Creating OiNK

ROGER & WiLLY: TRUE ORiGiNALS

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Weedy Willy and Roger Rental, He’s Completely Mental are two of my most fondly remembered OiNK characters. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. We’re all familiar with their strips and art styles; Mike Green for Willy and Ian Knox for Roger. But that wasn’t always the plan.

Graham Exton went to university with one of OiNK’s three creator/editors, Mark Rodgers and I’ve previously shown the Germs comic they produced as part of their course. Graham was very heavily involved in OiNK in the early days, helping create characters, strips and the overall sense of humour as the dummy issue was put together in 1984 for IPC Magazines, the contents of which would be used for the Preview Issue two years later. Graham would contribute heavily to the early issues of the regular comic before moving to live in the Bahamas, which reduced his comics work somewhat. (Hey, it was the 80s, before the internet so seamlessly brought us all together no matter how far apart we were to adore each other’s cats.)

Graham created The Plops amongst others, including the aforementioned Roger and Willy. Not only did he create these two icons of OiNK, he also drew their strips when cartoonists were still being assembled. Ultimately, he’d be one of the comic’s main writers when it launched, for these two characters and plenty more. For OiNK’s 40th anniversary Graham has given me his kind permission to show pig pals those early, unpublished strips from the days when OiNK was first being put together. Some are still in their unfinished pencilled state, while a few of the Willy strips are complete and inked.

You’ll notice quite a difference between these and the characters we were eventually introduced to. Weedy Willy looks more like a regular boy, it’s his words and actions that give us the information (and the gags) on how weak and cowardly he is. Roger isn’t even called Roger! Barmy Barney was the precursor to Mr. Rental. As Graham explained to me, “I think it was Mark’s decision to use Mike Green’s weedy, spindly style for Willy rather than my more Baxendale-ish one. Similarly, Ian’s wacky style seemed better suited to the character [of Roger].”

The name Stuart Fellows also pops up in one strip, a name unfamiliar to me. “Stuart is an old pal from the Leeds days,” says Graham. “I expect he chipped in for that story. Most of our mates contributed ideas and scripts. You’ll see Keith Forrest’s name on Roger Rental stories, for example.”

Some of these early ideas of Graham’s would make it into OiNK in his scripts for Mike. A strip about Mandy’s recently deceased cat would be reworked and included in the Preview Issue and the introduction of Flash the dog, who now looked like it wouldn’t be too long until he joined Mandy’s cat, was used in the first regular issue. “The dog was named after a friend’s (school friend Rob) mangy mutt. Mike’s version was certainly weedier than mine, which is sort of generic IPC/Baxendale style.“

This was followed up in #2 with a reworking of a photography story. You can see Graham’s original completed strip and the full page from OiNK below to compare.

Graham would continue to contribute to OiNK via fax but less often, ultimately stopping altogether. “I continued to write Sweeny [Toddler for Whizzer and Chips] in South Andros, but dropped all the others on account of teaching,” he says. “Gums was the last to go. (I loved writing Gums. Such a narcissist prat!)” On that we can agree, I love that stupid ol’ shark!

“I continued to write and draw and started Tatertown when I was between jobs in Freeport, Grand Bahamas,” Graham continues. “That really improved my art, and I learned how to use Photoshop to colour the strips. Now I’m teaching comics colouring in my computer classes! One of my tenth grade girls is completely into it and coloured one of my Sweeny newspaper strips that never got published.”

Thanks so much to Graham for all of the great information and of course these original scans. I’ve always said I’d love to see the Creating OiNK section of the blog expand now that the full real time read through is complete, so this insight into the creation of these characters and their misadventures is gratefully received. I hope you all enjoyed it too, may there by many more to come.

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SHAKESPEARE COMiC: KEV F KiCKSTARTER CAMPAiGN

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Kev F Sutherland contributed so many great gags to the second half of OiNK’s run. Hugely prolific, he even had his name attached to ten pages of the final issue! His Meanwhile… series was a personal favourite of mine and, alongside such brilliant contributions as the pun-packed March of the Killer Breakfasts and the hilarious Three Scientists, OiNK kickstarted his comics career which has spanned titles as varied as Beano, Red Dwarf Smegazine and Ghost Rider 2099! Now, he’s kickstarting something else. (See what I did there?)

Kev has released five Shakespeare graphic novels in recent years and now he’s raising funds to publish the first ever Shakespeare Comic! This will contain a selection of strips from the graphic novels already out in the wild, as well as two brand new strips from upcoming books based on Twelfth Night and King Lear, the former changed into a monster movie called Twelfth Thing… you get the drift.

Those reprints aren’t just straight copies either. Any that were originally printed in black and white have now received a full coating of colour, and they’re resized. Kev explains this means each page of the comic will contain the same amount of strip as two from the books. Bargain. Seeing as how his books were mainly only available from him directly at cons, festivals and his school art masterclasses, this is a great way for fans far and wide to get hold of them.

The 32-page full-colour comic also comes with a large poster of Shakespeare’s Britain. Not only does this contain ol’ William’s characters in the places where their stories are set, Kev is also giving readers the chance to have their caricature drawn on the map where they live! Sounds good, doesn’t it?

£10 will bag you the comic itself, signed by Kev, and the poster. The next level up is the one where your face could be drawn (in a very Kev F way, obviously) on the map and that’ll cost £30. Finally, there’s a £60 option for anyone who’d like their company name and logo (or, again, their caricature) on the map poster.

Kev only needs £250 to reach his goal and at the time of writing this, just a few hours after it was launched, he’s already at £218. Oh, no, hang on, wait… £248! That’s me on the map, then. Obviously it’s going to reach its target (and then some) so it’s guaranteed to be published and I’ve a feeling you’ll want to bag a copy of this one for yourself. Whether you’re familiar with the works of Shakespeare or not, this is by one of OiNK’s most consistently funny cartoonists so you know it’ll be a great laugh either way!

Head on over to the Kickstarter campaign before 12:41 on the afternoon of Saturday 13th June 2026 to grab yourself a copy. I’ll be telling everyone all about it right here on the OiNK Blog when it arrives, so you won’t want to be left feeling you missed out!

WELL WOULD YOU LOOK AT THIS: I was just about to hit ‘Publish’ on this post and the Shakespeare Comic has hit its goal! Wonderful news!

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 42

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SATURDAY 13th MAY 1989

Lee Sullivan’s cover for this week’s Transformers and Visionaries combines the issue’s two robotic strips in one striking image rather than using a split screen, while Brian Williamson and Nick Abadzis provide us with my favourite of the four Real Ghostbusters in a solo role.

Sky Lynx was probably my favourite character from the cartoon, simply because he loved himself so much yet was so utterly charming and polite as he fawned. He doesn’t feature in any action this week, instead stealthily stalking Dreadwind, but it still made for an exciting cover even if Dogfight was in a different story. The female warriors are still portrayed poorly in unnecessarily scant clothing but at least they have a biting sense of humour when confronted by typical male arrogance.

At the time of writing this blog post one of The Real Ghostbusters strips feels rather relevant. All those fossil fuels we still continue to dig up are full of the haunted spirits of the creatures they come from. However, in a comic that has already had strong environmental stories, the solution is very strange. A deal is struck with the oil diggers that they’ll not harm the ghosts if the spirits ensure the well never runs dry. Not exactly sending the right message there, something the comic was usually very good at.

That wonderful Starscream tale ends in a surprisingly sad way as the maniacal not-quite-dead Decepticon pleads for release but two Nebulans slaughter him regardless. Death’s Head #7 continues to entertain with the funniest strip of his run and last week’s Doctor Who Magazine remains too. I’ve been informed it’s an Ice Warriors article, not strip, so in a comics checklist there’s no info on the actual comic story. Thundercats continues to limp on, again playing out like the weekly Ghostbusters comic but released only a fraction as often and already containing reprints. At least there was a new freebie to start collecting this month.

As promised, I’ve finally got a new contemporary comics advert to share with you. Now, as a huge fan of the cartoon and his humour strip in The Real Ghostbusters, you’d think I’d have been all over a Beano-esque humour comic with Slimer as the star, wouldn’t you? If you’re unaware of the comic in question, here’s a proper introduction to It’s Wicked after the teaser back in week 34.

At the time OiNK was still fresh in my mind, a comic that spoofed what it deemed to be the tired and safe comics of old. OiNK was a breath of fresh air, so It’s Wicked felt like a step backwards to me. To this 11-year-old it was using a new and exciting character to churn out the same old jokes that had originally put me off humour comics.

Plus, there’s the very obvious way It’s Wicked was a Marvel UK rip-off of Beano and The Dandy etc. Have a look at the cover of any issue and it just screams “DC Thomson could sue us for this”, from every part of its layout right down to the colours used on the logo! We wanted originality and using Slimer in this way felt cheap and nothing more than a ploy to sell us something pretty tacky. It’s Wicked would last for only 17 weekly issues and I never picked up a single one, and never felt like I was missing out. Did you try it? Was it as horrific as I assumed?

Oh dear, that was rather downbeat for the OiNK Blog, wasn’t it? Well, Marvel UK’s range did have its ups and downs, thankfully they weighed heavily towards the former. In fact, next week my own two comics have a big celebratory issue and the return of a favourite Cybertronian of mine. See you back here in seven, then.

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OiNK Pre-Release

GERMS: iNFECTiOUS STY-LE

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This post is being written for OiNK’s Pre-Release section of the blog, and this is about as pre-release as you can get! We’re going right back to 1978, in fact. Back to OiNK co-creator and co-editor Mark Rodgers and writer Graham Exton’s university years and a special project they created, certain parts of which may be of particular interest to you pig pals out there.

“The Literature Degree that Mark and I were studying for at Leeds Uni had a publishing module, so we figured it would be fun to do a comic,” Graham tells me. That comic was Germs, the title an anagram of their initials (Graham’s middle name is Stafford). Looking back, it’s a fun little insight into the developing talents of both before they got their breaks in the comics industry, and you can read the whole thing in this post thanks to Graham.

Graham is very honest about what he thinks of the end result. “We did everything wrong, like drawing a whole page on A4 paper (not Bristol Board), not using scripts, lousy lettering, and cramming in so many pages we couldn’t break even when we sold it on campus,” he says. “Mark’s mum came to our rescue by charging 50p a copy to each customer at the British Legion she ran, then taking them back when they were ‘finished with’. She was brill, Our Shirl.”

Shirl wasn’t the only parent to help out. “My mum did the typing for the contents page on her fancy word processing computer,” recalls Graham. “Probably Ventura or some such. She had to figure it out herself as no one knew what a word processor was. It was the most professional part of the comic! So, like Ian Dury’s Clever Bastards we had help from our mums. We learned a lot about publishing, which was great for Mark in particular.”

Eight years before OiNK hit shelves (six years before the team completed their dummy issue for the publishers as a proof of concept), there are hints within Germs of what was to come when they’d once again have the same level of creative freedom. While reading it you can tell that unique OiNK humour is in there, albeit in an early guise. There are plenty of spoofs, very random moments, strips referring to themselves as comic strips, even the way some of the titles are drawn feels familiar.

Mark and Graham were learning their craft, a craft they would both excel at, culminating in the comic we all love so much to this day

However, that’s not all. There are a few actual precursors to specific OiNK strips in here. The Mad Monk from #28 actually appears here in pretty much the same form, albeit drawn by Graham instead of Davey Jones. There’s also The Jolly Wedding, another one by Graham that would transform into a smaller three-panel strip drawn by the legendary Tom Paterson in The OiNK! Book 1988.

There are more too. “I liked Mark’s Police Vet strip [which would be developed further for the first book and #64], which involved getting a stuck Rhino out of a tree by chucking a brick at it,”says Graham. “Mark liked my Mad Monk strip, and had Davey Jones illustrate it for OiNK. Mark may have plundered a few others. There was one about a beach encounter where someone got hugged to death [turned into a page drawn by Lew Stringer in OiNK]. You can tell Mark and I grew up in the 60’s, when Bax and Ken Reid were at their wackiest and most violent.”

Yes, it’s rough around the edges but Germs should be seen in the context of when it was created, as Mark and Graham were learning their craft, a craft they would both excel at, culminating in the comic we all love so much to this day. There are some little treasures here though. Personally, I giggled at the array of different copyright notices, the depiction of an “Asst. Director”, all of the brill Bermuda ‘Narna (“Yoo hoo”) and the rendition of the 1812 Overture!

Dig in and pig out, pig pals.

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THE MiGHTY MARVEL CHECKLiST: WEEK 41

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SATURDAY 6th MAY 1989

A rather simple Transformers and Visionaries cover by Jez Hall in comparison to the comic’s usual high calibre of front pages belies another excellent issue inside, while our characters’ dialogue on Dave Elliott’s cover for The Real Ghostbusters doesn’t make much sense given the image, which has been pointed out to me is a spoof of a Fantastic Four cover. This still doesn’t make the speech make sense and who out of this comic’s young audience would know an obscure FF cover? Weird choices abound.

In the American Transformers story the Mecannibals may have looked silly when we first met them but by now they were already among the best original creations the comic ever had. Pure evil with a comedic slant, I loved them! In the UK story the animated corpse of Starscream is the real highlight of the issue. Not confirming whether he’s actually living or dead, this had me glued to the story as a kid! Check out the link below to see Andrew Wildman’s depiction of him including some brilliant in-jokes.

In our other comic, main story Snack Attack had no dialogue whatsoever, playing out like a very funny silent comedy. A bold move for the strip that took up the most space in the issue. Spengler’s Spirit Guide tied in with this week’s prose story and included a spoof history of horror comics, while the Dead True series detailed a spooky urban myth tale centering around jealousy. Another great read all round.

Nice to see Visionaries actually getting a mention this week. In fact, Transformers gets a good chunk of the checklist to detail all of its strips beyond just credits for once. While the Mecannibals were a great addition to the story, the all-female warriors were sadly depicted as cringingly poorly as you can imagine. A bit of a spoiler about the true nature of Starscream there too! Also, you’ve just got to love some of the strip names the Real Ghostbusters team came up with.

Action Force Monthly and Death’s Head are the same issues as last time and if you haven’t checked out the latter before then you simply must read the highlights in the review from the comic’s real time read through, link further below. Such a funny story, full of slapstick. The big issue of the week was the latest Doctor Who Magazine, although I’m not sure if The Ice Warriors were the stars of the strip or a written article.

I’ve had the pleasure of reading some of the classic issues of the magazine for the blog and their rather unique output while the show was in its wilderness years. You can check out the latest of these in the Death’s Head section of the blog, an issue he made a tiny cameo in a few years after his comic ended. That’s us for now. Next time, we’ll finally get our next contemporary comics advert. It’s for a comic that really didn’t appeal to young me despite it starring a favourite cartoon and comics character. You can see what it was in just seven days.

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