The Mad Monk was a funny little three-panel strip from #28 of OiNK (the Fantastic Flying Issue), written by Graham Exton and drawn by Davey Jones. The character never appeared again, just another of those random little one-offs OiNK was so full of every issue. However, it may have been his last appearance but it actually wasn’t his first, as I’ve found out recently.

Regular readers of the blog will now know The Mad Monk first appeared in 1978 in Graham and OiNK co-editor Mark Rodgers’ university project, Germs where he was also drawn by Graham. All of Germs is now available to read on the blog and if you’ve done so already you’ll know there were a few precursors to OiNK strips and characters within its pages. This was one such instance.

However, not only do we get to see the origins of the strip in Germs as part of OiNK’s 40th anniversary celebrations, now we can get a little glimpse into how it also came to be in the pages of our favourite comic. “Just found an example of me making a pig’s ear out of an OiNK cartoon in early 1987,” related Davey when he found a note and pencil doodle of the strip and shared it on the OiNK Comic Facebook group a few years back.

“Script editor Mark Rodgers sent me the idea (by Graham Exton) and I drew it for OiNK #28 (May 1987),” he explained. “But why on earth did I give the mad monk those stupid little feathery angel’s wings, instead of the proper big wood and canvas constructions indicated in the rough, which would’ve been funnier and more ‘mad monk’-ish? In fact, the rough sketch is altogether better than my finished drawing. Sorry Graham, sob.”

Wanting to share this doodle and note from Mark with OiNK Blog readers, I asked Davey if he could tell us anything else about working on OiNK at this time.

OiNK Blog: Obviously The Mad Monk is a very short strip so I’m limited in what I can ask, but generally speaking how did you get involved with OiNK in the first place?

Davey Jones: When I was in sixth form at school I sent some samples of my cartoons to [Group Editor of Humour] Bob Paynter at Fleetway (or was it IPC then?) [it was IPC – Phil], who invited me to Kings Reach Tower for a chat and told me about OiNK, which was in the developmental stages. He sent my samples to Mark Rodgers, who wrote to tell me more about OiNK and suggested I send some ideas. So as soon as I finished my A-Levels I started bombarding them with scripts, and after a few weeks got something accepted. That was about it, really.

Henry the Wonder Dog was the first script of Davey’s accepted by OiNK, which he also drew. It was published to much giggles from readers in the first Halloween issue, #13.

OB: How did you find working with Graham, if you ever had any contact that is?

DJ: I didn’t have any direct contact with Graham until we connected years later through your OiNK page. I dealt pretty exclusively with Mark, although I did meet Tony [Husband] and Patrick [Gallagher] once or twice when I was living in Manchester, and would see Marc Riley when I’d drop into the OiNK office.

OB: I’ve spoken with other cartoonists like Lew Stringer who said he dealt pretty exclusively with Mark. How was he to work with?

DJ: Mark was great, always very encouraging and full of ideas and suggestions for how to improve a script. I’ll have a dig around and try and find some letters/scripts.

Watch out for more behind-the-scenes finds from Davey this Christmas (2026) on the blog, folks!

Thanks to Davey for taking the time to chat with me about The Mad Monk and OiNK in general. It’s always fun to peek behind the door of the sty!

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