Monthly Archives: September 2021

Retrospectives, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends

THOMAS & FRiENDS: 800th iSSUE!!

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Back in 1987 I was nine-years-old and already a bit above the target audience for Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, but growing up in a town with actual steam trains (the headquarters of the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland were just around the corner from my house) a lot of the kids in my town loved the original Railway Series books by the Rev. W. Awdry and the subsequent TV series with those stunning model layouts. In October ’87 I found myself in the newsagent to pick up the latest issue of OiNK, the only comic I was collecting at the time and I spotted “A brand new comic” on the shelves.

This was my first ever Marvel comic, believe it or not. I even got my drawing printed in a Christmas issue!

I collected it for about two years before finally moving on but over the years I’ve seen younger family members and friends’ kids become fans just as I had been. Working in newsagents over the years I was aware the comic was still ongoing, surprisingly keeping the original numbering even though it had gone through a couple of different publishers. Then a few months ago while browsing the children’s comics for a friend’s wee boy I discovered Thomas & Friends (as it’s now called) was at #797!

So fast forward to the present and I’ve bought #800 for him and thought I’d open it up to see what’s inside and compare it to the original. But first let’s just dwell on that issue number for a second. The 800th issue! This makes it the longest-running UK licenced comic ever. It’s an amazing achievement and I doubt it’s going to come to an end any time soon, the TV series is as popular as ever.

Now, when I mention modern children’s comics there’ll inevitably be a chorus of middle-aged men complaining that they’re “nothing more than flimsy leaflets” with “cheap tacky toys” in plastic bags “pushing the price up”. Well let’s just put this to rest once and for all, shall we? While the comic magazine itself doesn’t mention it’s celebrating the milestone it’s still packaged as a ‘Special Edition’ and contains a die-cast metal Track Master Thomas which on its own sells for £4.99 in the shops. Not a bad start!

For just £1 more than the cost of the toy, for £5.99 (usually it costs £4.99) you also get a 36-page issue printed on really great quality matt paper with a gloss cover and it’s chock full of content for younger fans. There’s also a second, plastic toy set produced specifically for it, a large double-sided wall chart, a poster and loads of stickers which are used throughout the pages as you’ll see below. I’d say that’s a bargain.

Interiors of the first and latest issues show it’s very much the same beast at its heart

So how does it compare to the original comic I bought for 35p back in 1987? I’m not mentioning the cover price for comparison reasons, it was 34 years ago, of course it’s going to be a lot more expensive, just as 35p was a lot more expensive than comics from 34 years before that. But I thought it’d be interesting to see how things have evolved after 800 issues, so below are some of the interiors of the first and latest issues and as you’ll see, it’s very much the same beast at its heart.

The main element of the original comic was the picture panel stories, which for the first year were adaptations of the TV stories (which in turn were adaptations from the books) then after that were all original, written specifically for the comic, some being adapted back on to the TV. There was also a short prose story every fortnight which readers were encouraged to “read aloud”.

These formats remain although with so many years of the show to pull from now they all seem to be adaptations and use stills from the current CGI series rather than original illustrations. What’s neat is how those stickers I mentioned are used throughout to fill the gaps in stories, features, puzzles and more. For the young readers it’s like a really fun old-school Panini sticker album on top of everything else is contains.

Obviously back when I was nine my attention span didn’t last long enough for me to finish colouring this image of Thomas and it’s remained as such all this time. The activity can be found a few times in the current publication, on two dedicated pages and even the editorial credits page.

As a nine-year-old I was already too old for the comic if I’m completely honest, evidenced by the ABC collection and some very simplistic puzzles such as Henry the Green Engine highlighting other green things the younger readers were meant to identify. I just ignored these and kept to the stories, editorials and letters page, as well as the middle-page spread below. But for the target audience they brought a level of interactivity to the comic and this is something the modern version continues.

The middle pages of my #1 are missing so this is from the only other issue I kept (#31) which was the second Christmas issue and the one I had my drawing published in. The middle pages had very simplistic questions about what could be seen in the picture but the reason it’s missing from my first issue is because they could be cut out and hung on the wall, issue after issue creating one long drawing around the Island of Sodor, wrapping its way around our bedrooms.

I’m clearly not the target audience so the final word has to go to Ollie

There may not be murals but there are plenty of CGI shots from the show used for spot-the-difference pages, mazes, pin-ups, puzzles and so much more. Even the competition in #800 reminded me of the one we got in #1. Thomas & Friends may look very different from the Marvel comic on first glance but take a closer look and it’s a very natural progression. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I’m surprised just how much it’s kept to the original ideas.

But I am clearly not the target audience so the final word has to go to the little person I bought it for, my friend’s baby boy, Ollie. As you can see, he’s clearly very happy with the gifts that came with it. In fact, three months before his third birthday he saw them and came out with, “Thomas the train”, which he’s never said before! A very cute moment.

His mum Vicki had a look through the comic itself, at the wall chart, stickers and the contents as a whole and remarked at how much was in it. Not expecting it to be much more than an excuse to package the toys in with something, she was pleasantly surprised at the value.

So there you go, if you have a young child in your life who watches Thomas & Friends on TV this is a top comic magazine for them. Usually £4.99 every four weeks, #800 is £5.99 but then again you are getting a toy which is normally a fiver on its own (and by the looks of it #801 has one too). It’s available online but everywhere I looked was charging around £10.00 for it because of bulky postage, but you’ll find it in most newsagents and supermarkets easily enough.

To finish with, here’s a look at the original audience and the current one.

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OiNK Reprints

THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA: OiNK REPRiNT PUBLiSHED

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Hot on the heels of the news Rebellion is to reprint some of Tom Paterson‘s OiNK strips later this year in The Tom Paterson Collection, comes the news of a Kevin O’Neill strip from one of the OiNK Books seeing publication again! The strip in question is the brilliant The Truth About Santa, written by Tom Thug and Pete and his Pimple cartoonist, Lew Stringer.

Kevin is probably best known for his 2000AD work, most notably Nemesis the Warlock, as well as Marshall Law and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. For OiNK, he contributed to two issues.

First up was a fantastic four-page The Price is Right parody in the 1987 Holiday Special and later that year came the first annual and the highly memorable strip above. Anyone familiar with Kevin’s work and his very unique style might wonder what kind of Christmassy strip this could be. All I’ll say is that you will not be disappointed! Kevin really is one of Britain’s Best.

So anyway, a second edition of Kevin’s Cosmic Comics book has been released by Hibernia Comics in association with Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics and Gosh. The first version went down a storm but this is more than just a simple rerelease, it contains a lot of extra content too. There are 28 more pages (making 96 in total) and what’s in this new section falls under the banner ‘Kev’s own’, compiled by the man himself.

Lew announced the news on his Lew Stringer Comics blog with the following details:

“[‘Kev’s Own’] is a collection of Kevin O’Neill’s early covers, samples and unpublished work for magazines like Interplanetary News and Legend Horror Classics, as well as Titan books cover designs and the never-before-reprinted 7 Wonders of the Galaxy series from 2000AD and more! Also included in ‘Kev’s Own’ is commentary by Kevin on the art included and his early career.”

Chronicling Kevin’s career and the development of his art over the years this is a must-have for fans, of which there are plenty so if you are one I suggest you get clicking over to the Hibernia shop now and get this ordered, because this is a very limited print run. Priced at £10.49 plus postage it’s also unmissable for any OiNK fans who’d like to support any reprint releases. UPDATE: Unfortunately it appears the comic has now sold out. If I find out of any further rerelease I’ll let you know.

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Comic Reviews, Ring Raiders

RiNG RAiDERS: PREViEW MiNi-COMiC

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That logo brings back so many happy memories. For a while back in the late 80s and early 90s I was obsessed with the Ring Raiders toys by Matchbox and I even cut out that name from the box of one of the bases and stuck it to the outside of my bedroom door. Some kids had their names on their door, but not me. Like I said, I was obsessed. You can find out more about the Ring Raiders toys (and merchandise) in my introductory post.

The real time read through of the short-lived but truly brilliant comic series begins today with the issue of Eagle dated 16th September 1989 (on sale 9th September). A banner along the top of the cover alerted readers to the free gift inside, one that would signal the release of the brand new licenced title from Fleetway.

Inside the matt paper of Eagle was a free Ring Raiders mini-comic, printed on higher quality stock that really made it stand out. The bright paper also makes the gorgeous Ian Kennedy artwork really pop! While Ian would contribute to every single cover for the fortnightly this would be the only time he’d produce a strip and it’s certainly an eye-catching piece. I wasn’t aware of this preview’s existence until a few years ago, but if I’d been reading Eagle at the time and saw this upon opening the comic, I think I may have found it hard to breathe with the excitement.

Okay that’s an exaggeration, but probably not as much as you think.

Four pages isn’t a lot, let’s face it. But this was par for the course by this stage in the UK comics market. OiNK was the first for the 80s to establish using a preview comic for marketing a new release and they did so with a full-size, 32-page publication given away free in a handful of IPC titles (who would later sell all their comics to Fleetway). That was in 1986.

In 1987 another of Barrie’s creations, Super Naturals began with a 16-page preview issue with full-sized pages, then in 1988 his original Wildcat comic’s preview was also 16 pages but at a reduced size. In that same year Marvel UK launched its Visionaries monthly with a small four-page mini-comic, made up of an edited down version of the story to be published in the first two issues. So you can see how things had developed over the decade.

It was an exciting read every fortnight and really holds up today as a top quality read

Space was at a premium here to grab the attention of the readers sufficiently enough to get them to buy a new comic, but Ian’s gorgeous hand-painted artwork is certainly bold enough. A basic plot written by Eagle and Ring Raiders’ editor Barrie Tomlinson is just to set up a big mid-air battle between the Raiders and their enemies, the Skull Squadron, in order to show off the kind of action we could expect.

Aboard their time-travelling Flying Fortress the Air Carrier Justice they’re alerted to a mayday from their leader Ring Commander Vector. The person receiving the alert via their ring is actually one of my two favourite characters and pilot of the futuristic Grumman X-29. I talked about this being my first purchase in the previous post. What follows is a double page spread of gorgeous aerial action featuring all kinds of various aircraft from across time, which as an aviation enthusiast must’ve been really enjoyable for Ian to draw.

In the toy line, and indeed in the comic proper, the pilots shown here would each command their own wing of four planes and pilots. But for the benefit of this preview and introducing the readers to the concept it’s best to show as much variety in aircraft type and aesthetic design as possible, so the Wing Commanders of many different wings are used instead. It works a treat and certainly comes across as confident in the concept’s ability to produce dynamic comic action.

The back page shows Ian’s cover for issue one, the first I saw as a child and mentions the brilliant free gift (an actual Matchbox Ring Raiders plane) and the fact the pages will be bigger, with half in full colour, which is much more than the comic this preview was given away with. If only it had become as big a seller as the hype states here! But that’s something we’ll deal with at the end of the real time read through.

As I’ve said before this remains my second favourite childhood comic, with only OiNK beating it to the top spot. It was an exciting read every fortnight and really holds up today as top quality stuff. There’s some real depth to the characters (which is no small feat given the toys and the outlandish setup), hints of big epic stories to come, loads of action, a sense of humour and exciting artwork.

So for the next few months I’ll be reviewing each issue on the date of its original release, going in-depth into stories, characters and art and giving my honest opinion on reading the comic now as an adult, as well as reminiscing about what it was like at the time, obviously.

212 pages in total, the next 24 of which will be winging (I really do have to stop the plane puns) their way to you on Thursday 16th September 2021. I hope you’ll join me then. The Command Is In Your Hands!

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Comic Introductions, Ring Raiders

RiNG RAiDERS: iN REAL TiME

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Do you remember these Matchbox toys? Created in partnership with Those Characters From Cleveland (Care Bears, My Pet Monster, Popples) it felt like there wasn’t a single ad break without that catchy metal music in the latter half of 1989. Synonymous with miniature toy cars, Matchbox released Ring Raiders, an assortment of high quality, colourful planes of various types and configurations and presented each on a small ring perfect for my eleven-year-old hands. This meant they could be flown in formation around every room in the house, complete with annoying (for my parents) sound effects from my Battle Blaster joystick.

In the summer of 1989 I was captivated by the idea. I started off with a special Ring Raiders Starter Pack, a cheaper set of two planes (normally they came in sets of four) so kids could try them out and hopefully get sucked into collecting them all. Mine contained one from each side of the battle, the Ring Raiders‘ Grumman -29 (right, below) and their enemies the Skull Squadron‘s P-51 Mustang (left, images taken from eBay). I can remember playing with them all the time, even setting them up on their rings next to my bedside lamp so they’d be the first things I’d see in the mornings.

With each pack came a mini-comic and the pilots behind these two planes soon became my favourite characters, something which continued into the pages of the comic.

The background story concerned the formation of Skull Squadron ten years into the then future, a band of extremely talented fighter pilots who could travel through time in their bid for world domination. Their aim was to manipulate events throughout history to change the world order to suit themselves. Formed to stop these terrorists were the heroic Ring Raiders, who created a massive time-travelling flying fortress which they’d use to recruit the best and bravest pilots from the past, present and future.

This was a neat set up to allow for the fact the toy aircraft could be based on classic World War II fighter planes, modern day jets or even some brand new prototypes, all fighting it out side-by-side. By Christmas 1989 the sets were being accompanied by large bases (my favourite was the Skull’s, below-right) , those sound effect joysticks, audio adventures, medal and plane sets, a display stand and even a couple of videos of the cartoon episodes produced as a series of pilots (no pun intended) in the US.

I was a collector straight away and over the months my assortment of planes grew. Any visiting family members from the mainland knew what to bring with them, Santa stocked up for that Christmas and loved ones were secretly discussing which sets I had and which ones were already purchased as presents.

I can honestly say no other toy line excited me as much as Ring Raiders and every new plane acquired was an event

In the end I had numerous wings (the name given to each set of four planes, each with one named pilot, the Wing Commander) alongside three of the four bases, many medals, bigger bomber planes, the display stand, a Battle Blaster and one of the audio cassette adventures and a couple of VHS videos, one of which came bundled with limited edition planes. (The cartoon wasn’t great, except for one particular episode I remember having my mum and I gripped!) I can honestly say no other toy line excited me as much as Ring Raiders and every new plane acquired was an event.

Like more and more toy lines, Ring Raiders was created as a kind of ready-made franchise, with merchandise appearing right alongside the first series of planes. There was a big push by the creators to market The Next Big Thing to as many companies as possible, including Fleetway Publications. Editor of the Ring Raiders comic Barrie Tomlinson and writer James Nicholas sent me a wonderful licensee style guide folder full of information on the characters, planes and possible merchandise, which I’ll show you at a later date.

The advertisement above is from an industry trade magazine from some time before the toys were launched, promoting the franchise to potential partners who’d like to jump on early. If they’d taken off (again, no pun intended) as they’d hoped I’d guess my own bedroom would have looked a little similar back then. Plenty of companies saw the early potential and produced everything from lunch boxes and books, to Revel model kits and even Hallowe’en costumes, all of which were released in time to cash in on the Christmas rush.

They may have initially launched in the US and that was where the bulk of these items were available, but it was over on this side of the pond that collectors were treated to their very own comic, and what a comic it was. In fact, OiNK aside it remains my favourite childhood comic to this day. This is no small feat considering it only lasted for six regular issues and one special to wrap the stories up.

So back in September 1989 I’d just started grammar school and everything was new and different in life. I dandered into my local newsagent on the way home one day to pick up my reserved comics and to have a scan of the shelves like I always did. I was so excited when I spotted a brand new comic dedicated to the toy range I’d just started collecting a couple of months previous! Not only that, the cover was a spectacular Ian Kennedy creation and it came complete with an actual official toy plane! I placed a regular order before I even left the shop.

To see these teeny tiny planes painted up as full-scale fighting machines battling across the skies like this was a thrill. They looked so awesome! I ran home and devoured the stories over and over again for the whole fortnight. It was brilliant! On top of this was the feeling of jumping in right at the start of what I thought would be the next big craze and at the very beginning of what would surely be an epic new comic. I’d joined the readership of Transformers years after my friends had but this felt like it was all mine.

Unlike Transformers with its main strip and smaller back up for the majority of its run, Ring Raiders had no less than five stories in every issue; four serials and an ongoing anthology. Even in that first issue I remember the characters felt developed and the stories huge in scope. I was also excited to see they were all going to be multipart tales, unlike the tiny stories I’d been initially disappointed with in The Real Ghostbusters.

The team assembled to work on Ring Raiders was second to none

As a kid it was so cool to see, even with that very first issue, these brilliant characters and such dramatic, dynamic action come out of these Matchbox planes, and as the comic continued it was always extra exciting when one of the stories featured a pilot whose plane you actually owned.

I also loved how the rings themselves were integrated into this new world. While the cartoon also did something with them (so it must’ve been part of the franchise’s actual story to tie in the rings) in the comic they were even more important. Initially just a way of playing with or displaying the toy planes, they were woven into the very fabric of the stories and characters, which you’ll find out about just as I did, as we make our way through the issues.

No credits were printed in the comic but in recent years I’ve been able to find out who worked on Ring Raiders and the team assembled was second to none. Then again, in charge was legendary IPC/Fleetway editor Barrie Tomlinson, whose comics always had the best talent. Roy of the Rovers, Eagle, Speed, Tiger and Scream are just some he was responsible for, so my new favourite comic was in great hands.

If it sounds like I’m excited to take off with this comic again then you’d be right

Barrie would write some of the stories himself, joined by a writing team including his son James Tomlinson (who went by James Nicholas), Angus Allan, Scott Goodall and Tom Tully. On the artist front we had Ian Kennedy providing more gorgeous covers (aviation art being a favourite of his, Barrie said Ian was disappointed when Ring Raiders was cancelled) and inside we’d be treated to the work of Sandy James, Carlos Pino, John Cooper, John Gillatt, Don Wazejewski and Geoff Campion. Editing Ring Raiders freelance from home under his Creative Editorial Services Barrie also brought in Terry Magee to assist with editorials.

If it sounds like I’m excited to take off with this comic again (okay, that one was intended) then you’d be right. But it’s only one part of a very special winter on the OiNK Blog. Over the next several months, alongside the (at the time of writing) ongoing real time read throughs of OiNK and Jurassic Park will be The Barrie Tomlinson Trilogy, as I am now officially calling it.

Ring Raiders, Wildcat and Super Naturals. Only in recent years have I found out three comics from my youth were all edited by the same person. They may be very different titles but take a closer look and you’ll see similarities in how they were put together, read them and you’ll get the same high level of quality in their storylines and characters, look at the superb artwork in each and you’ll be equally wowed.

The issues in these reviews are the originals I bought back in 1989

It all kicks off with the Ring Raiders Free Mini-Comic given away in Barrie’s own Eagle comic. Containing a full-colour strip drawn by Ian Kennedy, a closer look will be on the blog tomorrow (Thursday 9th September 2021), 32 years to the day the news of this brand new and exciting comic was broken. Issue one will then be reviewed just one week later before going fortnightly for its run. Discovering the first issue on the shelves I never knew of the preview at the time, only picking it up a few years ago to complete my collection.

Since those childhood days most of my comics were binned by my parents when I moved out of home in my early 20s. Even my OiNKs weren’t safe. Only first issues and a select few hand-picked editions or books survived those culls, but the one exception was Ring Raiders. Apart from accidentally losing one issue (#4) I chose to keep them all. The issues in these reviews are the originals I bought back in 1989.

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OiNK Comic Reviews

OiNK! #10: A CLASS ACT

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This colourful, busy cover by Mike Roberts is just superb and takes me right back to the 1990s. The 90s? Yes, OiNK may have been my first comic but Mike also had a hand in my first magazine, Future‘s Commodore Format, published between 1990 and 1996. Every month he drew the adventures of Roger Frames which sat between the mini-reviews of the ‘Budjit Games’. Mike’s work can be found in four issues of OiNK and the first 31 issues of CF, the latter he returned to for #61 to draw the final cover. Here are the illustrations from my first issue, #14 (oddly enough, the same number I began OiNK with).

Mike’s OiNK cover perfectly sums up #10; it’s chock full of great content, jam-packed with random humorous moments, there’s plenty of chaos and anarchy, and loads of genuine laugh-out-loud moments. It’s been very difficult to whittle its 32 pages down to a few highlights and I’ve had to leave out some real gems. There were just too many.

To prove my point here’s a quick glimpse of some of that content, beginning with the one character you just knew would relish the theme. This issue’s Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile – Aged 7 5/8 (yearƨ) sees him trying a variety of excuses to get out of returning to school, only for his mum to admit it doesn’t start until the next day, she just wanted to see what tricks he was going to try. Jelly-Belly Johnson is a one-off photo story featuring young friend of Patrick Gallagher’s, James O’Malley winning a jelly eating contest, the Skiver’s Survival Kit has everything needed to get out of various lessons and in Tom Thug we meet Wayne Brayne for the first time.

Hadrian Vile written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Ian Jackson
Jelly-Belly Johnson starred James O’Malley
Tom Thug by Lew Stringer

Lew has mentioned in the comments to this post that in the original script Wayne asked Tom, “Are you having a fit?” and Mark Rodgers changed it to the line above, because obviously there’s nothing funny about having a fit. Thanks for the info, Lew! Wayne would pop up now and again in Tom’s strips to outwit the thug, not that this was particularly difficult, of course. He’d also sometimes appear in Buster after the merge.

After I discovered OiNK I can remember often taking each new issue into school for my friends to read, in a blatant attempt to get them to start buying it themselves instead of what I called their “boring comics”. I can imagine this particular issue going down particularly well in classrooms across the country.

We haven’t had a comical shark in a few issues but thankfully here’s Roger Rental, He’s Completely Mental to fix that, as ever brought to the page by Ian Knox.

One-panel genius. Not Roger, admittedly, I mean the writers and Ian’s perfect style for the character. Throughout his appearances Roger would be written by a variety of talented individuals, notably Graham Exton, Keith Forrest and later Howard Osborne. Graham originally created the character as ‘Barmy Barney’ but, in Graham’s own words, “The Three Wise Men renamed him Roger Rental.” While there are no credits here Graham says co-editor Mark Rodgers was always very good at crediting other writers so most likely this was by Mark himself.

This issue’s Mr. Big Nose turned a work colleague of mine into an OiNK fan

Jeremy Banx‘s Mr Big Nose steals the show on a regular basis with his uniquely surreal humour and unexpected punchlines. By all means they don’t make an awful lot of sense but that’s what made them so funny to the young (and now the not-so-young) audience. It was just lovable nonsense. This issue’s strip also turned a work colleague of mine into an OiNK fan several years back.

When I was reading the comic for the previous version of the blog I posted the strip below on Twitter and a woman I worked with, who had previously rolled her eyes at what I was doing in my spare time, admitted she loved it and couldn’t stop laughing when she saw it. Apparently thinking I was reading something more akin to Beano or The Dandy, it had taken her by complete surprise. Thanks to it and another Banx strip later in this issue I ended up lending her my OiNK Book 1988 and she loved every silly page.

Success.

I’ve another personal story about this little one-off from Ed McHenry too. Before collecting the whole run and putting together the original blog back in 2013 I’d bought a handful of issues online to reminisce with. (Little did I know it’d turn back into an obsession again.) When they arrived I took a couple down to the house of my girlfriend at the time where I was staying for the weekend.

I hadn’t had a chance to flick through them yet so I was oblivious to their contents. I started to casually scan over them while she was curled up asleep on the sofa next to me after a tough day at work. I should also explain that my laugh can be rather loud, especially when I’m caught off guard, and I was already doing my best not to laugh at Graham Norton’s show on TV so as not to wake her up.

“Don’t be frightened by bullies, kids! And don’t try to scare anyone yourself!”

Uncle Pigg (Cowardly Custard)

I was doing a very good job of it too until I read Mike Slammer. Well that was it. I erupted into laughter! She jumped awake!  I tried to apologise but I couldn’t stop laughing. When I eventually calmed down and explained I wasn’t actually laughing at scaring her awake, I showed her the culprit. One strange look and a shake of the head later and the status quo returned, albeit it with my attention solely on the TV, just in case.

Moving on, one of the most enjoyable series in these early issues are the Pigg Tales, double-page stories introduced by Uncle Pigg and often with a moral at the end (in a typical OiNK fashion). So far on this read through I’ve shown you The Revenge Squad in the preview issue and Testing Time in #1, both of which were hilariously drawn by Tom Paterson. This issue’s school-based tale is Cowardly Custard, illustrated by OiNK-supremo Ian Jackson.

Contrary to critics of the comic at the time, OiNK contained some strong moral messages within its pages, especially of the anti-smoking variety which you’ll see here in due course. (They even created a complete OiNK Smokebuster Special comic to give away to schools.) They just didn’t preach at us. Instead they created Madvertisements or funny strips like the one above, which is clearly an anti-bullying story but presented in an original way.

I love the different character designs for each of the kids and how the usual comic strip cliché of the victim turning the tide on the bully is then also turned upon. The victim teaches the bully a lesson, but then the other bullies teach the victim a lesson. The message is clear: Don’t become the bully! All told through giving the reader a good laugh. Job done.

Getting a reference to the Warsaw Pact into a kids’ comic could only have come from the mind of Jeremy Banx

Cowardly Custard is a main highlight of the issue and it’s nice to actually see our editor in a strip, what with him not getting his usual introduction on page two for the first time. While OiNK would have so much variety and so many different art styles it always felt like Uncle Pigg’s various appearances throughout tied everything together. In this issue he also pops up on the Grunts letters page and in an advertisement for those ‘Prime Porky Products‘ of OiNK merchandise.

Okay, so earlier I showed you the Mr Big Nose strip that sold the whole premise of OiNK to a work colleague. Over the course of a few issues, starting with this one, Jeremy Banx got some extra space to deliver us some hilarious one-off strips. The first one is below and was the one I alluded to above.

Getting a reference to the Warsaw Pact into a kids’ comic, and as the name of a character no less, is so out there it could only have come from the mind of Jeremy. But let’s not brush over the fact this character then proceeds to have her child put down. Then stuffed. Innocently slipped into the issue it’s an example of something we just found silly fun as children, then are so surprised by as adults (in the best possible way, of course). Brilliance.

Finally, the issue also contains the penultimate part of the epic Street-Hogs story which started right back in the preview issue (and you can check out a full chapter in #1’s review), ending with yet another cliffhanger they’ll get out of in a most improbable way in a fortnight’s time. The heroes are also the focus of the Next Issue promotion.

In two weeks then it’s the conclusion of The Street-Hogs’ first adventure, with a general biking and motoring theme for the rest of the issue too. But it wouldn’t be long before the next spoof adventure series to be masterfully drawn by J.T. Dogg would appear, and it was the first my younger self clapped eyes on his art style. So watch out for the introduction of Ham Dare: Pig of the Future in a few short months.

That aforementioned next issue will be here for you to peruse on Monday 20th September.

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