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. 

Lady Penelope No.42 (1966)

Lady Penelope was a pretty cool character for a puppet, and her comic equally so. Take a look at the cover to Lady Penelope No.42 above, dated November 5th 1966. Its companion comic TV21 often played around with its own logo but never to this extent. A gigantic Lady P logo dominates the cover, even dispensing with the comic's full title that week. (The words 'Lady Penelope' usually ran alongside the logo in the left hand corner.) I don't recall any other comic being as experimental with its cover as this in the 1960s. Also, when you consider that this comic was the size of a tabloid newspaper you can imagine how eye catching it must have been. 

For its target audience of young girls, Lady Penelope must have seemed like the most modern and 'with it' comic they'd ever seen. Its contents were pretty groovy too. On pages 2 and 3, was a strip featuring The Monkees drawn by Tom Kerr. The artist's work was as superb as ever but what's interesting here is that he added little items to the strip in the way that Bill Elder had with Mad a decade earlier. Note for example the UFO in panel three, and the man hanging from the panel border in panel seven. 

Lost In Space was a popular TV show at the time about the Robinson family trapped on a distant planet. Lady Penelope had a Space Family Robinson strip but this had no relation to the TV series. It was instead based on the American Gold Key comics, but with brand new stories for the UK drawn by John Burns. 

The Lady Penelope strip itself ran across the centrespread in the sort of glorious full colour only achievable by the expensive photogravure printing of the time. Artwork by Frank Langford.

The comic certainly employed some top class talent. Ron Embleton delivered fine work as the illustrator of The Man from UNCLE...

There were also a few humour strips in the comic. The excellent Bill Titcombe drawing Bewitched...

The Beverly Hillbillies. (I'm unsure of the artist. Paul Trevillion perhaps?)

Perils of Parker, drawn by Peter Ford...

There was also a prose serial, All the King's Men, featuring an ancestor of Penelope. Art by John Canning...

On the back page, Marina from Stingray had her own series. Nicely illustrated by Rab Hamilton...

The rest of the 20 page comic was taken up with reader participation features and suchlike. I thought you might like to see a couple of adverts from this issue too, which reflect the times. First is an ad for a Sugar Puffs promotion where girls could buy 'Julie... the fashion doll with everything' for 21/- (One pound and 5p). Turns out that 'everything' included stockings and suspenders for the doll. Guaranteed to turn the head of any Action Man. 

The other full page ad was for a variety of Century 21 toys. No doubt worth quite a bit on the collector's market today. 

As you can see, Lady Penelope was quite an impressive comic with some great artwork. Too bad that most of us lads back then were too embarrassed to be seen with a girls comic! If you want to read about its history, check out the brilliant Technodelic website here:
http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Upload03/LadyPenelope02.htm

This week in 1965...

I haven't done one of these for a while, where I look back at several comics from years ago that were published in the same week. Above is my photo of how a newsagents counter may have looked this week exactly 50 years ago when all of these issues were on sale! Half a Century ago! Blimey!

Let's start off with the issue of Valiant that went on sale Saturday 20th February 1965. Cover by Mike Western which looked back on other events of this week in times past...

Inside, the dark, tense artwork of Solano Lopez with the latest Kelly's Eye chapter. These old strips certainly knew how to deliver a great cliffhanger!

As the topline on the cover promised, this issue saw the start of a new adventure with The Wild Wonders, drawn by Mike Western...

A good horror/mystery serial in Valiant at that time was Jack O'Justice, drawn by Tom Kerr... 

That issue also carried a half page ad for that week's Buster and The Big One which featured a free gift...

Monday 22nd February 1965 saw the publication of The Dandy No.1214 with a very amusing Korky the Cat strip drawn by Charlie Grigg...

Inside, Dudley D. Watkins proved what a master comic artist he was with a Desperate Dan strip with 17 panels on one page...

The Smasher was up to mischief as usual, drawn by Hugh Morren. Note the advert at the foot of the page, heralding the start of Greedy Pigg the following week! (Greedy Pigg would replace George Martin's Sunny Boy which ended that week.)

The Dandy carried a regular feature page back then called My Home Town. Humour illustrations by Frank McDiarmid, with the 'straight' artwork by Thomson staff artist Alan Gibson. (Thanks to Ray Moore for correcting me on that.) Note the ads for that week's Bimbo and Diana at the bottom of the page...

The same day saw the publication of Wham! No.37, with a cover by Graham Allen doing his best to 'ghost' Leo Baxendale's style...

This issue of Wham! saw the debut of two new strips. In actuality they were both reprints from Swift. Western serial Johnny Straight by Don Lawrence was a re-lettered reprint of Wells Fargo...

...whilst The Bouncers by Peter Maddocks was also reprinted from Swift.

The rest of Wham! was still all-new though, and worth every penny. Especially with Leo Baxendale's glorious centre-spread strip Eagle Eye: Doomsday School...

This week in 1965 saw the publication of TV21 No.6. (Apologies for my copy having a bit missing from the cover.)

An important issue as it saw Mike Noble's arrival to TV21, taking over the art duties on Fireball XL5...

On the back page, The Daleks were proving to be more devious and cunning than they'd be portrayed in some of their TV appearances. Artwork by Richard Jennings...

Sparky was also on issue No.6 that week. Cover by Ron Spencer. My apologies if anyone is offended by the strip. Presented as it was in different times. Thankfully things have moved on since.

The centre pages featured another adventure with Dreamy Dave and Dozy Dora with artwork by George Ramsbottom. (Thanks to Ray Moore for that info.) One of the weirdest things about this strip was that every week the sleepy siblings shared the same dream! 

On the back page, another nice Moonsters strip by Bill Ritchie...

Just a few examples of the wide variety of strips from the many British comics that were available 50 years ago. It was a great time to be a child!