It was an exciting week as a Transformers reader this week in 1989, which John Stokes’ cover sums up perfectly. Meanwhile, the perfect pairing of Andy Lanning and Dave Harwood worked their funny magic with The Real Ghostbusters.
My friends who were long-time Transformers readers weren’t too enamoured with the new three-story format in the newly-retitled Transformers and Visionaries. We now had a pair of five-or-six-page Transformers stories (and the same size of back up) every week but they preferred the previous 11-page strip and found it hard to adjust. I was used to Fleetway’s action comics though, so this felt like an upgrade over the previous format, even if it took a while before the UK strips were written for the new format.
Visionaries was yet another reprint of the origin tale (to give the American G.I. Joe comic time to get ahead again) but that didn’t dampen things for me as a teen. Although, now I think a reprint of an early G.I. Joe from years before may have been better, as many readers would’ve read this back up strip just the previous Christmas! As a whole it all felt fresh, new and exciting though, and would lead to what would eventually become my favourite period of time with the comic. It also kicked things off with the superbly titled, “Guess Who the Mecannibals Are Having for Dinner?” Great fun.
Obviously, this issue was going to take the top spot on the checklist. It was a mammoth change to such a long-running comic. Yes, it was to save money down the road amid rising production costs. By changing to this format they could churn out the British strips in black and white and run some reprints while still having new strips for the readers, but young me wasn’t aware of all of that and it deserved this fanfare regardless.
Alongside The Real Ghostbusters are the same editions of Marvel UK’s monthly Action Force and Thundercats as last week but we did have some brand spanking new comics adverts. Cartoon Time was essentially the Flinstones and Friends comic from earlier checklists in all but name. That had made it to 24 issues before cancellation and was basically rebranded as Cartoon Time, each issue’s main title relating to a different Hanna Barbera character with the “Cartoon Time” banner off to the side or top.
It certainly proved popular, running for 40 fortnightly issues before turning monthly. This would normally signal the beginning of the end for a comic but Cartoon Time continued for another 38 monthly issues after that, so fair play. Our other advert is for a Doctor Who graphic novel collecting a strip from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, starring Colin Baker’sSixth Doctor and Frobisher, his penguin companion. No, really.
In reality (well, you know what I mean) Frobisher could take on any form but for some reason preferred to be a talking penguin, and he and the Doctor found themselves on a Death Ship falling off the edge of the universe. The 80s TV show couldn’t have brought this to the screen! It sounds wonderfully inventive and I’m aware it stands in high regard with fans even today.
There are new issues of some top Marvel UK monthlies in next week’s checklist and a whole host of Spring Specials in the ads to jog your memories. See you then!
Dave Huxley may have only contributed to three issues of OiNK but that didn’t stop the Crickey! fanzine from asking him to talk about the comic back in 2008. Dedicated to the nostalgia of classic British comics, Crikey! kicked off as a quarterly before it quickly became bi-monthy, eventually added more colour and ended up with a proper distribution deal before distributors Borders collapsed, taking the magazine with it.
I’ll admit this is the only issue I’ve read and that’s because I saw the OiNK logo on it while browsing eBay, and the corresponding article is one of the main highlights of the issue. It isn’t an interview, it’s actually written by Dave himself and at times it can be wonderfully insightful. Sadly, it kicks off with the Viz comparison, despite that comic not being mainstream at the time nor an influence on the OiNK creative team. And, Tom Thug a “Viz-like character”?
Interestingly, Dave wasn’t hired by the team to create his first piece, the Mona Lisow (the name given to it by the editors), instead he sent it in unsolicited and they saw in him a potential part of the team. He returned in #43, my favourite regular issue and the second Christmas edition with The Hamformers and there’s a funny story included here about his kids appearing on that one.
Dave says he had more ideas to come after his third and final piece, The Statue of Piggery in #55 but never had the chance to develop them due to OiNK’s cancellation. Although, since his first page appeared in #36 and OiNK lasted until its 68th issue I wish he’d developed them a bit quicker! While it’s an interesting article, unfortunately there’s a glaring error included.
I’m not talking about some of the grammatical mistakes or even the misspelling of Mark Rodgers’ name. While Crikey! had a habit of including factual errors in its articles in its early issues, when someone who worked on a comic (albeit briefly) is the guest writer I suppose you’d expect it to be accurate. Unfortunately, the fanzine’s lack of fact-checking is clear when Dave spins the tale of why OiNK ended up cancelled.
Yes, the Janice and John strip did lead to a complaint being lodged with the Press Council and W.H.Smith (R.I.P.) did top-shelf it, but that strip was published right back at the beginning, in #7. It wasn’t the reason the comic was cancelled nearly two-and-a-half-years later! That myth of the complaint bringing about the end of OiNK did circulate at one time though, so perhaps we shouldn’t be too harsh on Dave either.
However, the fact remains that it’s just not true. I’ve covered the evolution and eventual cancellation of OiNK in-depth throughout its real-time read through. Put basically, when Fleetway took over all of IPC’s comics they placed them into sales groups and if the combined sales of each group wasn’t good enough they’d all be cancelled. But OiNK survived its group’s culling; its sales were impressive to IPC (about 100,000 per issue) but Fleetway wanted more. The publisher changing it to a weekly and then to a larger monthly were well-meaning changes but ultimately they are what led to a decrease in sales, long after the complaint shenanigans.
Also, I was aware of Dan Dare and knew who Mary Whitehouse was, so they were hardly included for mature readers.
Despite these errors it’s still nice to read how OiNK was held in such high regard by one of its contributors many years later, even when he only had a very limited amount of work for it. While it doesn’t apply to OiNK, I do agree with Dave’s final sentiment. It’s something that’s still very much prevalent today.
While we’re here I spotted a few little moments elsewhere in this issue that might be of particular interest to OiNK Blog readers. In an article about Warrior comic V for Vendetta is included (although I think the writer has twisted the story to suit his own politics) along with some of David Lloyd’s artwork. This was between 1982 and 1985, the same time David was producing the gorgeous artwork for the first two Knight Rider Annuals that have featured on the blog.
In a quick look at the short-lived Thunder we have brief mentions of Dusty Binns and The Terrible Trail to Tolmec, drawn by Ring Raiders’Geoff Campion (also misspelled) and Wildcat’sMassimo Belardinelli respectively, and both artists also contributed to licenced anthology horror comic Super Naturals at different stages.
Elsewhere, there are a few articles about girls’ comics, one of which asks why girls enjoyed them so much? It seems to have been too much to ask that Crikey! hire a woman to answer the question, though. Gil Page, who was still working for Egmont at the time spends much of an article about classic comics bitching about the modern market, which is a bit surprising given his employer. Unfortunately, there’s quite a bit of this sort of thing throughout, which dampens the reading experience. For example, an otherwise interesting article about Commando loses me the moment the writer starts to complain about today’s “politically correct world”. Sigh.
This has been a curious little read. I’ve heard a lot of good things about later issues, especially when other comics professionals came in to write about their work and I can’t fault the ambition of the comics fans who put this together in the first place. While this particular issue hasn’t really been for me, it’s always good to see OiNK get some love long after it was gone.
This week’s Marvel UK cover for The Real Ghostbusters by Brian Williamson and Dave Harwood was overshadowed by the strap line for me. Also, at the time I didn’t realise this week’s Transformers and Action Force cover was something of a big deal.
That’s because it was drawn by John Stokes (Doctor Who, Star Wars, The Invisibles), making his first return to the weekly in three years. The story was great, focusing on the mental toll of being the human part of a Head Master, while the big changes coming next week were hyped with a full-page Next Issue promo. However, it contained no text or details, just three comics panels. The editorial made a big deal about Visionaries returning without mentioning it’d be a reprint. How very on brand after last week’s checklist post (link below).
So yes, that Atari ST competition in The Real Ghostbusters really takes me back. I always loved the look of that machine and was in awe of how a friend used his to produce incredible music, albeit a few years after this, so I never entered at the time. Strip-wise, after contradicting the cartoon last week the comic now contradicts itself by featuring Father Time, forgetting he’d already appeared in a completely different guise in an earlier issue. It was still fun though, as always. On to the checklist.
Death’s Head remains because let’s face it we all should’ve bought every single issue, it was that good and deserved more success. There are also a few details for you there about the sheer amount of stories The Real Ghostbusters comic could include in its 24 pages every week, while Transformers’ checklist entry does little to sell its fantastic, human story beyond a basic action piece. But hey, they had to get the kids interested so we won’t hold that against them.
Action Force Monthly was Marvel UK’s attempt to repackage their content back to the States (as ‘G.I. Joe The European Missions‘), so they had a forgivable excuse for including some reprints. Some of the regular features from the ol’ weekly a couple of years previous were also making their way back into the comic, giving it a feeling of being in rude health. Such a shame in five short months it would just… stop! But those UK stories were superb, the few that I’ve read anyway.
A short one this week but the adverts return in seven days, featuring a dog, a cat and a penguin! You’ll see what that’s all about in week 37 of The Mighty Marvel Checklist.
OiNK’sDavy Francis (Cowpat County, Greedy Gorb, Doctor Madstarkraving) and I both live in Belfast and I’ve been lucky enough to meet up with him on a few occasions now, whether that’s over a coffee or a Greggs. Always a great laugh, on one of those days he very generously sent me home with a heavy shoebox full of a random selection of magazines which Davy or friends of his had contributed various comic strips to.
Instantly I thought this would make for a great post on the OiNK Blog. A selection of new gags from Davy? What’s not to love, right? However, not only did I discover so much good material by him that I’d need more than one post just for those, there was also plenty from other OiNK cartoonists! So in the end there was only one solution, a series of posts about Davy’s Shoebox.
There are some publications with multiple issues and they’ll get their own instalments in this series, but I’m kicking things off with a bit of variety first and the selection of other random titles. We begin with Red Dwarf Smegazine from Fleetway. Davy appeared in two of the issues in the box including this very final issue, #9 of volume two.
Alongside articles and interviews the magazine had a selection of strips, some adapted episodes while others were new adventures for guest characters such as Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley. Lasting for 23 issues altogether, the last issue is double-length to include conclusions of all the strips and any already-written features. As such, Davy’s Cred Dwarf strip gets twice as much space as in previous issues, hence why I’ve chosen to highlight this last instalment.
Written by Steve Noble (who I can’t find any other credits for) and lettered by Woodrow Pheonix (The Sumo Family, Ecco the Dolphin, Sugar Buzz!), it’s set inside the Total Immersion Red Dwarf Videogame from the Back to Reality episode (a fan favourite), hence why the regular characters look the way they do. Here, the end of the story is all just a long walk to a Christmas pun and the final panel does sum things up somewhat, doesn’t it?
Davy wasn’t the only OiNK alumni in the pages of the Smegazine. Kev F Sutherland (Peter Porter Post Office Sorter, Rotten Rhymes, Meanwhile…) contributed his art to the Androids spoof soap opera and in the final issue a Madvertisement of sorts, Dwarf Eager, coloured by Lucy Allen. There’s something very ‘GBH’ (OiNK’s spoof mail order company) about this and Kev has certainly packed plenty into this little half-page. It’s the final strip of the magazine’s run.
Not to be confused with the clothes shop of the same name, DV8 was an independent newspaper that folded up to fit on the magazine shelves (like the previously-covered Speakeasy). Focussing on Belfast’s cultural scene it included a lot of comics gag pages and even a photo strip from the team behind the Hole in the Wall Gang. It was released monthly between 1992 and 1996. The editorial team received paramilitary threats when an issue released after the IRA ceasefire had a union flag in Irish colours on the cover. It folded soon after.
This was the first on-sale issue after a free preview. A lot of the pages contain cartoon strips from one artist and just a few pages in we’re treated to Davy’s. As you can instantly see from the very first panel this is much more adult-orientated output from Davy, although it’s still very much the same sense of humour we all grew up with in OiNK, just for a different audience.
It’s very ‘Northern Ireland’ too. I did chuckle at the “Didn’t feel a thing”! Across the way Davy’s good friend and fellow Uncle Pigg employee, Ed McHenry (Wally of the West, Igor and the Doctor, OiNK puzzle pages) gets his own space to shine and right in the middle are two little individual panels that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the pages of OiNK, especially the one with the sheep. Ed’s other strips are more adult but I wanted to show these off on their own because it felt like I was reading new OiNK material.
The final publication I want to pull from this time is in a similar format, at least physically.
Created by several cartoonists fed up of how they were being treated by the industry, Duck Soup was another independent newspaper-like magazine that very much feels like the funnies section we used to get in newspapers, only here it’s all funnies! It’s a rather strange reading experience given the large format and the physical feel of it, while the reading experience is very much that of a comic. It’s definitely unique, that’s for sure.
It was distributed nationally but WHSmith only took it on for a six week trial then cancelled all their orders when they deemed the content unsuitable, again deciding what the rest of us were allowed to read and find funny (this was a year before they’d throw a hissy fit over OiNK). What a shame they’re no longer on the high street, eh? Sadly, this resulted in the magazine folding after six issues because, despite its popularity, without Smith’s distribution they just couldn’t break even.
Davy doesn’t actually feature in this issue of Duck Soup but some of his OiNK pals do and that’s why he’s kept it safe in this box. Up first is Ed again and on his first page Girth stood out because I recognised him from the very last issue of OiNK, published over two years later. Not only that, but upon refreshing my memory with that issue I see he was actually named Girth there too. He was a one-off in OiNK so this was a nice surprise.
Later, Ed brings us more substantial strips including Norbert Wibble Schoolboy Detective, who also appeared in DV8. It’s just plain daft and I was smirking away to myself as the captions took over more and more of each panel, then laughed when I read those final points! While the next character I want to highlight may not have gone on to appear in OiNK like Girth did, he still feels very familiar.
Jeremy Banx’s (Burp, Mr. Big Nose, Butcher Watch) Norman Spittall has a strikingly familiar appearance and in these random life moments feels somewhat like a precursor to Mr. Big Nose, although they were very much different characters. Norman got his own book and animated series called The Many Deaths of Norman Spittall in 1997, so luck definitely didn’t improve after Duck Soup! I’ll have to grab a copy of the book sometime if these examples are anything to go by.
The much-missed Tony Husband (OiNK co-creator/editor, Horace ‘Ugly Face’ Watkins, writer of too much OiNK goodness to mention) also pops up which was a lovely, somewhat emotional surprise. Tony’s work in OiNK often didn’t shy away from pointing out the wrongs of the world to its young readers and how Tony felt about certain topics, particularly those involving animals. Here, he combines this with his hatred for war. In fact, the mid-80s fear of the threat of nuclear war is at the forefront of many of the cartoons throughout this issue from many of the contributors.
It’s quite striking how similar some of this is to comments we can read online today, particularly the similarity between Frank the frog and a certain type of person found of socials. It’s also striking how this could easily have been printed today and it’d be just as relevant. That would be a depressing thought if it weren’t for Tony’s ability to make us laugh at ourselves.
The middle pages are of the same higher grade as the cover and open out into a spoof of The Sun (surely already a spoof newspaper). On the back of this are more cartoons, some of which are by Pete Dredge (Master T, Dimbo, Young Arfur in Buster) under the banner War Cry. This pull-out of sorts is packed full of such gags, bringing some levity to a time when adults weren’t as blissfully unaware of the Cold War as I was as a child.
This has been a fun start to delving into this box of treats, hasn’t it? Next time, we’ll be concentrating on the many issues of Electric Soup in it (they must’ve run out of ducks). I’d never heard of the publication before and according to the covers it’s “Scotland’s Adult Humour Comic”, so expect to move further away from the kind of stuff we’d find in OiNK. However, I’m sure it’ll still be ‘very Davy Francis’. That’ll be in a couple of months’ time.
Kicking things off for Marvel UK’s two best-selling comics are covers from Brian Williamson and Bambos Georgiou for The Real Ghostbusters and Andrew Wildman for Transformers and Action Force, the latter of which reminds me of a school trip to London in P7.
While there we had to visit Hamley’s toy store, naturally. I bought Ecto-2 while my friend Roger bought Decepticon Pretender Beast, Carnivac. For the remainder of the trip Roger kept it sealed in its box, fearful of losing anything if he opened it before we got home. I didn’t have the patience for that so I took my Ecto-2 helicopter out of its box for a closer inspection… and promptly lost the missile launcher!
Anyway, Carnivac would become a favourite character of mine later in the comic’s run when he’d team up with the Autobot survivors of the recent Time Wars and Underbase Saga storylines. Back to this week and the Ghostbusters comic has a strip inside it that fans would find somewhat confusing. On the checklist it simply states they’re at a haunted film set but that’s only half the story.
They’re actually filming the live-action movie, with them in the starring roles. That’s weird enough, but in the cartoon they’d already visited the set of the film in which the original actors were playing the roles. It was a fan favourite episode (it even contained movie footage) so, combine this with Week 32’sSpengler’s Spirit Guide and it’s clear the comic’s team weren’t researching the show their work was based on.
Despite being an excellent issue and a sequel of sorts to a strip in Doctor Who Magazine, the first appearance of Death’s Head’s fifth issue wasn’t important enough to knock the first monthly Thundercats issue off the top spot. Thundercats seems to be getting the ‘Don’t Miss’ spot more than any other comic. They were really trying to push it, weren’t they? What else were they pushing at us this week, adverts-wise? Two Spring Specials, that’s what.
First up is Droids. This wasn’t an extra edition of a regular comic, rather a one-off special importing an American strip to the UK for the first time. Droids was a cartoon Star Wars spin-off released in the States as a companion series to Ewoks, the latter of which I remember my friends watching. Toys, comics and various other merchandise were all created for what would surely be a sure-fire hit, but in the end Droids only lasted one season of 13 episodes and a special, the comic also cancelled after eight bi-monthly issues so it never got beyond this edition and some Marvel Bumper Comic appearances this side of the Atlantic.
At least Droids brought us a strip we hadn’t seen yet, our next Spring Special was another matter entirely. I remember stumbling upon this edition of the Visionaries comic by accident, buying it immediately and loving it. I’d missed out on the monthly but had devoured the annual the previous Christmas. Little did I know this Spring Special was pretty much just the fifth and final issue of the comic repackaged with minimal changes.
Even the advert was recycled from the one used to promote the first issue the previous year. Released at the same time Visionaries returned to Transformers as the back up strip (a third printing of the origin story within 12 months), this was probably why the special was released. A quick copy and paste of a whole issue and any new readers would hopefully start picking up Transformers as a result. You can check out just how similar it was to the last issue in its review, link below.
After what seemed like a bumper year for Marvel UK in 1988, a year in which we got constant news of new comics and which saw me spending a lot of my parents’ money on them, not many survived and 1989 was turning out to be a year of reprints and big changes to some of their biggest titles. More on that soon!
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