Hi everyone. I’m writing this post to let you in on a couple of new series coming to the blog this year that should please Beano and Marvel UK fans, as well as officially announcing the first writing project of mine that I hope to launch on Kickstarter this year, a project that’s tied in closely with the site. However, this means there are some changes to the planned contents of the OiNK Blog this year.
First up, those new series. Back in 2018 D.C. Thomson’s Beano celebrated its 80th birthday in style with a fantastic box set containing a fascinating bookazine, lots of little extras and, best of all, one issue of the comic from each decade. The comics were selected for specific reasons and included a reproduction of the very first Beano! I’d originally begun writing about it on the old blog that very year but never followed through on my promise of covering them all.
It’s time to set that right. So, in a new occasional series I’ll be reviewing each of those celebratory issues on the dates of their original release, in keeping with the theme of the blog. There’ll be two issues this year, one during the summer and the next at Christmas, with a special introductory post taking a closer look at the contents of the box too. Watch out for that in the Retrospectives section of the blog (in the pull down menu) in July.
At the end of the same month begins a new 74-part weekly series of The Mighty Marvel Checklists. Anyone who bought Marvel UK comics between the summer of 1988 and the end of 1989 will remember these updates that told us what was on sale every week for us to rush out and buy. Using my Transformers and The Real Ghostbusters collections I’ll also be showing you all of the contemporary adverts for the company’s comics released during that time.
Loads to look forward to, as well as two more parts of the OiNK’s Real Ads series and at Hallowe’en there’ll be some extra love for fans of Super Naturals and Aliens/Predator. Then of course there’ll be the usual huge selection of yearly real time read throughs and extras throughout the festive season. However, between now and then I’d planned about a dozen or so extra posts for various comics (OiNK and others) on the blog, but I’m now postponing those until next year.
The reason is my first self-publishing project, a bookazine I’ve decided to name Comics 80:99. The majority of the comics covered on the blog haven’t received much press since their time of publication and Comics 80:99 is going to follow this template, as well as delving into lesser discussed aspects of some popular titles. It’ll contain articles exclusively about UK comics from the 80s and 90s and will be a Kickstarter project that I hope to launch on the crowdfunding website sometime this year or early 2026.
It’s still early days so that’s all I’m going to say about it for now, but make sure you bookmark the OiNK Blog because I’ll be documenting Comics 80:99’s creation right here, step-by-step. I’ve put a lot of hard work into this blog over the past four years (according to WordPress’ word count I’ve written nearly 600,000 words, the equivalent of over eight novels!) and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into this too and sharing it with you all.
Officially announcing it is a major step for a project that’s only been in my head until now, so I hope you’ll enjoy reading all about it on the blog, alongside the continuing real time read throughs of Aliens, Transformers: Generation 2 and Dracula, the new series discussed above and the extras to come throughout the year. A lot to look forward to… in fact, there’s a lot to do, so I’d better get started! Thanks for all your support as always, folks.
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