“IPC’s Youth Group is trying to change
John Sanders
the face of children’s comics with its
launch next month of a new-style,
fortnightly comic into the
eight-to-12-year-olds market.“
So began a piece in CTN, an industry magazine covering the world of magazines and comics on this day back in 1986, a month before OiNK‘s release from the sty. Comics sales had been in heavy decline for a few years with television seen as the cause, although so perhaps was the ever-growing presence of computer games. While other sources of children’s entertainment were evolving, comics hadn’t. They had to do something new and fresh in order to remain competitive.
You should know where this is going. That something was, of course, OiNK. Edited by the “three liberated pigs” of Mark Rodgers, Tony Husband and Patrick Gallagher, IPC Magazines saw in them the chance to reinvigorate the market.
The article in CTN (which you can read in full at the bottom of this post) takes the form of an interview with IPC Magazine’s Youth Group Managing Director John Sanders. That’s him above, surrounded by OiNK page layouts prior to launch. A wish to move away from the “custard pie humour” is cited and the publishers were certainly putting their weight behind this anarchic comic, independently put together for them in Manchester. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the preview issue would be bagged with some of their biggest titles and an eye-watering (for the time) £55,000 was being spent on Blockbuster Adverts.
“Their [children’s] humour is a lot more sophisticated than it was 25 years ago. It is a lot more outrageous, the butt of their humour has changed.”
John Sanders
It’s interesting to note having a preview issue wasn’t something generally used at the time. The normal strategy had been television advertising such as with Marvel‘s The Transformers in 1984, the (very) brief advert for which you can see below. This was news to me when I found out because I remember several preview issues inside my comics but nothing on the telly. Then again, those previews came after OiNK’s. However, even OiNK’s would be different from those that followed. It was a full-sized issue!
The article states the new comic was “aimed very directly at youngsters”. The whole point was to grab the attention of the eight to 13-year-old age group. Yet, here we are, over three decades later with a website all about it and my main audience is all you grown up pig pals discovering just how well it holds up for both adults (and your children reading it) all these years later. IPC’s target audience weren’t just readers of comics by the competition either, such as The Dandy and Beano, it included those buying the company’s own humour comics who they worried could be moving away.
Thanks to Lew Stringer for sharing this scan on his Blimey blog and for the kind permission to show it to you all here. That particular blog is no longer being updated but is chock full of interesting comics tidbits, so make sure to give it a look. While you’re at it, bookmark Lew’s ongoing Lew Stringer Comics blog too, detailing all of his own work both past and present.
(John Sanders has now released his own book, King’s Reach: John Sanders’ Twenty-Five Years at the Top of Comics which chronicles the business side of the industry.)
About a month later the April/May 1986 issue of IPC News (the in-house magazine for IPC Magazines staff) also ran a piece on OiNK’s imminent launch, where it’s affectionately described as “John Sander’s cherished ambition”. It contains much of the same information as the CTN article, including some direct quotes by John, cementing the company’s support of the comic’s ethos and what it was attempting. This following scan also comes courtesy of Lew.
There could be no part of IPC Magazines or the wider UK comics and magazine scene that was unaware of this bold new venture. At least that seemed to be what the company was attempting to achieve, what with the size of OiNK’s marketing push. It gave the impression that the company was completely behind Patrick, Tony and Mark. Of course, any company will want to give that impression when they’re launching a new product but there can be no doubt IPC believed in OiNK.
OiNK Blog 