Shiver and Shake Annual 1986

Today I thought I’d share a few pages from the 1986 Shiver and Shake annual. Other than being the last S+S annual to hit the shelves, there’s nothing particularly significant about it. But I thought I’d share some pages because it is simply a fantastic and beautiful comic, really showcasing the talent of the day. Artists inside included Martin Baxendale, Tom Paterson, Terry Bave, Sid Burgon, Jack Edward Oliver — I could go on.

The full colour pages were also stunning, and among the best full colour I’ve ever seen in a Fleetway comic. Here are the front and rear endpapers, illustrated by Roy Mitchell who signed his pages as ‘Mitch’. 

For a comic from 1986, quite a few pages were printed in full colour. For their £2.50, readers were given 96 pages (counting the covers), 16 of which were in full colour. A good number more had either blue or red ink.

One of the more bizarre inside pages was this Jumbo Jesters page, featuring various photos of an elephant — elephants of course being the ‘Shake’ part of the comic. I have so many questions. Is it a real elephant? Where did they get a real elephant? How did they get a real elephant on a bus?

Another good page is this Desert Fox puzzle board game. Elsewhere in the book the Desert Fox strip is illustrated by Terry Bave, but this spread is instead by Jack Edward Oliver.

Trevor Metcalfe also had a few pages. Here’s a nice Ghoul Getters Ltd strip. Metcalfe was an expert at motion - just look at the slamming doors or the man spinning around at top speed! It makes me dizzy just looking…

As I said, there’s no shortage of great pages to share and I could easily go on, but I’ll wrap things up with this Lolly Pop strip by Sid Burgon. The Fleetway annuals from this time are relatively common and usually pretty cheap, so I would definitely recommend picking them up if you come across any.

Smash and Odhams - Leo Baxendale Hands Over The Reins

Time to take a look at one of the absolute best comics the United Kingdom has ever produced - Smash. When Smash launched back in 1966, top artist Leo Baxendale was already overworked thanks to its sister comic Wham, which he was essentially illustrated cover to cover. 

Ok I exaggerate, but despite the workload he still managed to draw the front covers for first three issues of Smash (I shared a few pages from issue three here), all of which promoted the free gifts given away to help get the comic off its feet. Issue one came with a "Big Bang" carboard gun (quite a fun and somewhat common idea for a gift, but more on that here) and issue three had a "Phantom Fighter Jet". To be honest, I'm not quite sure what issue two had. I've pulled the scan of the front cover below from elsewhere and as you can see it says "TOP SECRET", but based on the clues it looks like a hopping cardboard frog. Fun!

Anyway, back on topic. After the gifts ran out, Baxendale pulled out a bright and exciting single panel featuring his character The Man From B.U.N.G.L.E. for issue four. The character is of course a silly parody of spy show The Man From UNCLE. However, he would only ever draw two of these covers for issues four and five, before handing over the reins. Below is the absolutely stunning front cover of issue five, and what Baxendale dubs among his last "official" work for Odhams. More on that in just a moment.

I can only imagine how seeing this front cover on the shelves in 1966 must have felt. As much as I love the Beano and Dandy, covers like these must have made them look dated in comparison. It couldn't be much different to how they made other comics look old fashioned when they hit the shelves in the 30s!

When issue six was published the following week, Baxendale's signature was not to be seen. Instead, I think it was the fabulously talented Ron Spencer who took over the immense task of filling his shoes. And credit where credit is due, he did a fantastic job. Below is the cover of issue six.

"

In his 1978 autobiography A Very Funny Business, Baxendale talks about these few Smash front covers. Rather than reword or summarise, I'll just let him do the talking: 

"While I was drawing all these features for Fleetway comics, I was producing a massive amount of 'undercover' work for Odhams. My last 'official' work for Odhams was the Eagle Eye episode in Wham no. 96, for 16 April 1966 (a lovely drawing). Wham's sister comic Smash had started on 6 February 1966. After drawing the first three special 'free gift' front covers for Smash, I created Man from Bungle as the permanent cover feature -- in an attractive big single-picture format. I only drew two of these, before handing over to somebody else. My Grimly Feendish character in Eagle Eye had proved very popular, so he was given a page of his own in Smash. I drew the first nine Grimly Feendish pages very rapidly, using a simplified variation of my normal drawing style. I gave Grimly some daft little subsidiary characters. This was an attractive strip, and was printed in full colour on the back cover of Smash. I also created Bad Penny (A Minnie-the-Minx-type character) as a double-page spread for Smash. These sets (along with the Eagle Eye episode for 16 April) were the last 'official' pages I drew for Odhams.

"I was by now in full spate for Fleetway. But I was reluctant to give up the lucrative Odhams market. Their rates of pay channelled large quantities of pages to Odhams via Mike Brown, a cartoon-film animator. I pencilled and Mike inked them in. One series we did in this manner was the Eagle Eye adventure which ran from 30 July to 7 September 1966. We turned out larger numbers of Grimly Feendish pages and Bad Penny sets in this way."

A Very Funny Business is a must-read for any
fan of British comics.

So for any young Smash fans who missed Baxendale's work once his stunning front covers ceased, all they had to do was flip over to the back page. Here are the Grimly Feendish strips for issues five and six respectively.

From Smash #5.

From Smash #6.

And finally, a quick look at Smash number 9. I'll show the front cover too, because Spencer has done a stunning job, but it's the back cover that is of real interest for this post. As Baxendale mentioned in the quote above, he drew nine Grimly Feendish pages "very rapidly". As such, that would make this back page his very last "official" work for Odhams and the wonderful Power comics.

Scrunge or Scrunch? The Many Sounds Of Faceache

Following on from the Ken Reid post the other day, here's an interesting piece of comic history that Fleetway editor Dez Skinn shared to Facebook recently. It's a letter from Ken to Buster editor Len Wenn, in which he complains that somebody has been changing Faceache's sound effect from 'scrunch' to 'scrunge' when he changes his face.

Here's what Dez wrote about it online:

"Here's something for anybody who read British comics in the 1970s... specifically Faceache in Buster. I've just unearthed a letter from writer/artist Ken Reid to editor Len Wenn complaining that somebody in the office changed his sound effect "scrunch" to "scrunge" every week. Now I can confess, 'twas I, as Len's number two - being responsible for everything beyond the scripts, which he was in charge of.

"And I must admit, while I still think scrunge sounds better, scrunch was the more appropriate term. Sorry, Ken."

Interestingly though, 'scrunch' wasn't even the original term! When Faceache first appeared in Jet comic in May 1971, the first strip had him 'twang' and 'boyn-ng'. 

Incidentally, 'scrunch' did appear later on, from issue #21, but for much of Jet's run it was actually the word 'squoylp' that appeared to be the sound effect of choice.

The very first
'scrunch', from Jet #21.

 

From the one and only Jet annual, 1973.

I don't have my 70's Buster's to hand, but based  on this and Ken's letter, 'scrunge' must have taken over after Jet merged into Buster in October 1971, after just 31 issues. This would of course be when Dez got his hands on the strip, and although Ken is of course a comic genius I think that just for once he may be wrong here - in my opinion 'scrunge' is the funnier word!

For those interested, I actually shared all of Faceache's appearances in Jet on this blog a few years ago, spread over three posts. Part one can be found here.

Ken Reid's First Fudge The Elf Book (1939)

The owner of a local bookshop gave me this for free (yep, free!) last week - a copy of the very first Fudge the Elf book by the wonderful Ken Reid. This book, titled The Adventures of Fudge, came out in 1939 when Ken was just 20 years old. He would eventually publish seven Fudge books, the last of which came out in 1951. 

Fudge had started life as a strip in the Manchester Evening News on 7th April 1938, running until 1962 when Ken paused the strip after falling ill. He had been due to return, but said that during his illness he was approached by agents from Odhams who offered him £30 a page (12 panels), on the condition of exclusivity. At the same time, DC Thomson paid £15 a page. "Anybody would have changed over," he later said.

This first book cost 2/6 and featured all new material, consisting of a 21 chapter story (128 pages minus the covers) written and illustrated by Ken. This was different to the the later Fudge books, which all featured compilations of strips from the newspaper, edited down and occasionally with new illustrations. In a 1979 interview, Ken said the new illustrations came about as some of the original artwork had been lost:

"I remember I had to redraw certain illustrations for this book, for quite a few of the original frames had been lost. I drew the replacements while still in the army, stationed at Bristol. I had to stop behind at night and work on the book while the rest of the men went out after duties. This is why some readers may detect a difference in style around the middle of the book."

A young Ken Reid
signing copies of
the first Fudge book
for fans.

The 1939 book had a good number of original illustrations throughout including plenty of full-page panels, including this full-colour panel at the front of the book.

There's no doubt Ken was a strong illustrator even by the age of 20, but he wasn't yet the artist he was to later become. Regardless, it's nice to see this early work of such a distinctive and talented artist.

Of course these days we might associate Ken more with his work for DC Thomson and Odhams, even Ken himself considered Jonah to be what he was best known for. But it's clear that Fudge was well loved by many and held a special place in his heart. When he passed away in 1987, his obituary in the Manchester Evening News was headlined "Father of Fudge dies", and the character was even placed on a plaque on his gravestone.

Image from fudge-the-elf.com

Whizzer and Chips - From The Drawing Board To The Final Product

Here's an interesting glimpse into the production process of comics from back in the days before computers. This piece shows how Whizzer and Chips issue dated 25th September 1982 made it from the art stage to the final product. Before this step, of course, the lettering would have been added on to the strip, either written onto the board itself or more likely glued on top.

These images were shared by Phil-Comics so I'll let his explanation do the talking.

"On a recent visit to a collector's house he mentioned that back in 1982/83 (aged 23/24), he was such a fan of the IPC comics that he got into some dialogue with IPC and was able to visit Kings Reach Tower, on the south bank of the Thames, the home of IPC comics, several times and met some of the editors including David Hunt (Eagle), Steve MacManus (2000AD), Ian Vosper (Roy of the Rovers), plus group editor Barrie Tomlinson. He told us he became interested in the comics when he bought the first issue of Whizzer and Chips in 1969 (aged 10), being intrigued by the “2 comics in 1” format, so the highlight of his IPC visits was when he went to the Whizzer and Chips office and was presented with a front cover of Whizzer and Chips by the editor Bob Paynter.

"The production process was to scan the original artwork and to print it at a reduced size of the actual comic. The printed scan of the original artwork was stuck manually onto white board, in this example the cover, where a date of issue and reader cover joke were also stuck on, plus the copyright line at the bottom. The transparent sheet was then applied over the artwork and colours applied. As a point of interest, we thought we'd message Barrie Tomlinson, on Twitter, who added the following when we sent him a few pics of the cover "That looks like a thing which was sent to the printers. Editorial was doing the colour separations so it was cheaper at the printers. The printer would use the black and white outline cover and then strip in the various colours shown on the overlay."

Phil said this piece will be up for sale on his ebay page soon.

Buster Crosses The Channel

Here's a little piece of comic history that shows there's always more to learn - well for me at least anyway! Buster comic, it seems, was not confined to the English language, but Norway, Finland and Sweden also had their own version. The first issue (seen on the left of the image above) came out in Sweden on 5th January 1967. Norway got its own edition in 1972 and Finland in 1978.

Buster UK (left) and the first Swedish Buster,
both from the first week of 1967.

Here I've put the first issue of Buster next to the British edition from that same week (dated 7th January 1967), and to me the difference is shocking. The Swedish version looks brighter and more modern than its British counterpart. I think it also has a slight feel of an American comic book about it too, with that big block of text at the bottom.

The first issue contained reprints from the British Buster, as well as some original Swedish material. Alongside Mighty McGinty on the front cover (illustrated by Carlos Cruz and here renamed to Dynamit Charlie), it included Buster's Dairy (as Buster's Dagbok) printed on the back cover in red ink, and Our Great Grandpa, illustrated by Trevor Metcalfe. In the UK, Our Great Grandpa only ran for a few months from 5th June to 25th September 1965, but as well as being reprinted here it also had a run in Valiant.

I'm also told that at some point a few D.C. Thomson characters were printed in it as well, including Kid Cox and Kamikaze Kid. That's probably because this Swedish version wasn't actually published by Fleetway, but first by Centerförlaget (1967-1970), then Semic Press (1970 - 1997), and finally by Egmont (1997 - 2005).

The comic was already looking different just a year in.

It started out as a weekly, 32-page comic, but by 1968 the comic became a fortnightly affair and gradually became more focused on sports strips, with even Buster himself becoming a more sporty looking kid. So when the comic launched in Finland in 1978, it was essentially a sports comic entirely with many reprints now coming from Tiger. The cover of the first issue showed Billy's Boots, Nipper, Hot Shot Hamish and Typhoon Tracy. In this version they were known as Eki Eskelinen from Harjumäen sisu, Edward Engmark, Benny Kultajalka and Hot-Shot Hamish was rebranded as Super-Mac. Also here you can see just how much sportier they made Buster, looking more like the son of Roy Race than of Andy Capp!

Like the British edition, there was also a pocket library and a special, this being a yearly 'Sports Special'. I'm not yet sure how long the specials ran for, but the earliest I've seen is 1974, and the latest is 1985.

A few of the earlier Sport Special
magazines.

In Finland, Buster continued until the 1980s, and in Norway the initial run was from 1972 - 1977, followed by a second run from 1984 - 1994. What is most interesting though, is that the Swedish edition actually outlived its British counterpart, carrying on until 2005!

The last issue of Buster, from 2005.

I should just add at this point I don't actually own any copies of Buster not printed in English, so my thanks to those in The Mighty World of British Comics group on Facebook for help with this post. All other information came from me scouring countless auctions past and present, none of which were written in english, of course.

I'm also working on a number of other posts for this blog. I've graduated uni now so life is (supposedly) a little less chaotic, so I'm hoping to be able to post a bit more regularly. Stay tuned!