a few original strips, but it gave the comic more variety at least, and introduced many of us to the FF. 

1966 also saw Leo Baxendale depart Odhams, which weakened Wham! somewhat but it still retained a lively anarchic flavour. Artists such as Mike Lacey (on The Tiddlers, shown here) did a solid job of imitating Baxendale's 1960s style. 

Sadly, the early days of 1968 saw the final issue of Wham! (No.187, 13th January 1968) as it announced a merger with relative newcomer Pow! for the following week. 

Still, Wham's three and a half year run can't be sniffed at, and it remains a memorable part of the sixties comics scene for those of us who were lucky enough to be children during that decade. Happy 50th, Wham! and thanks for the lunacy.

All scans taken from my collection of Wham! comics. Over the years I've managed to buy most of them, but there are still gaps. However, at my age I'm no longer inclined to track down the missing issues. The stack I have here is perfectly adequate for when I get around to re-reading them all again. Whenever that will be!

You'll find several older posts I wrote about Wham! if you type the relevant keywords into the search window at the top left of this blog.