It feels fitting that this is our last comics post of the year. I’ll have a New Year’s message later with news of the blog and more in 2026, but as for comics the final issues of The Real Ghostbusters and The Transformers and Action Force are it, their official release date being this day way back in 1988.
Brian Williamson and Dave Harwood’sSlimer fronted a celebratory issue, New Years being something none of my other non-humour comics celebrated. But the Ghostbusters were based in New York where the ball drops, they couldn’t miss out on this. Best of all though, the results of a readers’ poll was presented in strip form with the team attending a dinner alongside the Marvel UK writers and artists in attendance. It’s genius stuff!
But it’s Art Wetherell and Dave’s Galvatron cover that’ll have fans reminiscing the most. The Time Wars had begun! This was my first big epic as a kid and it enthralled me for weeks; no one was safe from being killed off, and I do mean anyone. This would also be the last time we’d see that logo before the big change in seven days. More on that below, but first up what else did Marvel UK wrap up the year with?
Action Force Monthly #8 and Death’s Head #2 continued to entertain through the school holidays. What, you mean you only read your comics once and not multiple times between issues? I’m surprised The Real Ghostbusters isn’t the ‘Don’t Miss’ title, what with it being the only one celebrating what day it was, but instead Thundercats #90 takes that honour in what seems a rather random choice.
This week’s advert is actually the Next Issue promo from the back inside cover of Transformers, but one glance and you’ll understand why I just had to include it. I always loved it when my comics got a new look and this was a big one. I was still a newbie to the world of Transformers comics and looking at that new logo, coupled with that image and all of the contents to come the following week, I remember this page being a real thrill. I’d jumped on at just the right time!
I would eventually stay with the comic all the way to its conclusion with #332 so this logo became the de facto one for me and the issue was an incredible way to start the new year. Was it “The Ultimate Comic”? Pretty much. Even Lew Stringer’s strips were getting a crossover and hyped on the page.
With that, both 1988 and 2025 come to a close. As I said I’ll be back later on today to sign off for the year properly, then the blog’s first post for 2026 will be the next checklist. There’ll be new issues of the monthlies to find out about and no guesses for which comic would be the hot one to see in 1989.
In 2026 I’ll be starting a new regular series for OiNK’s pig pals, specifically those pig pals who wrote in to Uncle Pigg and had the thrill of seeing their name in the comic. Grunts was the letters page which had everything except letters on it! Drawings, celebrity spoofs, newspaper clippings (about OiNK or anything pig-related really), jokes for Nasty Laffs & Specs… you name it and the young readers had thought about it and sent it in.
To kick things off, here’s something special for the holidays: The Grunts Celebrity Special! Whether it was a reader spotting one of their favourite 80s celebs name-checking their favourite comic, a bonafide celeb pig pal themselves getting in touch, celebs partaking in an OiNK photo shoot voted for by readers or a politician meeting one of the editors. These appearances kind of went over my head as a kid, however as an adult it’s fun to see the waves this very different comic was making in the world of 80s entertainment.
As I sit here enjoying my glass of Red, Red Schloer we begin with #10’s Grunts, back when readers were lining up to send their problems in to be laughed at by their porcine pal, and the first celebrity appearance is UB40 frontman Ali Campbell! It’s a quote from another magazine spotted by Rupert French from Congleton in Cheshire and Uncle Pigg uses it to request readers let him know of any stars who Can’t Help Falling In Love With OiNK.
The next big musical name to grace the pages was Ian Astbury of The Cult who really was a true fan of the comic. Ian even bought OiNK mugs and t-shirts before he was interviewed by co-editor Tony Husband in the guise of Janet Street Porker, OiNK’s resident entertainment reporter. A quick preview of this appeared on the Grunts page of #15, below.
As I noted in the review for #16 this was quite the scoop for a children’s comic and a very surreal moment for Tony, seeing as how he was a fan of The Cult too. The MADchester music and cultural scene in 80s Manchester is well documented and has been the subject of many a documentary. It was a centre of talent, innovation and creativity, and OiNK was right there at the centre of it. Not only physically (given the office’s proximity to those in the scene) but also in its popularity with bands, singers, writers and more. You can read a little bit more about this in the issue’s review and in the post about my phone chats with Tony.
Below The Cult interview you can see the newsagent reservation coupon and a band called The 3 Johns, who I’d never heard of before this. This was actually another band of Jon Langford’s. Jon’s art can be seen in a few issues of OiNK after he was brought on by Tony and he and his band The Mekons starred in a couple of photo stories too! Also in #16 was a rather original competition, in which one lucky (depending on your point of view) reader could win a pop concert in their home. Le Lu Lus (or ‘Lelu Lu’s’) contacted OiNK as fans themselves and became the prize.
It’s time to Say Hello… to the next celebrity guest on the Grunts page of #22. Where this photo came from is anyone’s guess. Was it in a magazine like above? Is the excellently-name Ferny Bubble of Wandsworth, Southwest London a friend of Marc Almond’s? Or just a very keen pig pal? Marc of course was best known for being one half of Soft Cell, whose Tainted Love is still a floor filler (at least in my living room) to this day.
Not even celebrities were immune from Uncle Pigg’s jibes! As we …Wave Goodbye to Marc check out that Read All About It box next to him. This was the first time a press clipping about OiNK appeared in the comic as the wider printed media started to sit up and take notice. You can read all of the many clippings the editors loved showing off in their own blog post.
Half a year after their pop music special the OiNK team put together another musically-themed issue with #29 and it contained a few links back to the previous one, the biggest one being a full-page strip to announce the winner of the concert-in-your-home competition. Martin Benster was lucky he lived in Prestwich. Prestwich is a part of Greater Manchester and the OiNK guys couldn’t afford to send the band further afield so they were always going to choose someone local!
If you head off to #29’s review (don’t forget to come back) you’ll also see one of those great Mekons photo stories.
Two weeks later came the results of the OiNK Awards, in which readers had been given the chance to vote for their favourite (and least favourite) celebrities in a variety of daft categories. Biggest Wally, Worst Pop Song and Unfunniest Comedian were just some of the awards the kids had their say in choosing. While most of the winners were represented as Spitting Image Workshop puppets, BBC Radio DJ Steve Wright was game for a laugh and appeared in person to be presented with his Most Irritating DJ award by fellow DJ John Peel.
There’s one more special appearance in OiNK by a well-known public figure and it’s back to the Grunts page itself. Unlike most other comics OiNK included reader contributions in its specials and annuals, and in the pages of the second OiNK Holiday Special up popped the then-Health Minister Edwina Currie alongside Frank Sidebottom and co-editor Patrick Gallagher… not that Uncle Pigg appreciated this description!
This was part of the big anti-smoking push that OiNK was also a part of with its free Smokebuster Special given away to schools in the north of England. At a special event involving a bunch of lucky pig pals the press were in attendance including the South Manchester Reporter, which appears to have been Patrick’s old stomping ground.
There’s a rather funny story (infamous in the history of OiNK) related to just after this photograph was taken. The three editors (Patrick, Mark Rodgers and Tony) and Frank (Chris Sievey) saw all of the children back to the railway station and got them onto their respective trains home. Then all four of them lit up! The thing is, the press hadn’t left yet. But hey, this was all about stopping the kids from starting and they were out of sight, so you can’t fault the team’s ultimate goal. You can read highlights from the special Smokebuster edition of OiNK and its clear message in its own full review.
That’s our quick tour through the celebrity cameos from OiNK’s run. If you remember having something printed in the pages of the world’s funniest comic please get in touch via the contact form on the blog, or through social media (links in the main menu) or email at OiNK.Blog@iCloud.com. The new Grunts series is due to begin next September and will be updated quarterly with all of the reader submissions from the issues released over that time, and it’d be great to speak to some of those featured. Have you still got your Piggy Pink Prize?
These days we can document our lives as much (or as little) as we like thanks to the phones that never leave our vicinity. In fact, now I’ve a cat living with me it’s become my camera that just so happens to have a phone built in. Back in the 80s the process of getting our hands on the photos we’d taken was a more involved process, for me it required trips to the local chemist and at least a 24 hour wait and everything! So we were a lot more selective with our documenting back then.
Over the last several years some of the OiNK team have either very generously sent me photos or shared them on the Facebook group which I’ve then saved. This has endied up becoming a little collection of its own. So I thought the festive season, when we’re taking lots of photos to capture new memories with each other as well as thinking back to our own younger days, would be the perfect time to show these off in a kind of random scrapbook-like post. And here we are.
Let’s kick off with Jeremy Banx (Burp, Mr. Big Nose).
“So this is me posing in front of some pictures I’d drawn of Supercar when I was about 4”, Jeremy tells me. “I’m looking dubious because my dad or my gran or maybe both had told me by taking the photo it would make my drawings come to life just like on TV. This of course did not happen and I’ve never trusted anyone since.”
Jeremy’s photo reminds me of the comics my friend Roger and I created as kids. Roger created The Battle-oids, The School Busters and The Wally, while I created WarBots, The Real Smoke Busters and The Idiot. (Hey, he inspired me!) Also, together with our friend Bruce we made a monthly comic for our primary school classroom called The Moo! But anyway, back to the OiNK team and David Leach (Psycho Gran, Dudley DJ)
“Reading that article again after all this time is funny”, said David when I asked him about it. “The strip I’m working on in that picture is the birthday strip for the OiNK anniversary issue, where Psycho emerges from a birthday cake. The story about me working for Bob Godfrey is true, he was the first person I worked for as a cartoonist, I did that for a year drawing Henry’s Cat. I was Bob Godfrey’s ghost artist.”
At the end of the article a potential new OiNK character who never made it into the comic is revealed. “Brian Damage was something I was noodling with back then, but never got beyond the planning stage, although he did become a female character called Maxine Damage: Hit Girl for Hire, that was drawn by Jim Cheung and scheduled to appear in a Marvel UK comic magazine I developed called HYPER. It was to be a frenzied monthly anthology based on the style of Japanese Manga and would have featured a strip called B.O.B about a sentient walking bomb walking through a battlefield in search of his target written by Banx.”
Co-editor Patrick Gallagher has shared a plethora of old photographs both online and over our email exchanges, often jazzing them up with graphics and behind-the-scenes insights, such as these example. Below, you can see OiNK photographer John Barry with a rather familiar looking crocodile in front of him, but it’s the unfinished sculpture in the background that caught my eye, hence the superimposed OiNK Book 1989.
As described by Patrick, “John also helped out when we were pitching the TV show Round the Bend. Here he’s sculpting a model of Doc Croc in clay and on the desk in the background is a cast from a previous sculpt based on the butcher on the cover of The OiNK Book 1989. Also on the desk is a junior hacksaw he moulded from Play Doh.” Typical Patrick!
You’ll also see in the background Ian Jackson’s cardboard cutout of Mary Lighthouse from the first OiNK Holiday Special casting a beady eye over John’s work. Speaking of Round the Bend, it was co-created by OiNK’s three editors, Patrick, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers and was nominated for a Royal Television Award. Tony shared these photographs from the night of the awards event, the first showing (from left-to-right) Patrick, Mark and Tony, while the second also includes Mark’s partner and friend of the blog Helen Jones, and rather randomly Rory McGrath!
“Patrick, Mark and me at the Royal Television Awards with Round the Bend,” said Tony. “Where we came runners up so we got pissed, and me and Rory McGrath were nearly thrown out for shouting abuse at Richard Stilgoe, who was doing a set and we thought he was smug and shit.” (Stilgoe is a songwriter, musician and broadcaster and has contributed lyrics to Cats, Starlight Express and The Phantom of the Opera, in case you didn’t know.)
These weren’t the only photos in Tony’s archive. Next up is a wonderful collection of polaroids and snaps by OiNK photographer Ian Tilton that Tony scanned in, mainly of #30’s OiNK Awards when they worked with the Spitting Image Workshop to produce an apparently star-studded event. You’ll also see one of the actual celebrities, John Peel amongst the chaos, a photograph taken of Marc Riley as a disguised Snatcher Sam and Tony’s son, Paul Husband who you’ll also see in the next photo posing with some of his dad’s creations.
Today, Paul is a renowned commercial photographer and OiNK had its very own renowned snapper in the guise of Ian Tilton. That last photo in the collage was taken during the making of The Bully Who Went Bald in #2 and according to Tony, “With Marc all hunched over dressed like this, passers-by and car drivers were stunned and puzzled.” As for Ian, he has worked with such icons as Kurt Cobain, Iggy Pop and The Stone Roses, and has been praised by Q Magazine for “one of the six best rock photographs of all time”.
He also photographed the equally iconic (in my eyes anyway) cover to The OiNK! Book 1988 and there’s a special post about that cover and Ian’s other OiNK work which went up on the blog earlier this Christmas season. Something less plasticine based and more liquid based is next. Ian first met the OiNK guys at its launch party in some nice, plush pub in Manchester when he’d been asked to come along and take a portrait of the three editors for some pre-publicity. Family and friends were all watching as Ian attempted the photo session. “Attempted” being the operative word.
As told to me by Ian, trying to find Patrick, Mark and Tony had been difficult with the crowds in attendance, never mind trying to organise the three of them under his studio lights now that they were so drunk! Ian says it was great fun and the shots of them grinning and gurning were worth it. (I think we can all agree on that.) Not that they hung around though, they immediately ran back off to get even more drunk.
The next horrifying image is of Hunchback Boar of Scare Boars fame from #13, the last surviving member of the terrifying trio… or the only one we know the whereabouts of! According to Patrick he found him lurking under the lid of his scanner in the lead up to Halloween 2021, just in time for the review of 1986’s spooky spectacular. Check it out and you’ll even see a video of Patrick and the Scare Boar together again after two-and-a-half decades.
The next photos will be rather small when you click on them because that’s the size they were when shared by Patrick. First up is a photo of him and Marc Riley (of The Fall and BBC 6Music and creator of Harry the Head, Doctor Looney and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth) on holiday, followed by a shot of some lucky pig pals getting to sit in on the recording of the OiNK 45 record. Not only did they get to meet Patrick and Marc (fresh back from that holiday and rather tanned), they also hung out with Frank Sidebottom himself, Chris Sievey. Then, a photo of Patrick with someone who didn’t work on OiNK but who you just might recognise.
Patrick met David Bowie when he was tasked with looking after him for half an hour before the Mark and Lard radio show (Mark Radcliffe and our own Marc). The photo was taken by David’s manager and you can tell Patrick’s just a little bit happy, can’t you? While there were no mentions or clippings on the Grunts pages mentioning this particular celebrity, Patrick tells me David Bowie confirmed he was a bona fide OiNK reader!
I’m going to wrap up our OiNK Scrapbook with some of my own photographs. The first time I met Patrick was during the days of the old blog. He was on a family vacation in Donegal and took the rather long drive to Belfast (across the island!) to see me in my old house to discuss some future projects. Not long after that I then got to meet Lew Stringer (Tom Thug, Pete and his Pimple, Pigswilla) and Davy Francis (Cowpat County, Greedy Gorb, Doctor Madstarkraving) at the Enniskillen Comic Fest.
I’ve spoken with Patrick and Lew ever since and count them as true friends. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Davy a few times over coffee or a Greggs sausage roll, and I’m glad to say he’s an absolute gent and a really funny guy to hang out with. In the photo with Davy is the fantastic Jenika Ioffreda (Vampire Free Style) and the last photo was taken during what ended up being a simply hilarious chat in a local bar after the comic con with Lew, Ian Richardson (Sinister Dexter, Captain America, Judge Dredd) and the man who had us in stitches most of the night, Yanick Paquette (Wonder Woman, Batman Incorporated, Swamp Thing).
Yes, these last few aren’t from the time of OiNK but they’re most definitely memorable moments from the time of the OiNK Blog. Maybe one day I should share more of the behind-the-scenes of this site and the work (and fun) that goes into it, but for now we’ll close the OiNK Scrapbook. These photos are just the smallest of hints at what it must’ve been like to put our favourite anarchic comic together.
Back in 1987 two things happened in the build up to Christmas. Firstly, my older brother grew out of comics and his weekly Beano. However, The Dandy and The Beano Fifty Golden Years had already been obtained by Santa. As luck would have it, the second thing that happened was me discovering OiNK and immediately falling in love with comics. So this special book was redirected into my stocking in the very early hours of Christmas Day and still sits on my shelves decades later.
While my brother’s comic didn’t really appeal at the time, and the strips in here were even more old fashioned, I found the book’s story about the creation and evolution of the comics fascinating. As an adult I feel I’ve also developed a better appreciation for the classic strips inside. This is mainly thanks to reading a couple of the earliest editions inside the Beano’s 80th Anniversary Box Set and my yearly dips into the world of the Big Comic Books. So it felt like a good time for me to revisit this very special celebration for the first time in nearly forty years.
As seems the case with all comics celebrations the release dates mentioned throughout are actually the cover dates. The cover dates usually referred to the Saturday after publication, the comics released one working day before whatever day was mentioned on the cover. For example, #1 of The Dandy had a date of 4th December 1937, which was the Saturday of that week and it states “Every Friday” on the cover, so it would’ve been released on Thursday 2nd. It’s a small thing but it does annoy me when this constantly happens, especially in a book created by the publisher of said comics.
Things kick off with this bright recreation of the first ever Dandy comic, complete with the original version of Korky the Cat. It’s followed by #1 of The Beano and Big Eggo which launched in July of 1938. It then launches headlong into a large selection of examples of strips from the early days of both comics, from those familiar with 80s readers such as Lord Snooty to plenty I’d never heard of, with names like Freddy the Fearless Fly and Deep-Down Daddy Neptune.
It’s not long before the book is showing off its celebrity fans too, beginning with radio DJ Mike Read who guest-starred in an issue of The Beano alongside Dennis. Other notables include Cilla Black, Geoff Capes, The Krankies (suitably enough in the Dennis the Menace section), Ken Dodd, John Craven, Little and Large, Geoffrey Palmer and Joan Armatrading, among many more. It’s a who’s-who of British 80s celebs. Mark Hamill also pops up of course, and he’d pop up again in the bookazine that came with that Beano 80th set. Clearly, he never grew out of it.
Of course, there are also a few celebrities you wouldn’t want to see included today, but unfortunately we have to remember this is very much a product of its time. So if you can ignore a couple of certain children’s TV presenters and a certain politician you’ll find a lot to love here. As you can see Mike shares a spread with a new strip created for the book with Grandpa introducing Poison Ivy to the classic strips and then it’s on to the meat of the book
Desperate Dan makes up the first themed section, of which there are several for the more popular characters. His first appearance and some of his earlier misadventures are included, as well as one from 1983 to show how he’d evolved. This Welcome to Cactusville spread is great too, perfectly summing up the classic version of the character.
Others who get this treatment include Lord Snooty, Black Bob, Korky the Cat and Dennis the Menace among others. Sadly, none of the girl characters do. Instead, they’re all lumped together into a few pages called ‘Have a Giggle With the Girls’. Not even Minnie the Minx is well catered for! An indictment on the times, yes, and it also shows how far we’ve come. One glance at the review for this year’s Beano Christmas Special will prove how the comic has set this straight in the years since.
This was the part of the book that fascinated me the most as a child. I’d never considered anything other than both comics temporarily ceasing during wartime and paper shortages weren’t part of my reasoning! As it turns out, they didn’t. They kept calm and carried on, you might say. Both reduced their page counts and went fortnightly, alternating each week so kids still had the option of weekly laughs.
I remember as a child thinking this was incredible. In fact, I was only annoyed there wasn’t more information about how they were produced during this time, what’s mentioned here having whetted my appetite. (The aforementioned bookazine did a better job of this 30 years later.) We get some examples of the humour that helped the children through those tough years with the likes of Lord Snooty (again), Pansy Potter and these two surprise entries. Try to ignore the accents, they’re another sign of the times, written at a time of war and it was important to keep the children unafraid, and having a laugh at the enemy of the time surely helped.
Over the past few years I’ve really been enjoying writing the Annuals section of the blog. It may contain the slowest possible real time read throughs but everyyear the new inclusions are worth the wait. Even though they’ve always gone on sale months beforehand, they’ve always been a huge part of Christmas (that’s why that section gets updated during the festive season) and the writers of this book knew it too.
Wow! £100? Even in 1987 I remember thinking, “Is that all?” Oh, and in case you’re wondering (much like ten-year-old me did) what that ‘Magic-Beano’ title is all about, Magic was a short-lived comic that ceased during the wartime paper rationing and never returned, so it was merged into The Beano and the books bore its name for a few years. I like looking back on old covers like this, particularly annuals as they seem to encapsulate the time they were published and provide a year-by-year look at how a comic evolved. Also included are similar pages for the summer specials, those tiny Dandy and Beano Comics Library collections and the 1000th and 2000th editions of both comics.
Originally The Dandy and The Beano contained adventure stories and prose funnies and I’ve already shown some of these off on the blog. The thrills and spills of classic adventures take pride of place here too. While the book explains these were mainly before TV became mainstream and so could be printed with few illustrations, they’ve included this wonderful spread from a Dandy annual in the 1950s, newly colourised for the 80s.
I may have been growing up in a world of TV and computer games but I still recall delving deep into these particular pages of the book, probably because they were such an unexpected surprise. I also spent a long time with any part of the book that gave an insight into how it was made. Any disappointment I felt with the lack of such information in the World War II chapter was soon put to rest with a great four-page feature starring The Bash Street Kids.
Taking a strip from 1983 that had answered readers’ queries of how The Beano was produced, the double-page strip is split across four pages with a factual article of the process across the middle of each. I find these middle sections the most interesting now as an adult but for kids it was a brilliant idea to have the characters being taught the same things in a lighter, funnier way, with further details right there too if they wanted.
There’s just too much in this book to cover in one blog post. If there’s a character you can think of from The Dandy or The Beano’s first 50 years, they’ll be in here. If there’s a moment, a piece of merchandise, a memory you have… anything you can think of that might have been part of their first 50 years, it’ll be in here. What I’ve been able to squeeze into one blog post is just the tip of the iceberg.
Wrapped up in a gorgeous hardback you can see what’s beneath that dust cover at the very top of this post. It looks lovely on a shelf like that. Inside are 144 pages of high quality paper, all full-colour and there’s an absolute tonne to read! I can remember being engrossed by this for days throughout the holidays that year. I’ll wrap things up today with another celebrity cameo and a quick example of the variety of topics the book covers: fashion!
Great, now I’ve got Drop the Pilot stuck in my head! I must say I sympathise with Joan here, her quote rings an all-too-familiar bell. (You thought all these comics on the blog were my copies from childhood?) This fantastic book originally sold for £4.95, a princely sum for something sitting among the annuals that year, but you’ll get it for cheaper than that nowadays on eBay.
This has brought back a lot of happy memories of reading it the first time around. I feel like a kid at Christmas all over again. (Well, I still am!) For any fans that missed out on this at the time, or perhaps for younger blog readers that hadn’t started reading Beano (or been born) yet, this is a must purchase for a few quid. Also, for anyone interested in the history and evolution of comics this is still truly fascinating and has the cherry on top of including so many laughs along the way!
This post is coming to you during the afternoon of Christmas Day 2025, so with all of the turkey, ham, roasties, stuffing, sprouts and chorizo, maple carrots, roasted parsnips, bacon wrapped cocktail sausages, mushy peas, apple sauce, cranberry sauce and gravy in your stomachs (just me?) you’re not going to be able to move for a while. That means it’s the perfect time to lie down with our latest Christmas annual and it’s the first in a new series. In 1985 there was something of a momentous book sliding down chimneys across the country with the rotund fella, all wrapped up in a simply gorgeous piece of John Higgins art.
Well, it would become momentous with the gift of hindsight at least. This is the first ever Transformers Annual from Marvel UK, co-produced by Grandreams. Basically, Marvel provided the editorial content while Grandreams handled the publishing side of things. Their offices were in the same building and after a few years Marvel would handle everything themselves. This first Transformers Annual was released in the autumn of 1985 for the Christmas market. Ian Rimmer had taken over as editor of the comic a few months before its release but this book had already been completed and edited by the comic’s launch editor, Sheila Cranna.
While it contains some silly fillers the likes of which we’ve seen in other licenced annuals it’s the stories that really stand out. They are superb! In fact, this series of annuals became known for having some of the best stories Marvel UK produced. The strips packed a lot into their smaller page counts and the prose stories were often the best parts of the books, even establishing key parts of Transformers lore. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, does this first annual ease us into the greatness to come?
Nope, it goes full throttle right from the off with some lovely atmospheric scenes of the army meeting the Autobots for the first time, and even the appearance of Ronald Reagan doesn’t dampen proceedings. Plague of the Insecticons is written by Transformers mainstay Simon Furman (Death’s Head, Dragon’s Claws, To the Death) with art by Mike Collins (Doctor Who, Darkstars, American Gothic) and Jeff Anderson (Judge Dredd, Swiftsure, Zoids), and the gorgeous colours are by Gina Hart (Rogue Trooper, Rupert Bear, Doctor Who).
In much the same way as the live-action movies have integrated the governments of the world into the Transformers universe, here their involvement also makes sense. However, the Insecticons have infiltrated proceedings due to their diminutive size in insect form (prepare for ludicrous mass shifting into huge robot modes). Optimus Prime thinks back to how the secret could’ve gotten out and it boils down to human error, one unscrambled call while Soundwave was monitoring. As they emerge they scream that they’re Autobots and attack the troops, who then turn against Prime.
This was the debut of the Insecticons here in the UK before they appeared in the American comic. They make quite the impact, announcing how they’ll obey their great leader Optimus and destroy the neighbouring city! But as the otherr Autobots chase after them, Prime heads off in another direction. His gut tells him the Insecticons feel restrained (half destroying a city is restraint?), guessing that as new warriors they must be being controlled by a third-party until they master their abilities.
This doesn’t stop him from joining the fight. For the only time in the comic he sends Roller (the small vehicle that resided inside his trailer in the toy) to help out even if it means he has to split his concentration (here Roller is a remote device, not an autonomous vehicle). He finds Ravage with a remote device and ends up tricking one of the Insecticons, Bombshell into planting a cerebral shell on Ravage’s body. These devices made it possible for Bombshell to control the mind of whoever he wished, but here his own mind was being controlled by Ravage, and thus a vicious cycle plays out in the final pages. Wonderful stuff.
The second, shorter strip is And There Shall Come… a Leader! with writer and colourist remaining, joined by John Stokes (Fishboy, L.E.G.I.O.N., The Invisibles) on art and Richard Starkings (The Sleeze Brothers, The Real Ghostbusters, Transformers: Generation 2) lettering. This tale takes us back millions of years and across space to Cybertron and Prime’s first battle as Autobot Commander. Most of the story is taken up with him awaiting the nod from the grand council of Autobot elders, led by Emirate Xaaron (an original UK comic creation who would eventually become a toy), to okay a strike against Megatron.
Up until this point it would seem the Autobots had been holding a defending position, their dedication to peace forbidding them from leading an attack. They’ve engaged in battles but only in response to the Decepticons and under the auspices of the outdated, elderly council. I love how it all comes down to politics in a kid’s book. It’s initially strange to see the toys so accurately drawn instead of the modified comic/cartoon versions but in the end it makes it feel lovingly quaint. With lots of the readers no doubt receiving Transformers for Christmas in 1985 I’m sure it made them happy to see their toys in action this way.
As the Transformers annuals continued, the prose stories would soon become the stand outs, giving us more in-depth characterisations; taking their time to delve into each with their inner thoughts, more intricate or dare I say intimate/personal storylines and even important new pieces of Transformers character lore that would become canon throughout the various incarnations of the franchise for decades to come. This book’s stories may be smaller in scope but they’re no less fun and produce some great images in the mind as you read. Most likely written by Simon, the art is by John Ridgway and coloured by Gina, their illustrations used to highlight key moments. They’re gorgeous and add a great deal to each tale.
Missing in Action sees Tracks incapacitated and left for dead in his car mode, only to be stolen by two small-time bank robbers who see this abandoned Corvette Stingray as the perfect getaway car. The story culminates in a small alien robot-obsessed boy stumbling upon him and getting entangled in a bank robbery that goes horribly wrong, the building exploding in flames and partially collapsing. The rescue scene with Inferno (who looks even better when drawn toy-accurate like this), Grapple and Hoist is a thrill to read.
Hunted! starts off well with one of my favourite Deceptions, Ravage stalking a human expedition leader in the jungles of South America (gloriously illustrated by John, too) and there’s some nice chemistry between Prowl and Bumblebee, as well as some genuine comic timing in the narration. In the end though, it all comes to a sudden end with a resolution that’s far too easy, almost like the writer had suddenly realised they were running out of their word count. But it’s still fun.
There are some corners of the internet that take these tales of transforming sentient alien robots far too seriously, who complain about where the annual stories fit into the overall story arcs. Given how each comic tale could last a month or two in real life but in the fictional world take place over a couple of days, that leaves an awful lot of time in-between in which anything could happen with the characters before returning to the status quo for the next exciting instalment. So I say just go with the flow and you’ll really enjoy this book.
Stories aside, this first of seven annuals also includes the usual kind of filler material we’d find in most other Grandreams annual. There are basic profiles, mazes, word searches and the obligatory dice board game. Given the quality of the strips and prose these basic pages seem out of place. The stories have depth and didn’t talk down to the young readers, so don’t let the fillers put you off.
Then, just to add one more surprise to this children’s comic book, it has a downbeat ending. The Insecticons story has an Epilogue right at the back of the annual in which it’s clear Optimus Prime and the President are on the same side, but have misunderstood each other. The resulting endgame could have dire consequences. If anything, all those silly filler pages only make moments like this all the more powerful.
There’s something special about reading a comics annual at Christmas and I’m thrilled at the prospect of reliving these every December for the next six years. While the toy-like images and the puzzle pages do age it, it’s storytelling and gorgeous art belie the fact it was 40 visits from Santa ago that this slid down the chimney to eager children across the UK. It’s a superb start. It’s a cliché to say it, but there’s definitely more to this book than meets the eye.
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