“What?!”, I hear you exclaim. “Why didn’t I hear of this before now?” Indeed, a crossover between two comics is always a big deal, but between an action and a humour comic belonging to two different publishers? That’s unheard of. However, this did actually happened. Twice! Well, sort of. Both times were thanks to the same person, Tom Thug’s creator Lew Stringer.
cover by Lee Sullivan
Action Force #228
cover by Jeff Anderson
Back in the 80s it seemed like nearly every comic I picked up had a Lew humour strip inside. Whether in funny comics themselves or in the likes of Transformers, Action Force (G.I. Joe), Marvel Secret Wars or early issues of The Real Ghostbusters. In Transformers, Lew’s work first appeared in #15 in April 1995 and he’d end up contributing to every single issue until the very end, #332 in January 1992!
First up was Robo Capers and, while there were some regular characters, for the most part it was made up of random little gags about the future of automation and robotics, a hot topic in the 80s. (Early issues of The Transformers even had news articles about the topic.) While pig pals were enjoying OiNK’s first Hogmanay issue from IPC Magazines at the end of ’86 (#18), Marvel UK‘s The Transformers #94 was hitting shelves. In this issue a suitably New Year-themed strip quite literally rang in 1987 to finish off the issue. Here it is to enjoy, but take your time and savour the little details.
Did you spot him? In the last panel below the big reveal, on top of the letterbox. Have a look. Yep, that’s Satan the Cat, none other than Tom Thug’s little kitty! So does this mean the strip was set in OiNKtown to keep it canon? No, it’s just a daft comic strip, you silly person. You didn’t really expect a full blown crossover with the Robots in Disguise, did you? This is OiNK. You should know better by now.
Lew has shared this post on his own blog and adds, “Making an unofficial guest appearance in the strip is Tom Thug’s cat Satan from IPC’s OiNK comic (sitting on the postbox) and in the corner, it’s Loose Brayne, Brickman himself holding the sign. All part of the Lewniverse! The shop sign refers to Marvel editors Richard Starkings and John Tomlinson who sometimes did the colour separations for the strip. (All of my Marvel strips were coloured by the staff.) I’ve forgotten who ‘Hindmarsh’ was, so apologies for that.”
No less than two OiNK guest stars hidden away within the pages of another publisher’s comic
When Action Force was cancelled after 50 weekly issues it merged into Transformers and brought Combat Colin with it, where he stayed right to the finale. In recent years Lew has started to publish collected editions of Colin’s misadventures (look out for reviews of them soon) and they’re just as funny as they ever were, and in a later edition of Transformers and Action Force (#228) there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo from a certain member of Satan’s family.
I must’ve missed him in that second panel at the time (I began collecting Transformers from #192 originally so I never saw Satan) because it was only while reading this epic comic for the blog’s Instagram in real time over more than seven years that I spotted him. I don’t know how I didn’t see him as a kid but as an adult I jumped and pointed at him, laughing at how Lew likes to link together all of his characters with cameos like this.
Well there you go, no less than two OiNK guest stars hidden away within the pages of another publisher’s action comic. I think that would make Uncle Pigg very happy indeed, OiNK’s influence reaching out beyond its own boundaries even after it was gone in the case of Tom, who of course was a regular in Buster by that stage. (Although, our esteemed editor will probably be looking to collect fees for these appearances!)
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