On this day back in 1989 the latest issue of Eagle, edited by blog favourite Barrie Tomlinson, hit shelves across the UK with a Dan Dare cover by David Pugh appropriately enough. Actually, it was the 400th issue since Barrie had decided to resurrect the classic comic in March of 1982. Not that any fanfare was made of this. In fact it’s not mentioned at all, but then again it didn’t have issue numbers on its covers, each issue identified instead by its cover date (the Saturday following release). It had celebrated its 300th but for whatever reason it was no longer keeping track.
So why am I mentioning this issue? Well, as regular readers will know the fantastic Wildcat comic merged into Eagle in April 1989 (#368) and (similarly to when three of OiNK’s characters moved to Buster when it finished) there wasn’t enough of Wildcat in each issue for me personally to justify collecting it. As I mentioned in the review of Wildcat #12 I’ll be covering the remaining adventures of those characters at some point. I wanted to finish Wildcat’s real time read through first, which I’ll be doing six days from now.
The Wildcat Holiday Special had been released a month after the merge (see below), but the name ‘Eagle and Wildcat’ only stayed on the cover of the weekly for three months. However, Loner’s and Joe Alien’s stories continued, with Loner present all the way through until April the following year. (Loner’s original artist had been our Eagle cover artist David Pugh, by the way. In fact, he’d been created specifically for David.) Anyone who had moved over to Eagle (or who had collected both comics) would have loved this promo, even if “a reminder of how the whole adventure began” sounds suspiciously like reprint material.
I’ve been looking forward to finally getting a new issue of one of my most fondly remembered comics to read again and after months of waiting it’s less than a week away. So if like me you’ve been missing Turbo Jones, Kitten Magee, Loner, Joe Alien and the spooky goings on amongst the passengers of humanity’s last hope of survival, join me here on Thursday 17th November 2022 for an in-depth look at the very final Wildcat.
Before you go, as I continue to track down the merged issues I’ve discovered another promo, for the aforementioned Wildcat Holiday Special which was already reviewed on the blog back in April. Here it is in a full-page advert alongside Eagle‘s special and one for the Superchamps TV series.
Coming up on Monday is the 41st edition of OiNK. It’s the Sickness and Health Issue and what better place to insert a special pull-out Pete and his Pimple comic! This news definitely excited me as a kid when I spot-ted this promo below in #40. That issue had already been one of the very best I’d read and then to have this news round it all off was just awesome for this young pig pal at the time.
Promo by Lew Stringer
As a not-so-young pig pal today I’ll admit I’m really looking forward to this particular issue for the same reason. While Lew Stringer‘s character may be the headline act watch out for what I personally think is the very best Burp strip yet, Janice and John finally return after the little bit of commotion they caused back in #7, plus there’s some news for OiNK fans which at the time was even more exciting than the mini-comic! The review of #41 will be here on Monday 14th November 2022.
Last month I got to show you how Future Publishing’s superb Commodore 64 magazine, Commodore Format gave away a game on its covertape called Pig Tales, and how this game was actually the OiNK computer game, which had originally been released in 1987 across all 8-bit formats (image below from an eBay seller). Despite not having much to do with the comic, its playability and value for money was generally praised at the time but it just didn’t sell. So a short three years later it was a freebie on the cover of CF.
In case you haven’t seen the previous post, it contained the full instructions for the OiNK game and one month later Commodore Format was back with a guide for those stuck in the misadventures of some of the comic’s most popular characters. So that’s what this post is all about. Plus, just like last time I’m throwing in some contemporary features and adverts from the magazine to place it in its time, just for fun.
Every month our computing and videogames magazines would contain hints, tips and cheats for a huge variety of games. Without search engines, if you were stuck you just had to sit tight and hope your monthly read contained some help for you. Today I stay away from such websites that offer things like this, but the younger target audience of these magazines lapped these things up, as did I at the time. Some of the most popular forms of help were game maps.
In the section of the mag called GameBusters, staff writer Andy Dyer and editor Steve Jarrett painstakingly compiled detailed maps for the Tom Thug and Rubbish Man sections of the OiNK game respectively, which in turn were drawn up by designer Lam Tang. There was no need for help with the Pete and his Pimple section, it was a bat and ball game. It just required practice. So if you’ve got a copy of the game and would like to get that bit further (and have no patience) here are the full guides from this issue.
Ignore those black and white maps down the side, those are for a different title altogether. As you can see Tom’s zombie crushing section is all one big area to traverse while Rubbish Man’s is divided into six increasingly difficult zones. (Also, see the rather self-congratulatory game programmer include his name in a level!) Throw in Pete’s game and it’s a bit of a miracle it was a single load, not taking up any more than the computer’s measly 64k of memory (actually less when system memory is taken into account). For contrast the images on this blog are 1Mb on average, roughly sixteen times that size.
I’d actually like to give that Rubbish Man section a go again!
You can’t fault the team’s work here. Every little detail is included and not one screenshot is used, it’s all been drawn from scratch from playing the game themselves. No, the team didn’t receive a copy of the maps from the game publisher, at the time writers of these kinds of magazines had to basically play these games for hours and hours and assemble the guides themselves. Given how this issue contains eight pages of such help for the young players it’s an insane amount of work every month.
I’d actually like to give that Rubbish Man section a go again! If you’ve missed any of the coverage of the game on the blog you can check out a retrospective from Retro Gamer, a preview from an issue of Zzap!64 containing a cameo by Snatcher Sam, a special interview with OiNK’s editors in Crash magazine which also came with a special free edition of OiNK, there’s a full review of the game from Zzap and of course the previous issue of Commodore Format. Now let’s have a quick retrospective look over some things that caught my eye on other pages of this December 1990 issue as I prepared the above scans.
Back in the early 90s when other computer companies such as Sinclair and Amstrad found their 8-bit systems struggling the Commodore 64 was still selling well as an entry level computer. In the back of it was a cartridge port which had been underused throughout its already lengthy lifetime. New cart chip technology now enabled developers to use extra memory along with their ability to instantly load to produce advanced graphics, sound, more content and more complex gameplay. Commodore even released a console version of the 64.
With these the Commodore could easily contend with new kids on the block the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System. I often found (and still feel the same) that my favourite games on the 64 were miles better than the (admittedly great) console games. But Commodore, in their infinite wisdom, weren’t exactly marketing geniuses and the only places you’d see these advantages of cartridge technology detailed were in Commodore 64 magazines, read by people who already owned the machines. Without the manufacturer doing a good job the game publishers’ flash adverts above looked the part but had minimum impact.
Don’t get me wrong, gaming technology began changing very quickly in the 90s and incredibly the C64 still continued to sell very well for another couple of years. Commodore Format itself was eventually cancelled in 1995 only a few months before the first PlayStation magazine began! But with these advertising spreads above Commodore wasn’t exactly inspiring excitement, were they? In fact, they would go bust in 1994, taking the Amiga and its ever-developing range with it.
“You can hold conversation with people who may choose to help you or decide to chop your head off”
‘Going On-line’, Andrew Hutchinson
I always felt there was real potential to stave off the fate of the C64 if the company had really got behind the cartridge format on the proper computer instead of that silly console idea. Nintendo and Sega didn’t have to worry. The big push never came and when the console failed (as anyone could’ve predicted) publishers left the entire format in droves. Oh well, this short period of time still produced some of my very favourite computer games of all time and that’s not just the rose-tinted glasses talking.
Finally for this post there’s a feature I just had to show you all, written by future CF editor Andrew Hutchinson. Given this issue was published in 1990 and was for the Commodore 64 it might surprise you to see an article about going online! It would be the late 90s before our household had access to the Internet via AOL and a PC, but we were still in time for the extortionate monthly fees and even more extortionate per-minute charges mentioned below. Ah, the old days, eh? Yep, they very much were not better.
That pullquote on page 61 was about playing RPGs online, but could easily apply to Twitter today.
The excitement around the ‘Information Superhighway’ was intense in those years and looking back on it now it’s all very quaint of course, but every big revolution has to start somewhere. It’s strange to think how dependent our everyday lives have become on the technology that back then was seen as an expensive luxury only. Aside from the brilliant writing and the fact it was a damn fun magazine, the enthusiasm is another reason why reading actual retro magazines will always be superior to those from today that look back. It’s a lot cheaper too!
Anyway, that just about wraps up the OiNK Blog’s coverage of the OiNK computer game. I’ll take another look at Commodore Format next year when I reread the first magazine (of any title) I ever bought for myself, #14, which coincidentally enough is the same issue number of OiNK that had been my very first comic. Look out for more OiNK merchandise posts in the future.
It is with great sadness that we must say goodbye to another contributor to OiNK. The news just came out yesterday that renowned 2000AD artist Kevin O’Neill passed away at the age of 69 after a period of illness. Kevin’s most famous work was definitely the likes of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law and of course League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I was a huge fan of his work on Nemesis but my first encounter with his unique style was in the pages of OiNK. Below is what I said about Kevin and his work in the OiNK Holiday Special earlier this year.
“Now, let’s move on to what would surely be the main event for many comics fans. At the time I was unaware of who Kevin O’Neill was but today I know the man as something of a legend in the industry. Drawing the image of Tharg on the cover of the very first 2000AD he would go on to produce incredible work for OiNK’s stablemate, most memorably for me the stunning Nemesis the Warlock. In 1986 his whole style proved unsuitable for the American Comics Code Authority but thankfully DC went ahead and published his Tales of the Green Lantern anyway. Later, he would co-create Marshal Law and team up with Alan Moore for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. For OiNK’s Holiday Special he drew a four-page parody called The Game is Greed, written by Mark Rodgers.
“Lew Stringer was friends with both Kevin and Dave Gibbons, another legendary comic artist who’d appear in the pages of OiNK. They’d meet up frequently at London comic marts and when Lew found out Kevin was a fan of OiNK he asked him if he’d like to contribute. His first strip was actually a collaboration with Lew called The Truth About Santa for The OiNK Book 1988, then later he drew this brilliant script by Mark, but deadlines for specials and annuals being what they are this was the one that saw print first. I may not have known who he was but I adored the very unique art style and I can remember lying in bed late at night (having already read the comic that morning) pouring over all of the funny details for a long time. I’d never seen anything like this.
“Kevin’s sharp lines, exaggerated action and gorgeous colours really pop, making the strip stand out in even the quickest of skims through the issue. This is no small feat for an issue of OiNK.”
Later, when I began reading issues of 2000AD that belonged to school friends it was Kevin’s Nemesis that really stood out to me. It still does and will always be my first choice of strips when I want to dip my toes into a little 2000AD.
Kevin grew up on The Beano and The Dandy but it was Mad magazine, the same title that partly influenced the contents of OiNK, that really had an impact on him at an early age. He began working as an office boy in IPC Magazines instead of studying art and worked his way up, eventually becoming instrumental in the early success of 2000AD. He was even responsible for the strips having credits, something unheard of before then in British comics!
He eventually worked his way into the American market but The Comic Code Authority thought his work was too shocking and he was effectively blacklisted. Back in the UK his co-creations Marshal Law and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen led to him being held in high regard as one of the greatest British comics talents ever, described by 2000AD themselves as, “innovative, iconoclastic, idiosyncratic, inventive, visionary and provocative”.
Back when I were a lad (as they say) fireworks of the outdoor variety were illegal in Northern Ireland, unless they were part of an organised event run by a council for example. Living in a tiny town back then this meant fireworks displays were never part of my youth around the time of OiNK. Sparklers were about the height of it. But of course in the rest of the UK (and from my teen years onwards too) such limitations weren’t in effect and Uncle Pigg wanted to make sure his piglets didn’t turn into barbecued pork.
So a copy of the Firework Code was pasted onto a page of #39 by co-editor Patrick Gallagher, the issue going on sale Saturday 17th October 1987. When I saw this while reviewing the issue I initially found it strange it wasn’t in the Hallowe’en issue for that holiday and the 5th November in particular. But given how many nights for what seems like weeks around this time are accompanied by loud bangs and whistles from every direction I think they got the timing just right.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed the spooky season and remember Uncle Pigg’s sage advice above, the last thing you want to end up as is a “burnt banger”.
OiNK Blog 