Kev F Sutherland contributed so many great gags to the second half of OiNK’s run. Hugely prolific, he even had his name attached to ten pages of the final issue! His Meanwhile… series was a personal favourite of mine and, alongside such brilliant contributions as the pun-packed March of the Killer Breakfasts and the hilarious Three Scientists, OiNK kickstarted his comics career which has spanned titles as varied as Beano, Red Dwarf Smegazine and Ghost Rider 2099! Now, he’s kickstarting something else. (See what I did there?)
Kev has released five Shakespeare graphic novels in recent years and now he’s raising funds to publish the first ever Shakespeare Comic! This will contain a selection of strips from the graphic novels already out in the wild, as well as two brand new strips from upcoming books based on Twelfth Night and King Lear, the former changed into a monster movie called Twelfth Thing… you get the drift.
Those reprints aren’t just straight copies either. Any that were originally printed in black and white have now received a full coating of colour, and they’re resized. Kev explains this means each page of the comic will contain the same amount of strip as two from the books. Bargain. Seeing as how his books were mainly only available from him directly at cons, festivals and his school art masterclasses, this is a great way for fans far and wide to get hold of them.
The 32-page full-colour comic also comes with a large poster of Shakespeare’s Britain. Not only does this contain ol’ William’s characters in the places where their stories are set, Kev is also giving readers the chance to have their caricature drawn on the map where they live! Sounds good, doesn’t it?
£10 will bag you the comic itself, signed by Kev, and the poster. The next level up is the one where your face could be drawn (in a very Kev F way, obviously) on the map and that’ll cost £30. Finally, there’s a £60 option for anyone who’d like their company name and logo (or, again, their caricature) on the map poster.
Kev only needs £250 to reach his goal and at the time of writing this, just a few hours after it was launched, he’s already at £218. Oh, no, hang on, wait… £248! That’s me on the map, then. Obviously it’s going to reach its target (and then some) so it’s guaranteed to be published and I’ve a feeling you’ll want to bag a copy of this one for yourself. Whether you’re familiar with the works of Shakespeare or not, this is by one of OiNK’s most consistently funny cartoonists so you know it’ll be a great laugh either way!
Head on over to the Kickstarter campaign before 12:41 on the afternoon of Saturday 13th June 2026 to grab yourself a copy. I’ll be telling everyone all about it right here on the OiNK Blog when it arrives, so you won’t want to be left feeling you missed out!
WELL WOULD YOU LOOK AT THIS: I was just about to hit ‘Publish’ on this post and the Shakespeare Comic has hit its goal! Wonderful news!
Lee Sullivan’s cover for this week’s Transformers and Visionaries combines the issue’s two robotic strips in one striking image rather than using a split screen, while Brian Williamson and Nick Abadzis provide us with my favourite of the four Real Ghostbusters in a solo role.
Sky Lynx was probably my favourite character from the cartoon, simply because he loved himself so much yet was so utterly charming and polite as he fawned. He doesn’t feature in any action this week, instead stealthily stalking Dreadwind, but it still made for an exciting cover even if Dogfight was in a different story. The female warriors are still portrayed poorly in unnecessarily scant clothing but at least they have a biting sense of humour when confronted by typical male arrogance.
At the time of writing this blog post one of The Real Ghostbusters strips feels rather relevant. All those fossil fuels we still continue to dig up are full of the haunted spirits of the creatures they come from. However, in a comic that has already had strong environmental stories, the solution is very strange. A deal is struck with the oil diggers that they’ll not harm the ghosts if the spirits ensure the well never runs dry. Not exactly sending the right message there, something the comic was usually very good at.
That wonderful Starscream tale ends in a surprisingly sad way as the maniacal not-quite-dead Decepticon pleads for release but two Nebulans slaughter him regardless. Death’s Head #7 continues to entertain with the funniest strip of his run and last week’s Doctor Who Magazine remains too. I’ve been informed it’s an Ice Warriors article, not strip, so in a comics checklist there’s no info on the actual comic story. Thundercats continues to limp on, again playing out like the weekly Ghostbusters comic but released only a fraction as often and already containing reprints. At least there was a new freebie to start collecting this month.
As promised, I’ve finally got a new contemporary comics advert to share with you. Now, as a huge fan of the cartoon and his humour strip in The Real Ghostbusters, you’d think I’d have been all over a Beano-esque humour comic with Slimer as the star, wouldn’t you? If you’re unaware of the comic in question, here’s a proper introduction to It’s Wicked after the teaser back in week 34.
At the time OiNK was still fresh in my mind, a comic that spoofed what it deemed to be the tired and safe comics of old. OiNK was a breath of fresh air, so It’s Wicked felt like a step backwards to me. To this 11-year-old it was using a new and exciting character to churn out the same old jokes that had originally put me off humour comics.
Plus, there’s the very obvious way It’s Wicked was a Marvel UK rip-off of Beano and The Dandy etc. Have a look at the cover of any issue and it just screams “DC Thomson could sue us for this”, from every part of its layout right down to the colours used on the logo! We wanted originality and using Slimer in this way felt cheap and nothing more than a ploy to sell us something pretty tacky. It’s Wicked would last for only 17 weekly issues and I never picked up a single one, and never felt like I was missing out. Did you try it? Was it as horrific as I assumed?
Oh dear, that was rather downbeat for the OiNK Blog, wasn’t it? Well, Marvel UK’s range did have its ups and downs, thankfully they weighed heavily towards the former. In fact, next week my own two comics have a big celebratory issue and the return of a favourite Cybertronian of mine. See you back here in seven, then.
This post is being written for OiNK’s Pre-Release section of the blog, and this is about as pre-release as you can get! We’re going right back to 1978, in fact. Back to OiNK co-creator and co-editor Mark Rodgers and writer Graham Exton’s university years and a special project they created, certain parts of which may be of particular interest to you pig pals out there.
“The Literature Degree that Mark and I were studying for at Leeds Uni had a publishing module, so we figured it would be fun to do a comic,” Graham tells me. That comic was Germs, the title an anagram of their initials (Graham’s middle name is Stafford). Looking back, it’s a fun little insight into the developing talents of both before they got their breaks in the comics industry, and you can read the whole thing in this post thanks to Graham.
Graham is very honest about what he thinks of the end result. “We did everything wrong, like drawing a whole page on A4 paper (not Bristol Board), not using scripts, lousy lettering, and cramming in so many pages we couldn’t break even when we sold it on campus,” he says. “Mark’s mum came to our rescue by charging 50p a copy to each customer at the British Legion she ran, then taking them back when they were ‘finished with’. She was brill, Our Shirl.”
Shirl wasn’t the only parent to help out. “My mum did the typing for the contents page on her fancy word processing computer,” recalls Graham. “Probably Ventura or some such. She had to figure it out herself as no one knew what a word processor was. It was the most professional part of the comic! So, like Ian Dury’sClever Bastards we had help from our mums. We learned a lot about publishing, which was great for Mark in particular.”
Eight years before OiNK hit shelves (six years before the team completed their dummy issue for the publishers as a proof of concept), there are hints within Germs of what was to come when they’d once again have the same level of creative freedom. While reading it you can tell that unique OiNK humour is in there, albeit in an early guise. There are plenty of spoofs, very random moments, strips referring to themselves as comic strips, even the way some of the titles are drawn feels familiar.
Mark and Graham were learning their craft, a craft they would both excel at, culminating in the comic we all love so much to this day
However, that’s not all. There are a few actual precursors to specific OiNK strips in here. The Mad Monk from #28 actually appears here in pretty much the same form, albeit drawn by Graham instead of Davey Jones. There’s also The Jolly Wedding, another one by Graham that would transform into a smaller three-panel strip drawn by the legendary Tom Paterson in The OiNK! Book 1988.
There are more too. “I liked Mark’s Police Vet strip [which would be developed further for the first book and #64], which involved getting a stuck Rhino out of a tree by chucking a brick at it,”says Graham. “Mark liked my Mad Monk strip, and had Davey Jones illustrate it for OiNK. Mark may have plundered a few others. There was one about a beach encounter where someone got hugged to death [turned into a page drawn by Lew Stringer in OiNK]. You can tell Mark and I grew up in the 60’s, when Bax and Ken Reid were at their wackiest and most violent.”
Yes, it’s rough around the edges but Germs should be seen in the context of when it was created, as Mark and Graham were learning their craft, a craft they would both excel at, culminating in the comic we all love so much to this day. There are some little treasures here though. Personally, I giggled at the array of different copyright notices, the depiction of an “Asst. Director”, all of the brill Bermuda ‘Narna (“Yoo hoo”) and the rendition of the 1812 Overture!
A rather simple Transformers and Visionaries cover by Jez Hall in comparison to the comic’s usual high calibre of front pages belies another excellent issue inside, while our characters’ dialogue on Dave Elliott’s cover for The Real Ghostbusters doesn’t make much sense given the image, which has been pointed out to me is a spoof of a Fantastic Four cover. This still doesn’t make the speech make sense and who out of this comic’s young audience would know an obscure FF cover? Weird choices abound.
In the American Transformers story the Mecannibals may have looked silly when we first met them but by now they were already among the best original creations the comic ever had. Pure evil with a comedic slant, I loved them! In the UK story the animated corpse of Starscream is the real highlight of the issue. Not confirming whether he’s actually living or dead, this had me glued to the story as a kid! Check out the link below to see Andrew Wildman’s depiction of him including some brilliant in-jokes.
In our other comic, main story Snack Attack had no dialogue whatsoever, playing out like a very funny silent comedy. A bold move for the strip that took up the most space in the issue. Spengler’s Spirit Guide tied in with this week’s prose story and included a spoof history of horror comics, while the Dead True series detailed a spooky urban myth tale centering around jealousy. Another great read all round.
Nice to see Visionaries actually getting a mention this week. In fact, Transformers gets a good chunk of the checklist to detail all of its strips beyond just credits for once. While the Mecannibals were a great addition to the story, the all-female warriors were sadly depicted as cringingly poorly as you can imagine. A bit of a spoiler about the true nature of Starscream there too! Also, you’ve just got to love some of the strip names the Real Ghostbusters team came up with.
Action Force Monthly and Death’s Head are the same issues as last time and if you haven’t checked out the latter before then you simply must read the highlights in the review from the comic’s real time read through, link further below. Such a funny story, full of slapstick. The big issue of the week was the latest Doctor Who Magazine, although I’m not sure if The Ice Warriors were the stars of the strip or a written article.
I’ve had the pleasure of reading some of the classic issues of the magazine for the blog and their rather unique output while the show was in its wilderness years. You can check out the latest of these in the Death’s Head section of the blog, an issue he made a tiny cameo in a few years after his comic ended. That’s us for now. Next time, we’ll finally get our next contemporary comics advert. It’s for a comic that really didn’t appeal to young me despite it starring a favourite cartoon and comics character. You can see what it was in just seven days.
Saturday 8th November 1986. The day everything changed for me. I’d browsed my friends’ humour comics but they never made me laugh enough and all looked the same. This was the day I’d discover a truly unique comic for myself, one that genuinely made me roar and had me obsessed from that day onwards.
I could get like that as a kid. In all honesty, I can still become fanatically obsessed when I discover something new that speaks to me, it’s one of life’s pleasures. OiNK was the latest in a long line of childhood obsessions and one that has stayed with me for four decades, to such a degree that I’ve written this mammoth blog and am launching my own writing career off the back of it. All because of a silly comic featuring pigs, puns… and plops!
Like most of my greatest childhood loves I’ve a huge amount of personal memories associated with OiNK. Yes, there are direct memories of enjoying the content of the comic itself and I’ve whittered on about such things throughout the real time read through. But I’ve so many other wonderful, more personal memories that I simply wouldn’t have 40 years later without this comic.
Take for example those who are no longer here. I remember my cousin giving me a few of his back issues when we visited them one evening in 1987 and as I sat looking through them next to my nanny she clocked the cover to #3 (by Tony Husband) with its bare pig bottoms floating in space. I wasn’t sure how she’d react. She often complained about violence and swearing in movies… but she looked at it, then at me, and let out a little schoolgirl-like giggle.
For many years my mum and her best friend May (who I called Aunt May despite not being related) would take it in turns every Thursday to make lunch for each other and spend the afternoon gossiping and drinking coffee. During what I called OiNK’s Golden Age (the last few months of 1987) I discovered it had begun arriving into the shop every-other Thursday instead of Saturdays as it had previously.
My mum and May are both no longer with us. Mum passed a couple of years ago and May has been gone a long time now. However, I can so vividly remember running from school to the newsagent and then to her house, sitting laughing away to myself with those issues while eating her fancy foil-wrapped Viscount biscuits. I can remember reading the Halloween issue and hearing them discuss whether I still believed in Santa or not, thinking I was too engrossed to listen, and confirming nine-year-old me’s suspicions that year.
This resulted in me searching my parents’ bedroom a few weeks before Christmas, not for the toys I’d asked from Santa but for The OiNK! Book 1988. I’d seen it sitting on the display table in the newsagent for a couple of months and now my excitement was spilling over. It was my most anticipated present that year. I remember my fingers stumbling across the brown paper bag underneath their wardrobe and pulling that grinning pig face out from within it! I didn’t read it. I didn’t want to ruin Christmas Day, instead it was the thrill of finding it and the excitement of knowing it was in the house, waiting.
By this time OiNK stickers were adorning my headboard, wardrobe, cupboards and the family fridge. The massive calendar poster that came with my first few issues of the comic took pride of place on my bedroom wall. That Christmas Eve I sat in bed, empty stocking by my feet, reading the first Christmas issue for the umpteenth time, so much better than a cartoon movie or classic festive tale from one of my books. I repeated this the next Christmas Eve too, and I remember being somewhat heartbroken the year after that with no new issue to see in the most exciting night of the year (after OiNK had been cancelled in 1988).
OiNK #14 (top of this post) was my first. I can’t remember why I was scanning the comics shelves but Jeremy Banx’s cover made me laugh and that big, bright pink logo excited me for what was inside. My dad also passed the same year as my mum and since then a fresh memory of my first issue has come flooding back. I can remember us trying our best to solve the riddle of the murder mystery page together, then dad giving up and checking the answer only to laugh as he realised we would never have got it! I ended up cheating and checking the answer myself in bed that night, trying to work it out way past when I should’ve been asleep. (Here it is below, the answer is in #14’s review.)
After I moved out of home my dad wanted to gut out a lot of the stuff I’d left behind, so I had to choose a few issues of each comic series I’d collected as a kid to keep. For OiNK I chose the first weekly, the last issue and of course that book. These copies are still the ones I have today. That book in particular is a cherished item and one I’ll never part with, not only because of how funny it is but for the personal memories attached to it.
For example, I remember during the 1987 Christmas holidays showing the cover off to any family friend that came to visit, eagerly anticipating their reaction as I turned it over to show them the rear. (Literally the rear.) “Oh, he has to show you this first,” my mum would say to everyone, laughing before offering them a cuppa and telling me to go and play. These are the sorts of memories that I treasure, and they’re still as clear as a bell in my mind thanks to their association with OiNK. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any photos of that Christmas, so here’s one from a good few years earlier and the cover in question. I definitely got my love of the season from mum.
Some individual characters and strips played a huge role in my growing years. Tom Thug helped me laugh at a school bully in my later teen years, a funny rhyming strip about a popular girl with bad dental care scared me into brushing my teeth before bed every night, the comic’s anti-smoking Madvertisements were the bane of my parents’ lives for a while, Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins gave me the strength to stand up to friends who decided to pick on a new kid at school, I made friends in my new scary grammar school partly through showing some 2000AD fans the Judge Pigg strips… the list goes on and on.
Throughout the real time read through there are examples of reactions from myself or friends to some of OiNK’s contents. One set of reactions elicits such funny memories that I’ll retell it here. I asked my dad if I could have The OiNK ! 45, the vinyl record with The OiNK! Song, The OiNK! Rap and Frank Sidebottom’s OiNK! Get Together Song. Little did I know how atrocious these would sound to my now-adult ears. Of course, at ten-years-old I loved that about them! My parents’ horrific reactions were genuine, but then they’d start to exaggerate and it became so funny to hear them pretend-scream from three floors down.
That was only half the story. Unfortunately for me (very fortunately for them) the excruciating sounds were short-lived. I went out to play with friends one day and, while it was the autumn and not exactly warm, my bedroom was on the top floor with a skylight. The autumn sun streamed in, the glass heating up the spot on the bed beneath it, right where I’d left the record without its cardboard sleeve. I was devastated to come home and find it badly warped and beyond use. Seeing a way out from the torture my mum and dad both laughed when they saw it and told me they wouldn’t order another after I’d been so careless with it. However, upon seeing my disappointment they asked what other OiNK things were for sale and a few weeks later I very happily received my mug.
There’s a whole other story about that cup and how it ended up linking me with the comic in a way I simply could never have imagined! But you can read about that elsewhere.
Originally I thought this post would be a way of sharing some memories of reading the comic as a child, highlighting favourite moments from its run that I never forgot enjoying 40 years ago. However, as I began to write I soon found OiNK was triggering all of these very personal thoughts, especially of mum and dad. I was going to publish the post at some point over the next month or so but as these memories came flooding back, and as I’ve found myself equally missing my parents and smiling at the funny moments with them, I’ve decided to post it today on the big anniversary of #1.
I can’t think of any better way to mark the 40th anniversary of OiNK. Thank you to the whole OiNK team for the memories; not just the memories of your work but also those you created in the lives of your readers. I’ll be eternally grateful to you all for these moments with my loved ones that’ll forever be fresh in my mind thanks to OiNK.
Today way back in 1991, Brian Williamson’s and Nick Abadzis’ cover to The Real Ghostbusters #47 and Art Wetherell’s for Transformers and Visionaries #216 were shining bright from newsagent shelves across the UK. As far as I’m concerned, together they make quite the impact.
I’ve mentioned recently how I’m currently watching Doctor Who from the very beginning and have been for nearly two years. Before I began, I took somewhat less time to enjoy every episode of Grand Designs on Channel 4 (resulting in me beginning to pay for it so I didn’t have any ads while doing so – bliss) and one of Kevin McCloud’s rules is never cut down grand old trees. Advice Egon should’ve followed and he might not have ended up being turned into his favourite fungi.
I really enjoyed these split screen Transformers covers, highlighting the new story format inside. It’s a shame they didn’t do more of them because over the next 100 issues there were some great double-bills I’d loved to have seen presented on the cover this way. Inside, there’s news of the first UK stories to be created specifically for the new five-page black and white strips. I think it would’ve eased the blow for some long-time readers if they’d waited until they were ready to change the comic’s make up.
Race With the Devil was memorable for two reasons. The first being Andrew Wildman’s depiction of a team of archeologists who were very similar to the stars of the sister comic in the photo above. The second was it ending on the reanimated corpse of Starscream. That image stayed with me for decades! Check it out at the link below. The trouble with having three stories now of course means there’s less room for details of each in the checklist, which is a shame because it’s a blinder of an issue.
Last week’s Action Force Monthly and Thundercats instalments remain for obvious reasons, while the only new entry is another monthly title which’ll most likely also be stuck here for a few more checklists. This issue’s slapstick humour perfectly complimented the action and wry wit of Death’s Head, making it one of the funniest issues of the run, which was no small feat.
We’re in the middle of a bit of a dry spell as far as comics adverts go and this continues next week, but don’t despair they’ll be back soon to tug at the ol’ grey cells.
Prepare to feel very old, for 2026 is OiNK’s 40th anniversary! That’s right, 40 years since we met the likes of Uncle Pigg, Tom Thug, Horace ‘Ugly Face’ Watkins, Psycho Gran, Burp and Ham Dare. Four decades! To help us original pig pals through this difficult time the OiNK Blog has a myriad of posts planned to celebrate, beginning with five throughout the comic’s original launch window. There’ll also be three celebrating a certain celebrity phenomenon the following month, a certain infamous anniversary later this summer and a series of posts to see us through the birthdays of all the issues.
As each post is published its name will turn into a piggy pink link below
The day of writing this post is the anniversary of OiNK’s Preview edition, then we’ll kick things off on the 40th anniversary of the first proper issue. That’s when I’ll be writing about my own personal Piggin’ Awesome Memories and why OiNK is such an important part of my life. I’ve talked to many others about their personal memories of the comic, it’s about time I shared mine on Sunday 3rd May 2026. Then, the following week brings Germs, a pre-OiNK comic created by co-editor Mark Rodgers and writer Graham Exton while at university. Its contents even included precursors to actual OiNK characters. You could say it was a preview of things to come and the whole shebang will be here to enjoy on Saturday 9th May.
In the same month there’ll be two special behind-the-scenes posts. The first, Roger & Willy: True Originals, looks at the original versions of Weedy Willy and Roger Rental as created (and drawn) by Graham. That’ll be published on Saturday 16th May. Then you’ll get to see the original script doodles and notes by Mark for a memorable wee Davey Jones’ strip, in The Making of a Mad Monk: Davey Jones on Saturday 23rd May.
On Saturday 30th May I’ll be chatting to Claire Bend and Robert Reed of Bread and Butter Films. Why would I want to do that as part of OiNK’s birthday celebrations? Well, what if I told you they were currently putting together a mini OiNK documentary? One in which they’ve spoken to a bunch of OiNK contributors (and a certain blogger) and they’re in the editing stage already? Excited? Then be sure to check out my chat with the duo in OiNK: A Short Tail!
Then, in an exclusive for the OiNK Blog you’ll be able to read all about the first edit for the film that’s being prepared, along with screenshots and details of who you’ll see when it’s finally released. This’ll be the first time anyone other than the filmmakers themselves will have seen any of the film and I can’t wait to watch it and (after cringing at my accent) tell you all about it in a special Piggs, Puns, Plops: OiNK Documentary Preview post on Saturday 27th June.
The celebrations will continue into the summer and beyond. During June and July you’ll get three fortnightly doses of OiNK’s megastar himself, Frank Sidebottom. It all begins on Sunday 21st June with his special appearance in OiNK publisher Fleetway’sThunderbirds The Comic in the 1990s. Then watch out for some film reviews! Namely, the Being Frank documentary and the Frank movie. I haven’t seen either yet so I’m looking forward to catching up at last on Saturday 4th and Saturday 18th July respectively.
At the end of July I’ll be delving into an infamous moment in OiNK’s history. The brilliant Janice and John spoof children’s tale in #7 prompted a complaint to the Press Council. It would be brushed aside in the end and OiNK celebrated the fact in a later issue but despite that it still led a certain defunct newsagent chain to top-shelf the comic. Sometimes OiNK contributor and Mark Rodgers’ partner, Helen Jones sent me the correspondence between the complainant, publisher IPC and the OiNK editors so it should make for a fascinating insight into The OiNK Complaint on Saturday 26th July.
UPDATE: There’s been a delay to this post, details are here.
Finally for the blog itself there’ll be a new series that’ll mark the 40th anniversary of the whole run, right the way through to the final issues in October 2028. The new Grunts series began with a celebrity special last Christmas (2025), and if Uncle Pigg ever chose you to appear in the world’s greatest comic you’ll not want to miss these! Every three months I’ll be collecting together all of your reader contributions. These didn’t start appearing until #4 so the series will begin three months after that on Sunday 6th September 2026. I may never have written in but I’m looking forward to this series, and I’m positive there’ll be plenty of you out there that will too.
Don’t forget to follow the OiNK Blog on socials via the links in the menu at the top of the page. Over the next couple of years every single issue will be highlighted on their original release dates with their covers and direct links to their reviews. Perfect if you’d like to relive the entire run in real time for yourself over its 40th anniversary years.
Happy Birthday OiNK! You don’t look a day over 39.
Ponquadragor returns on Anthony Williams and Dave Harwood’s cover! If you never collected The Real Ghostbusters this will be lost on you, and let’s face it if you never collected it you were already missing out big time.
In a turn up for the books it’s Transformers and Visionaries that brings us a light-hearted cover this week, courtesy of Jeff Anderson. Inside, the UK strip was now black and white. This saved money obviously, and having two shorter Transformers stories instead of one long one gave the comic the ability to run reprints that wouldn’t take up the whole comic. Together, these enabled Marvel UK to reduce the budget in a harsh comics environment. The story still wasn’t written for the new five-page format yet, but between this and the US strip we got a double dose of Dreadwind and Darkwing to soften the blow, the UK strip a prequel to the American one running at the same time, which was a neat idea.
Did I mind the black and white? Not at all. On the contrary, reading Fleetway’s comics I was used to the same length of strips and a mixture of colour and monochrome. Plus, once they started to be drawn for this new format the details really began to shine in the art! Across the way in the New York firehouse Peter and Egon found themselves in another dimension fighting side-by-side with our returning villain in a story which feels epic, even if it is only six pages long. It ends with a funny visual gag of the defeated demon on a trike being chased by Ponquadragor, the story then spilling over into Spengler’s Spirit Guide and the prose story, making it a rather special issue.
It’s presented on the checklist in a way that very much makes fun of the overly complicated names in fantasy novels and films of the day.
Hasbro had released a G.I. Joe action figure kids could only get by mail order after collecting tokens from the packaging of other figures. Nothing but a mishmash of parts from previously released toys, the Supertrooper never made it into the US comic but Marvel UK brought him to life in Action Force Monthly. I wonder if his story was a series of rehashed plot lines too? The excellent Death’s Head #6 was still on sale and the latest monthly Thundercats took the top spot yet again, with one of the new stories written by friend of the blog John Freeman, no less.
Both Action Force and Thundercats presenting “classic” tales should’ve been a sign of things to come for readers of the two main comics, both of which would “re-present” classic stories before the year was out. While Transformers had a long history to pull from, it was particularly galling to suddenly “have another chance to read” content in the much younger Real Ghostbusters. However, it was a sign of the times across the whole industry.
Now officially past the halfway point, there’ll be another checklist next week, and the week after, all the way until the festive season. See you in seven.
This is a fun little extra for Death’s Head fans out there, with emphasis on the words “fun” and “little”. We’ll get to that, first up though let’s set the scene by beginning at the, well, beginning of #173 of Marvel UK’sDoctor Who Magazine. I’m already taking umbrage though. How could they revert to the 70s logo when the latest series to have aired was the Sylvester McCoy era and my favourite series logo of all?
Oh well, inside there’s an interesting mixture of features and contemporary news, the latter of which reports on rumours surrounding the return of the show and much of it really was clutching at straws. The mag still had to report on it, after all we were in the pre-internet gossip days, so how else would the readers get their fix? It reminds me of the year or so before the Knight Rider sequel series launched in 2008, when I’d clamour for every juicy morsel of official news (but not spoilers, naturally).
On a side note, I loved everything I heard about that new Knight Rider and the pilot movie was ace. But when it went to series NBC gave the show runner position to the guy who created The Fast and the Furious and he didn’t have a clue about Knight Rider. We were SO close to something great! A great cast, a great car, a great premise… all ruined. At least we had the movie though. It makes me wonder what a series of Doctor Who would’ve looked like if its own pilot movie five years after this issue had gone to series.
Somewhat tied in with that news page is Lies Lies Lies, a feature looking back on the wild rumours and blatant lies people had made up about Doctor Who in the past just to get some attention. It’s somewhat ironic to have this in the same issue as that news page, don’t you think? I reminds me of social media today, or even discussion forums before that, and the things included here are the reason I no longer look out for future Knight Rider (or Doctor Who) news anymore. Some things never change.
Having recently watched all of the Seventh Doctor’s stories I don’t understand the hate it received from some corners of the fandom, but then again those corners are still there today moaning about the latest series so I still don’t understand them. I loved these stories. Stills of The Happiness Patrol in particular always made it look rather weird and I had a feeling of dread going into it, but it was fantastic!
Through this strange outer shell was a solid gold story and I particularly liked the feel of the dystopian future and the ending as described here, with the Doctor and Ace bringing sorrow, pain and sadness to a world forced to be happy. A happy ending through the importance of feeling sad. Again, it was brilliant! I found this feature about the writing of the story fascinating too. You should really give it a read.
Back in the 90s I collected Babylon 5 on VHS tapes, spending £8.99 for each volume of just two episodes. Or if we wanted to see the outtakes from Red Dwarf or find out how Thunderbirds was made we’d to fork out for additional tapes at about the same price. In the same decade the BBC had an idea which sounds equally bizarre when we’re so used to extras being include in our purchases today. Long before iPlayer The Eras Tapes were a way to get caught up on the earliest adventures with a rather random selection of episodes tied together by video links of Sean Pertwee and Sylvester McCoy. A real product of the time.
Elsewhere in this issue is a Fourth Doctor prose story and a humour strip written by Steve Noble (who I couldn’t find credits for when I wrote about Red Dwarf Smegazine) and drawn by OiNK’sKev F. Unfortunately, there are also the kind of Doctor Who episode reviews (of then-recent VHS releases) that are more suited to today’s internet than the official mag. Much like certain modern online reviews they’re overly long, overly negative and the reviewer is more interested in promoting themselves and how ‘clever’ they are than writing honestly. There are even letters of complaint about this reviewer!
But anyway, for Death’s Heads fans the wait is over. Party Animals is the issue’s comic strip, written by Gary Russell, pencilled by Mike Collins (Zoids, Transformers, Captain Britain), inked by Steve Pini (Knights of Pendragon, Bloodlines) and lettered by Gary Gilbert (Transformers, Thundercats, 2000AD). Gary Russell would have a huge career in the universe of the Doctor, including becoming editor of this magazine from the next year, script editor on The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood, and producer on Big Finish’s audio dramas.
So just why is this issue of Doctor Who Magazine in this section of the blog? In this strip the Seventh Doctor is visiting a bar at the centre of the space-time vortex run by Bonjaxx, whose birthday it is. Everyone from across space and time frequents this bar and have turned out to celebrate. Friends and enemies drink side-by-side as the Doctor and Ace meet two mysterious strangers, the Doctor and the other man exchanging a cryptic conversation while Ace and Ria get caught up in the inevitable 80s movie-style bar brawl.
In the end we find out the other man is a future incarnation of the Doctor, which is rather disappointing. His face may have been based on Nicholas Briggs from Big Finish (who supplies the current show’s Dalek voices) but this depiction does him no favours, the character coming across as rather boring. Even his costume makes him look more like a maître d, so the twist in the tale is a bit flat as a result. But the real highlight here was always going to be the bar itself and the wonderful array of cameos for readers to spot and their funny interactions both before and during the fight.
As you can see, our resident Freelance Peacekeeping Agent was also taking a well deserved break, at least until a Meep got a bit angry and things escalated as only bar fights can. Death’s Head is only in a few panels but he makes his presence felt and thankfully this was before his horrible redesign for Death’s Head II. It’s an insane little piece, although I’ve no doubt there are some who took it far too seriously and either saw it as proof these characters all existed in the same universe, got annoyed that it was “timeline/universe inaccurate” or who went to great lengths to explain how they could all be together.
Relax! It’s just a bit of fun. After all, that’s what comics are for. It even has Bart Simpson in it and some Daleks actually enjoying themselves in the background! It was a lovely surprise stumbling upon this Death’s Head cameo then purchasing it for the blog. Not only because of him, but also the amount of time I spent pouring over every panel to see who I could recognise. There were some genuine moments of laughter to be had when spotting them.
Finishing off the rest of the magazine I wanted to touch upon Enlightening, a superb interview with director Fiona Cumming, especially as it counters some corners of today’s online world. There were so many hateful men complaining about seeing women’s names on writing and directing credits during Jodie Whittaker’s and Ncuti Gatwa’s runs but the 1980s got there first. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many in the credits during this era. How little the sexist trolls actually know, eh?
There are some great nuggets of information here. It’s strange to read how little the writer was involved in the production back then, or that much like today whole seasons were filmed out of order. The latter is testament to Janet Fielding’s and Sarah Sutton’s talent in acting out their characters getting to know each other even though they’d been working together for months already. There’s a lovely Jon Pertwee story too, as well as some very clever examples of using set design to get around the tight budgets.
I certainly wouldn’t have said Doctor Who was famous for its incidental music back then, some of it was atrocious, especially in the 70s. However, in Sylvester’s years it really was superb, with each story individually tailored for and I loved hearing the theme tune woven into the episodes in various ways, something we’d never had before and wouldn’t get again until Jodie’s era. It’s a great article so I’ve included it all here for you to read.
Yes, I really did fork out for an old Doctor Who Magazine because Death’s Head was the star of three panels of a comic strip! As a fan of Doctor Who I was never going to complain though. I always enjoy reading contemporary coverage of such things, even despite the negatives mentioned above. Thankfully the positives (most of all the strip itself, of course) more than make up for any shortcomings. A fun little addition to the Death’s Head section of the blog, yes?
The Real Ghostbusters didn’t have the most exciting of covers this week despite having Anthony Williams’ talent behind it. Over on Transformers and Visionaries meanwhile, for a few weeks the covers would remind readers they now had two stories for the Cybertronians inside.
John Stokes returned for #214’s cover and while the Mecannibals were a fun villain the hyping of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fight between Megatron and a Decepticon not mentioned until now is a choice. The American story wins out this week thanks to shady subterfuge from Dreadwind and Darkwing and the funny way they bicker while in their combined form. As a teen it was extra exciting because I’d previously played with the toys of these characters at my friend’s house.
In New York, hair cuttings on a barber’s floor came back to life and, hilariously, Slimer got a job as a ghostwriter! Brilliant. The Real Ghostbusters’ creative team had the best imaginations. Also, after previous issues had contradicted the cartoon, an answer to a letter references the episode that explained the change to their uniforms compared to the movie’s, so someone was paying attention after all. Okay, it’s checklist time.
Yes, Marvel UK, you could say more for Death’s Head. This is a bit too close to that dreaded and overused “Nuff said” phrase they seemed to trot out ad nauseam in their editorials around this time. It was a great issue and this really doesn’t sell it, although it must’ve been difficult only having one paragraph for each of five comics. Alongside the continuing presence of Action Force Monthly #11 is Doctor Who Magazine, which finally seems to be a regular addition to the list.
It’s taken long enough, although I suppose you could argue this is a comics checklist and DWM is a magazine, so that could be why it wasn’t featured for the first several months. Coincidentally enough, I’ve been watching Doctor Who from the very beginning (the very beginning from 1963) for a couple of years and I’ve just watched Silver Nemesis for the first time about a month ago. It was a good ‘un so I can understand why it proved so popular.
I never did collect the Collected Comics series for my two main Marvel comics, although it was one of the Transformers specials that got me into it in the first place. As a kid, once I was reading the weeklies I didn’t see the point in collecting stories I’d already read. As an adult though, I appreciated getting the chance to enjoy classic tales all in one go and catching up on certain story arcs at regular intervals in my Transformers real time read through.
Finally, that Spring Specials advert certainly showed the variety in Marvel’s range, didn’t it? I’m surprised they put them all together on one page rather than separating them into genres or age groups. As it stands, I’ve no recollection of Snorks or Wimple Village, however I do remember Care Bears being on TV Sunday mornings, I’ve reviewed the Visionaries already and I owned that Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends poster mag. Hmm, now that I see this I do remember buying the ‘Collected Stories’ (as they were called) for Thoma, so that’s made a liar out of me!
That’s us for another week and we’re now officially halfway through the lifespan of The Mighty Marvel Checklist. See you in seven.
