It was 10th December 1988 and my mum, dad and I had just returned from a local Christmas jumble sale and I’d sat down on the sofa to read the comics we’d picked up from the newsagent on the way home, beginning with Marvel UK’s Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. I may technically have been a few years older than the target audience even at that young age but I still loved the show and my Hornby train sets, so I was still collecting the comic too.
It was only the second Christmas edition (of a comic that still continues to this day) and I remember my parents were in the kitchen unpacking whatever we’d bought at the community centre and making cups of tea. I’d only been reading comics for a couple of years but I’d already fallen in love with the issues published this time of year. Tim Marwood’s cover may have been missing snow on the logo but I don’t think we can accuse him of holding back on the Christmassy feel.
Inside, the editorial made mention of a page of drawings sent in by readers a few months previous and I’d completely forgotten I’d sent one off. So, I sat there and continued to flick through the issue to see what was ahead of me, as I would do with all the comics I got that day before deciding which one to read first. A few seconds later my parents had the fright of their lives when I screamed at the top of my voice and came running towards them!
I can clearly remember my mum’s panic dissipating into laughter and a huge smile as I showed off the Thomas comic in my hand where my drawing had been chosen to be printed! I’m not sure why I’d never sent anything to OiNK over the previous two years (it had been cancelled two months before this), given the excitement I felt that day knowing thousands upon thousands of kids would see my Gordon, Thomas and Percy (the three Hornby engines I owned) in their Santa hats.
On the 36th anniversary (blimey!) of that moment I thought I’d share the few occasions as a child that I saw my name in print in some of my favourite publications of the time. I began writing in to many comics with letters or drawings but I wasn’t successful until four years later. By that time I was in high school and in the middle of a different big craze amongst my friends, the Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles.
Any international readers might be a bit confused by the title there. Our turtles were called “heroes” rather than “ninjas” in the cartoon, its song and any merchandise, all because stuffy Brits thought “ninja” was too strong a word. Even all of Michelangelo’s nunchakus moments were edited out of the cartoon and the movie was sliced apart upon release. All this even though the comic and toys would show those weapons. So strange to think back to those times!
Anyway, as I babysat my niece one night I drew a picture of said mutant turtle for no real reason. So chuffed was I with the end result that I added a quick background and sent it off to the comic, once again forgetting I had done so. The thing is, I cancelled my reservation for it not long after, some time before issue 50. Almost a year later, knowing we had some classes in school that our teachers wouldn’t be there for (I can’t remember why) I decided to buy a comic on the way and the best option on the shelves was #67 of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles Adventures.
Talk about a lucky coincidence. I’d flicked through the comic on the bus but only during one of those classes did I sit down to read it properly and discovered I was in it! It had taken them long enough to print it and to this day I still find it quite unbelievable this was the only issue I ever bought after I’d stopped collecting it. It was the last drawing I sent to a comic but my letters continued, for example inside an issue of a new, futuristic magazine.
After seeing the new 3DO machines on an episode of Channel 4’s Equinox I was sold! It was to be the new standard for interactive entertainment much like radio or VHS and I wanted in on the ground floor. The story of the 3DO is for another time but I became an early subscriber to Future Publishing’s Edge and in the days before widespread internet in all our homes this was the only way to get my queries answered before I spent (my parents’) money on the system.
Why I thought Edge would know anything about Jaws I have no idea and I was heartbroken that Equinox had lied to us. As you can see I was by no means the only person hyped by 3DO and while I adored my Panasonic model, I still covet that Sanyo machine on the other page to this day. I also collected the bi-monthly 3DO Magazine around this time and got another set of queries answered in its final issue. Unfortunately, I never kept them and they go for silly money on eBay these days, but eventually I’ll track down what other not-as-important-as-I-thought-at-the-time questions I had and add that magazine to this post.
There was one publication I appeared in quite frequently and I’m currently tracking down all of its issues to complete my collection. It was a computing magazine that’s already featured on the blog for its coverage of the OiNK computer game and the fact it was the very first magazine I ever bought, beginning a few years before Edge. That superb magazine was Commodore Format, also from Future.
Yep, that’s me in my school uniform with my friend’s fluffy duck. (I know, you have questions.) We really thought that would make a good promotional photo. The story of Commodore Format and how formative it was for me and my friend Colin is worthy of a post all of its own, so that’ll be something I’ll dive deeper into in 2025 and I might even be able to get Colin involved. So if you want to find out what the hyper-intelligent duck forced us into then keep an eye on the blog over the next year sometime.
Did you ever see yourself in print as a kid? Friends of mine found their way into the pages of Transformers, 2000AD and even other issues of the Turtles. Maybe you were a lucky pig pal and impressed Uncle Pigg enough to get published in the blog’s namesake and received a piggy prize? If so, feel free to reach out to me on the blog’s socials (Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook), I’d love to hear your stories too.
