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. 

Ken Reid's BANGER AND MASHER (1970/71)

For many of us, Ken Reid's work reached its hilariously manic best with Jonah and Roger the Dodger for The Beano in the 1950s and then in the 1960s for the Odhams comics Wham! (Frankie Stein), Smash! (Queen of the Seas, The Nervs) and Pow! (Dare-A-Day-Davy). A body of work proving him to be a master humourist.

Curiously, when the Odhams comics fizzled out and were replaced by IPC's new humour titles Whizzer and Chips, Cor!!, and Knockout, Ken Reid's work was nowhere to be seen. Was this Ken's decision, or was his work considered too dark for the more conservative IPC funnies? (He did contribute to the next wave of humour comics, Shiver and Shake and Whoopee! but initially only to illustrate the back page pin-ups, and what great work he did on them.) Given that IPC management axed The Nervs in 1969 because they felt it was over the top and should never be reprinted, I'm betting they didn't want him on their new funnies. Their loss.

Fortunately Ken did find work on the IPC adventure comics at that time. Perhaps it was felt he was more suited to the slightly older target audience? I've already covered his early work for Scorcher (more on those strips in a week or two) but he also produced Faceache for Jet of course and a great humour page for Valiant. 

Banger and Masher had the simple premise of two kids creating new ways to knock seven bells out of each other every week, all in Ken's own fantastic way of course . The strip ran for a year, from Valiant 4th July 1970, to the issue dated 3rd July 1971. Here's a selection of some I consider to be the best. Click on the images to see them larger...

Ken Reid's FOOTBALL FORUM (1970/71)

It's been ages since I did a post about Ken Reid's football strips (see Sub here) and I'd promised to cover the rest so here's a look at Ken's second strip for Scorcher.

Football Forum was a replacement for Sub and ran in Scorcher from issues dated 15th August 1970 to 16th January 1971. The concept of a forum-based strip wasn't new to comics but Ken Reid turned what might have been a pedestrian strip into a delight of manic consequences. Here are a few examples scanned from the comics. Click to see them larger.

I'll be looking at Ken's other Scorcher strips soon, but for a taster, here's a blog post I did briefly covering them a few years ago:
http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/ken-reids-scorcher-strips.html