Five years ago, almost to the day, I told you about OiNK cartoonist Kev F Sutherland’s brand new podcast, Comic Cuts. Known around the sty for his hilarious Meanwhile… series and two of my own personal favourites from OiNK’s entire run (The Three Scientists and The March of the Killer Breakfasts), Kev’s podcast was full of enthusiasm for the comics medium and provided plenty of entertainment to boot.
In recent months his current batch of episodes have been dropping and the latest one at the time of writing should be of particular interest to pig pals. For the uninitiated, you’ll probably want to know the set up of the series first. To quote the man himself from the beginning of the episode, “We’re looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel, there’s a few of us. So the panel sees a panel, and we talk about the comics from the panel we discuss.”
Simple, right? Basically, Kev invites on two guests with ties to the comics industry. Each brings with them a panel (or a series of panels) from a favourite comic. The other guest then has to describe it to the listener (although the image is also in the promo art for the episode and shown on the YouTube version) and guess the comic it came from. Previous guests have included Psycho Gran’s very own David Leach and OiNK fan and Beano artist Laura Howell. The current episode doesn’t feature anyone from OiNK, instead it features the comic itself.
Is that image a spoiler? Well, as soon as any pig pal sees the cover image for the episode they’ll instantly recognise Ian Jackson’s handiwork and maybe even the strip itself. Children’s book illustrator Liz Million is the OiNK fan who has provided for the podcast the full page (four panels) of #14’s The Hold Up written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Ian, and it’s up to comics writer and artist Rich Johnston to work out where it’s from. I’m not going to give anything away, you’ll have to listen to it for yourselves to find out if he’s successful or not.
In amongst the gameplay is plenty of reminiscing about OiNK and some lovely insights from Kev about working on the comic. In particular, I like the little bit about Meanwhile at the Ball from the final issue, #68. As long as you can grit your teeth through the two guests (but NOT Kev, to be fair) stating OiNK was a kid’s version of a certain adult comic (grrrr!) there’s plenty to enjoy here. You can either watch the episode on YouTube on your next train journey or even take Kev into the shower with the audio version. (Just don’t tell him you did that.)
To find out more about the series in general, and the man himself, you can read my original post from June 2021 when Comic Cuts had just been launched.
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