Last month I told you how August’s competition for a couple of issues of Dragon’s Claws had been the most popular yet and how I expected September’s to be likewise. Well, I received almost double the amount of entries again! Death’s Head is still rather popular it seems, yes? We know the characters from the comic he spun off and, apart from one or two of you, you all correctly answered the question of which God of Chaos did Death’s Head once take a psychic trip into the mind of. It was, of course, Unicron in the pages of Transformers.
Congratulations to Andy Senyszyn from Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, seen here looking ever-so-slightly pleased with himself. Andy obviously knows his chaotic gods. But who will know the answer to this month’s specially-themed competition?
Last month I promised you that as a ‘Preview’ for this month’s competition I wouldn’t ‘Toy’ with you when it came to having the perfect prize for Hallowe’en. So here it is, October’s giveaway.
It may have been a short-lived comic but Super Naturals was quality! This rare 16-page preview edition contains the origin of the characters in a suitably atmospheric tale set on the release date of #1, which just happened to be 31st October 1987. There are also a handful of brilliant marketing mini-posters for the toy range, a light-hearted Ghostlings tale and more. The comic is in as-new condition and could be yours in time for the spooky season.
All you have to do is answer the following question, which may require you to scour the blog for the name of the toy company if you don’t already know it:
Q – The toy manufacturer of Super Naturals was famous for producing toys of which type of vehicle?
You have 14 days to enter, so if (you think) you’ve got the answer you can either email it to me at oink.blog@icloud.com(all emails will be deleted after the winner has been selected), or use the contact form you can find on the right-hand side of your desktop screen or under this post on mobile. Your entry must be with me by midnight on Tuesday 14th October 2025.
After this date I’ll contact the winner to ask for their postal address. Unfortunately, due to rising costs the competitions are open to UK and Ireland readers only. If you win I’ll ask if you could take a photo of you with your prize for inclusion in next month’s competition post. You don’t have to, but you do get to show off if you do.
This is a little gem of a comic to get your hands on. Just don’t blame me if you then find yourself on eBay looking for the other issues! The next competition will be here on 1st November, just a day after the Hallowe’en festivities and it’ll continue the theme, albeit on a more humorous note. There’ll be six issues of a comic to be given away, make sure you Bust a gut to get back here on that day so you don’t miss out.
It’s always exciting news when Lew Stringer (Tom Thug, Pete and his Pimple, Combat Colin) announces another of his self-published comics. Regular readers of the OiNK Blog will recognise the star of his latest release from Lew’s Barmy Comix and Comic Sampler collections. Starring one of his earliest creations, Brickman #1 is the first of three ‘Best Of’ comics for the spoof superhero (“Britain’s Greatest Super-Pillock”) and his alter ego, Loose Brayne.
I’ll admit I own some of the previous Brickman releases but, while there’s no new material here, if you haven’t read any before this is unmissable. Actually, even if you do own the 2005 book Brickman Begins you should check this out as it’s in a much bigger and easier to read format, the strips really shining on the high quality paper. Included is the 1985 3-page introductory strip from Swiftsure and the 20(!)-page Brickmania Caper from a one-off comic for the character back in 1986.
This first page is the perfect example of what to expect, with loads of laughs not only from the main characters (his origin story) and plot (having his secret hideout above ground and his house buried is genius) but also from all of the little background details. Check out his underwhelming chest logo, the glue-drinking copper, the reader’s thumb and even Lew’s own credit. The comic is chock full of things like this.
If you’ve read Barmy Comix you’ll have already seen Brickman meets The Mad Cobbler. That was actually the first chapter in the huge second story here (renamed and presented in Barmy as a complete strip). Here though, it’s just one small part of a much larger whole, although the chapters do work to some degree on their own. Tied altogether like this it’s a relentlessly funny read.
There are a lot of gags at the expense of Thatcher’s 80s Britain and as someone who grew up in that time and remembers the likes of Spitting Image’s jokes about the politics of the day, high unemployment, privatisation etc. a lot of this takes me right back and I had a good chuckle at the expense of the time. Hey, we had to laugh back then!
Those hidden background gems had me laughing the hardest at times, like the ‘How to Sue the Marvel Way’ book on the shelf in the above panel. Next to that you’ll also spot a mention of none other than OiNK. This strip was originally released during OiNK’s first year and Lew takes every opportunity to add in a little plug. There are quite a lot of little Easter eggs for OiNK fans actually, including a cameo or two. There are also pages drawn by some guest artists who’ll be very familiar to pig pals.
At least it wasn’t a Venezuelan boat! This is just one example of the comedy here that still feels very contemporary decades later. The page was drawn by Dave Gibbons (Ro-Busters, Rogue Trooper, Doctor Who) who drew Lew’s script for the brilliant Superhero’s Day Off in OiNK. Also contributing here are Mike Higgs, Mike Collins, Mark Farmer and the late Kevin O’Neill being very, very Kevin O’Neill! What a line up.
So what super powers does Brickman actually have? Well, chucking bricks basically. That, and just happening to have exactly the right gadget to hand, quite like how 60s Batman did, only here it’s exaggerated to even more ludicrous levels. But that brick throwing! It may be a silly comic but those brick impacts don’t half look painful! But the more painful they look the funnier they get. I’m not sure what that says about me.
A couple of years ago in the actual Batman comic Bruce Wayne found himself without his mansion and his millions, diddled out of it by the Joker. Here, all it takes is a quick visit from someone claiming to be from the Inland Revenue and Loose gives away all of his money, instantly growing stubble to heighten the broke look. It’s a perfect example of the speed of storytelling in this comic.
My personal favourite baddies are The Poker (he loves to poke people) and Man-Brick, but it’s Lew’s pitch-perfect barbs at everyday life and the world we live in that really hit home for me. Superhero movies and fandom are targets you might expect, but the (many, many) other surprising topics in here can range from unfair representation of women in media to how the press manipulates the fickle nature of humans.
It’s testament to Lew’s skill as a comedy writer that these topics are handled in such a way that we laugh along while also acknowledging the points being made. There are many more examples I could give but that would ruin the experience for you, and discovering them all for yourself is something you simply must do. There’s a joke about a certain tropical fruit that resulted in me having to stop reading just to catch my breath!
What we have here are 28 pages packed with so many gags they could fill three issues, so it’s an absolute bargain at only £5 (plus postage). You can grab your copy direct from Lew by visiting his Ko-Fi shop. On his main Ko-Fi page you’ll also see regular blog updates and other comics of his for sale, so make sure you check that out while you’re there. This is only the first issue! I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
Another Wednesday in 2025 becomes another Saturday morning in 1988 with Brian Williamson and Dave Harwood’s cover to #16 of The Real Ghostbusters and Andrew Wildman’s cover for #185 of The Transformers and Visionaries for our latest look at Marvel UK’s wares in The Mighty Marvel Checklist.
The Ghostbusters comic would sometimes group stories together into themes and that was true of this edition that really raised the temperature, with Peter and Egon off on a hot bust in Hawaii Fire-Ho! and Ray up against some haunted ice cream. Then Tobin’s spirit, of Tobin’s Spirit Guide fame from the movie and cartoon visits Egon in his Spengler’s Spirit Guide to test readers on everything they’ve learned so far.
In Transformers, Soundwave was leading the Decepticons into battle in Space Pirates so if, like me, you heard the cartoon or movie voices in your head when reading these, his vast amount of speech might’ve taken a while to read! In Visionaries, their magical animal selves provide some great spy drama and humorous moments in equal measure, and the biggest toy ever (to my young eyes when I saw it anyway) was up for grabs for free. Now, last week I said there was a surprise entry in the checklist this week, can you guess which one I meant?
You probably didn’t expect to see Thomas pop up here. While I was ten-years-old at the time I was obsessed with the original books and TV show and, despite this technically being a nursery comic, I still collected it for a couple of years. So it was fun to see it sharing space with these other comics, although I do get the feeling now that the inhabitants of Sodor were being used to fill what might’ve been a bit of blank space this week.
Elsewhere, if I’d realised at the time so many of Marvel’s comics were giving away Real Ghostbusters stickers for my Panini album I’d have been buying more of them. Stickers and something new to read? Yes, please. Although, my parents were probably glad I didn’t know. Who knows what else I’d have wanted to add to my reservation list! Finally for the checklist, it was cartoon crossover time with two properties from the complete opposite ends of time coming together.
This week one new advert for Marvel UK’s publications popped up and it’s yet another for their range of annuals. The Real Ghostbusters’ penchant for short comedy strips saw its book grouped together with more of the light-hearted fare. Count Duckula and Inspector Gadget had Marvel annuals? If I’d paid closer attention at the time I think Santa’s sleigh could’ve been weighed down that year, judging by last week’s and this week’s adverts.
That’s you all caught up for another week. Do you remember any of these specific issues? Did you collect any of the series mentioned? Did you own those Duckula or Gadget annuals? Let me know on the blog’s socials on Bluesky, Instagram or Facebook and I’ll see you back here in seven days.
This cover by Carl Critchlow (Thrud the Barbarian, Flesh, Batman/Judge Dredd) has got to be one of the best covers so far, encapsulating a moment with the twisted Doctor Cutlow character in the final chapter of our prose story, Tribes. So, only six issues to come after this one, eh? Yes, but calm down, that’s still half a year and a lot of aliens!
Editor Cefn Ridout mentions a sea-faring (“sea-scaring”) tale beginning next month and teases us about some other surprises to come. Colour me intrigued. After the editorial (included here so you have access to the full credits) we’re straight into the concluding half of Jim Woodring and Killian Plunkett’s superb Backsplash. After the cliff collapse there are only two Marines left, Gibbs and Crespi and these eight pages depict their desperate escape bid from the alien-infested cavern to their drop ship outside.
This is great fun! It’s also tense in all the right places which is quite the feat when we’ve gotten so used to seeing the aliens in comic form. Smacking an alien over the head with the limb of one of its fallen siblings, the pair make their way outside just before everything collapses around them. Not that this stops one of the aliens making a surprise reappearance to grab Crespi as they make a bolt for it.
Gibbs saves him only for things to take a turn for him. Hanging on to the ship’s entrance ramp he’s suddenly choking and an inner alien mouth bursts out of his own in a scary moment of synchronicity. His decapitated body falls to the ground as the ship takes off and a quick lever pull by Crespi opens the floor beneath the beast and, mirroring that earlier arm smack, poor Gibbs’ head is used in a moment of alien frustration!
This has been a brilliant little tale. Okay, so it’s light on plot and the characters are interchangeable with pretty much any Colonial Marine from the comic or movie, but through its sheer relentlessness and imaginative situations it’s a standout. But Kilian’s art is the main reason for its success in my eyes. His aliens are superbly detailed, his humans full of character even if the script doesn’t really call for it, and he heightens the horrific moments perfectly.
On to the news and I take issue with the Director’s Cut/Special Edition of a movie being referred to as “diluted”. Also, “already hailed as the best platform game for the Super Nintendo”? Really, Dave Hughes? Better than Mario? Better than Yoshi? The Alien³ game did very well across the board in all versions too, so I think maybe Dave owned a SNES. Ah, the days of unrivalled loyalty to a games platform. (For me it was still the C64 at this point.)
The game was notable for not following the plot of the film at all, with Ripley running around with a huge variety of weapons killing hoards of xenomorphs. Kind of defeats the purpose of having an Alien³ licence, no? At least she was bald! I still think a creepy platform game of stealth and a lack of weaponry with one alien roaming about would’ve been much better, like a 90s version of the more recent Alien: Isolation.
British strip Crusade begins with the Archbishop confronted by his suspicious followers, but he just keeps coming up with ludicrous excuses. “The wind whistling through broken stones” really placates people who’ve heard the alien Queen? Then our tribe and Minecorp marines are attacked by another tribe but the art is too messy to work out what’s going on. In the end the survivors continue on with their two horses into the sewers beneath London and now we can’t even see their hair colours in the dark, one of the few things we could use to tell characters apart. Suddenly their motion tracker starts to bleep and Rani’s spidey senses start to tingle. That can’t be good.
Back in the “big building for tiny minds” (as one of the Marines describes the church) it becomes clear that the Archbishop thinks he’s actually doing god’s work by keeping the alien threat contained within the tower via human sacrifices. But an attack and a hole in the wall recently saw some eggs roll down into the river, however he thinks if he keeps the aliens fed with outsiders they won’t leave their tower. In reality of course he’s just adding to their army.
The world building is potentially great but it’s that lack of visual clarity that’s just so frustrating. This issue’s chapter ends with one of the horses suddenly writhing in pain and an alien bursting from its chest, so the thrills and danger should be tangible but it just requires a bit too much effort for you to feel it.
One moment almost ruins the whole months-long story for me
Much better, as per usual, is prose story Tribes. This concluding chapter is, to use a clichéd phrase, a thrill ride. The whole place is rigged to explode any minute and Rat is stuck in a refuge unit with an alien climbing down through the rubbish. Bort realises he’s always loved her and risks his life to release the unit into deep space so she’ll finally be at peace, dead from the vacuum instead of being an alien incubator and reliving those nightmares of her childhood with her father.
In a tense moment she’s finally able to activate her oxygen supply and the story is left with her floating (alone, sans alien) in space. But one moment almost ruins the whole months-long story, for me anyway. The doctor of the religious extremists trying to help the aliens finds himself in an escape pod with a newborn Queen and a human baby. He was going to use this baby to feed the Queen but the baby dies in his arms slowly from a lack of oxygen.
Look, I know Alien is a horror franchise but I just felt this was an unnecessary use of a mental image of a dying baby to try to elicit an emotional response from the reader. It wasn’t needed and it cheapened all of the excellent work up to this point by writer Steve Bissette. Colton is also dying but knows the Queen will feed on him, providing her with sustenance until the pod lands and she can free herself. Tribes has been a real highlight and if it hadn’t been for that one moment I’d have been singing its praises for months to come.
The Technical Readout pages seem to have done away with the intricate technical cutaways, somewhat making the name of the feature redundant. While I do miss those earlier entries I have to say I really like this most recent one showcasing the military gear worn by two female Colonial Marines. There’s no credit anywhere for the artist, perhaps they were drawn by Lee Brimmincombe-Wood himself?
Our final strip is Colonial Marines and it’s been reduced in pages again after a bumper chapter last time but it’s still a meaty 12-page read. Leaving the sun gun they get distracted on the way to their main mission by a kelp bed on a planet that’s somehow keeping a comms channel open with the HQ they can’t reach, and on a planet that’s not meant to be inhabited. So off they go, with their bug man prisoner in tow.
Unfortunately, things don’t start off too well when the comic’s habit of printing errors sees spread above in the wrong order. The bug man is somehow able to produce the addictive alien slime we humans can’t get enough of and it’s handed around the marines like a drug. Meanwhile there’s an underlying current of distrust in Vasquez after her freak out as people begin to question whether they can rely on her to save their lives like they did hers. With less characters now we can begin to familiarise ourselves with some of the personalities in the ragtag team during these downtime scenes, instantly improving what was already a good strip.
Once they’re flying over the planet they spot an outpost where there shouldn’t be one and, once inside and cornered, they find out it belongs to the bug men. That of course means the aliens can’t be far away. The Marines attempted escape in the people carrier had the same music from the Hadley’s Hope escape scene in the movie playing over and over in my head as I read the end of this month’s chapter.
The cliffhanger sees their drop ship explode and now they’re stuck on this mysterious planet. Chris Warner’s story began as a fun take on the movie but little did I know that was only the starting point. I’m still not convinced about these bug men but given how much I’m enjoying the rest of it (at least they’re no longer 70s Doctor Who aliens) I have hope they’ll develop further too.
The Genre Gap is a strange little page, taking a long time to come to the conclusion we knew already that the Alien films are horrors. They just so happen to be set in a futuristic sci-fi setting, with a sci-fi entity as the main scare. When Stephen King says so is there really any need to question it? Then on the Bug Hunt letters page I’m not too sure about the name given to describe fans of fellow horror franchise, Predator!
There’s a healthy variety of places of origin for the readers this month. Back then it was rare to see letters in our comics from anywhere other than England. There also appears to have been a great deal of positivity for not only Tribes, but for the very idea of having a prose story in the comic, which I’m all for too. The sequel idea for an Alien 4 movie is just ridiculous… I mean, Madonna doing a movie song after that thing that I had to endure at the start of Die Another Day?!
Backsplash and Tribes may be over but that means more new stories next month which is always exciting. Colonial Marines continues to get better and better, and Crusade certainly has loads of potential that hopefully it can begin to fulfil. Even more excitedly there’s talk in this issue of a second autopsy feature (the first in #11 was fascinating) next month, this time for the alien eggs. Things can only get better, so be here in one month to check out Aliens #17.
On this day back in 1988 the newest issues of The Real Ghostbusters and Transformers and Visionaries sat on newsagent shelves across the UK waiting for excited children like me to run in and grab them. Inside sat the latest Mighty Marvel Checklist, ready to drain parents’ wallets across the land.
Humour comics legend John Geering supplied the cover for the ‘Busters alongside Dave Hine, while the other was provided by the artist responsible to the epic cover to #1 of Transformers, Jerry Paris. Two big competitions this week! We could’ve won a bicycle courtesy of those Frosties reflectors we ALL had on our bike wheels back then (this was also run in Transformers #182, as seen on its cover two week ago) and, possibly even bigger than that, new Optimus Prime toys! It was this second, Power Master version of Prime that I would eventually own.
Dreadwind took over the Transformers letters page too and quickly established himself as the most brilliant, sarcastic responder comics ever had, which lightened things up after the main strip ended this week with a bunch of fan-favourite Autobots strung up, dead or dying! As you can see below, Janine also thought she was receiving equally bad news but the title of the story kind of gives it away before even reading it. It was still a fun tale though. Strangely, there’s no word on the cover or the checklist that this issue had four extra pages, something Marvel UK usually hyped.
The previously advertised Marvel Bumper Comic Holiday Special was now a fortnightly and the checklist makes it clear it was mainly a reprint title, although Marvel did go one better than Fleetway’s Big Comic Fortnightly and provided the occasional new strip, like here in the premiere issue to entice the Ghostbusters fans.
The Flintstones would also appear in it now and again, and in their own comic the cut-out figures and buildings of Build Bedrock was something I bet absolutely no one actually made. Elsewhere, a Geoff Senior cover is always a big deal and I see I’m not alone in thinking that as it gets top billing for the latest issue of Action ForceMonthly, while in Thundercats and Galaxy Rangers the name “Shane Gooseman” sounds more like a character from Count Duckula.
Annuals season was in full swing too. Although most of us never got to actually read them until Christmas Day, the months-long advertising just made them all the more coveted. The Real Ghostbusters Annual was the latest to get the full-page treatment and even seeing these few sample pages brings back all the Christmassy feels of receiving it myself that year, reading it wrapped up in bed during that void week between Christmas and New Year.
The selection of action titles was particularly brilliant in 1988, wasn’t it? Personally I received the Transformers and Visionaries books and absolutely loved them! That Visionaries Annual was certainly popular when it appeared on the blog, especially with all you American readers. I’d love to have a nosey at the Galaxy Rangers and Action Force ones. Now that I think about it, I was a big fan of the Action Force back up strips in Transformers so I’ve no idea why I never asked for their annuals and specials!
There’s a surprise guest appearance in the checklist next week, the only time this particular fortnightly appeared in it. I was so happy to see it included at the time but with hindsight I’m thinking they were desperate to fill a gap for the week! What was it? You’ll find out in seven days.
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