Creating Comics, Ring Raiders

RiNG RAiDERS LiCENSEE STYLE GUiDE: PART TWO

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I’m back with the second part of the Ring Raiders Style Guide folder sent to licensees of the potential hit franchise in 1988, this particular copy very graciously given to me by Barrie and James Tomlinson, father and son editing and writing team behind Fleetway’s short-lived but awesome Ring Raiders comic. I previously covered the introduction to the toy range, the background story and a couple of examples of the mini-comics packaged in with the Matchbox planes. Now we move on to the meat of the folder.

The next section is all about the planes and their pilots and there’s so much here I’ve decided to divide it into two parts, this month focussing on the heroic Raiders themselves. Included are eight of the Wing Commanders and their aircraft over sixteen pages, including top and side views of the planes and a full view of the pilot with a little bit of written information about each of them. We begin with their leader, Ring Commander Victor Vector and his F-19 Stealth fighter codenamed Victory 1, and “Salty” Salton with his Corsair Sea Dragon.

The basic details about the human element of each pairing would be elaborated on by the comic although the basics remained. It’s fun for me to remember all of those little details about the planes, such as weapons panels that were meant to slide open, wings that could split in two or underbellies that had inflatables built in. Of course the Matchbox toys were so dinky none of these were actually included but in our imaginations they were there and deployed often, not that it mattered with Salty because he was never a toy! More on that below.

For such small toys they had intricately moulded details. The panels may not have opened, but they were all there; the bodywork of the planes looked and felt authentic in our tiny hands. What else would you expect from Matchbox? The next couple includes my absolute favourite, the X-29 Samurai Flyer flown by Yasuo Yakamura, the first plane I owned (alongside a Skull Squadron plane I’ll show you next time). It was just the coolest toy ever!

I had most of the wings from the first series, although at the time I never thought about the coincidence that the Knight Fighter was flown by a pilot called Max Miles. The coincidence I’m thinking of? Knight Rider and one of its characters, Devon Miles. Maybe one day I’ll find out if there’s more to that than just coincidence. For now, what about those colour codes?

Even if these pages were sent in black and white it wouldn’t matter because the artist could use the Pantone code

The Pantone company’s Pantone Matching System is a standard colour chart used across various industries. It ensures correct use of exacting colours and licence holders Those Characters From Cleveland have used it here. They understood how important it was that all those little Matchbox toys were exactly as designed and that every bit of merchandise, like our comic, didn’t deviate.

I’d never given a thought to how precise things like this would have to be but it makes perfect sense of course. It’s a level of detail in this folder I didn’t expect to see. By using this system and its naming of the tones it also stops any accidental colour changes, for example if these pages were photocopied or faxed to the artists. Even if they ended up being sent in black and white it wouldn’t matter because the artist could use the Pantone code.

When you consider how small the planes were it’s pretty incredible to see precise colour codes for such teeny tiny details as the darker blue outlines of Joe Thundercloud’s F-86. “Cub” Jones’ F-5 Sky Tiger with its animal markings was a really cool plane to own at the time. Note that the page also mentions the mini missile system, something else our imaginations ran with. James actually wrote it into a script, brought to life by artist Don Wazejewski.

Cub’s background was also one I enjoyed and it brought a personal touch to the World War II story featured in the early issues of the comic. However, for whatever reason the cartoon did away with this completely and made him a modern day rookie Ring Raider pilot. I’m surprised they were allowed to change a key element of a character so drastically. The comic proved this original version could be so much more interesting.

Finally for this month are Yuri Kirkov’s F-4 Comet, a favourite toy of mine. In fact, his entire wing was a favourite, the colour scheme of the lead plane used across the three accompanying aircraft (like most of the wings), they really did look quite incredible to my young eyes. I was thrilled to see his Wing getting a starring role in a gorgeous Sandy James strip.

Go check that out to see just how brilliant Sandy was at bringing this toy to life. It’s the perfect example of what the comic could do. Before writing this post I thought Commander “Never” Evers and his F-16 Fearless Falcon was that rare thing, a Ring Raiders set I didn’t actually own. I thought, looking at its design, that I’d really missed out. But a fellow fan informed me that Evers and Salty were never actually released as toys, despite being official characters and planes, both featuring in the comic and the cartoon. How strange.

That’s the first half of the Airplanes and Pilots section covered, all the leader craft and characters in the toy range for the good guys done and dusted. I’m excited about doing the same for the Skull Squadron next month, even more excited to show fans what’s to follow after that. Whether you were as obsessed as I was with Ring Raiders or you’re interested in the production of licensed comics, I hope you’re enjoying this series so far.

The Skull Squadron takeover happens on Wednesday 13th March 2024.

PART ONE < > PART THREE

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OiNK Merchandise

YOUR SINCLAiR #27: SLOW PORK

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There I was, thinking I’d pretty much covered the OiNK computer game as much as I could have when I spotted the name of our favourite comic on the cover of this issue of Your Sinclair from 1988. One quick eBay purchase later and here we are, exactly 36 years to the day of its release and ready to check out another contemporary review of the game.

Previously we’ve seen how Commodore 64 magazine Zzap!64 and multiformat magazine Computer + Video Games thought it was a fun game and represented good value for money, with three very playable mini-games for the price of one full game. The problem was that it basically had nothing to do with OiNK. However, reviews were still generally very positive and so was I when I eventually played it decades after its release. So how did the Sinclair Spectrum conversion released six months later stack up?

As you can see, YS’s design was a bit basic to say the least and it’s rather sparse in the screenshot department (even for games it rewards big scores to like Gryzor), but from this one uninspiring picture of Tom Thug’s game we can see it’s a million miles away from the original C64 version. It’s not just the graphics that suffer either, it runs very slowly by comparison and while the C64 version loaded everything in at once, here each of the mini-games needs a few minutes to load individually.

This continues the general feeling that it had very little to do with the comic but as a game in its own right it was fun to play

Duncan McDonald’s review was written when the game was first released at full price (usually a tenner on cassette, around five pounds more for disk). Like most games of the time on these machines it would be rereleased in a smaller cassette box as a budget game for a few quid about a year later. The main complaint here is that each of the games already feels like a budget game rather than part of a full price release, but bundled together it’s not bad and is quite fun, hence the decent score overall.

This continues the general feeling about the game, that it really had very little to do with the comic but as a game in its own right it was fun to play and good value for money. You’ll also see here that Andy Capp’s game was reviewed on the same page, which is quite fitting since he’s very loosely linked to OiNK. When Buster comic was first released the character of Buster was billed as Andy Capp’s son, and as we know OiNK merged with Buster when it was cancelled. Nice little coincidence there.

As normal when checking out these magazines I decided to take a look at the rest of the contents and this Street Life double-page was right up my alley. As well as the obligatory sales charts it also takes a look at the 80s culture readers may have been interested in. Yes, there are a lot of daft space filler things here too but there’s some interesting contemporary snippets.

There’s a comics chart, although it’s focussed on specialist stores importing American titles rather than UK comics. Alongside this is a chart of the most popular arcade games back when such venues were everywhere and a review of two new movie releases, one of which would go on to spawn two awful sequels, a television series I loved and a comic series which was printed in Havoc in the UK and reviewed right here on the blog.

“[The graphics] are simply amongst some of the best I have ever seen on the ol’ pregnant calculator.”

Tony Worrall

Two other pages which may interest comics fans are an advert and review for a Dan Dare computer game, Dan Dare II: Mekon’s Revenge. To say the screenshots on the advert are small is an understatement. Maybe they’d have been fine for me at the time but to these 46-year-old eyeballs they’re so tiny they tell me nothing about the game whatsoever, the details lost to me. I do like how the advert has a 1955 date and price as if it’s a Dan Dare comic cover.

It appears Tony Worrall is a bit of a fan of the game. It may not look like much compared to today’s graphics, or even those found on my beloved C64, but for the Spectrum (which a friend of mine owned at the time) it does look ace and sounds like it would’ve been quite fun to play. If you read the review and find the sight of thumb-sucking mini-Mekons a funny idea check out the first screen shot closely and look at the two cryogenic chambers, you should be able to make out the animation. Fun stuff.

When I looked back at my first ever magazine, namely Commodore Format #14, I showed you a large double-page advertisement from Datel Electronics, a company renowned for quality hardware accessories for the home computers of the 80s and 90s. The CF adverts were slick, the accessories wowed teenage me and I ended up collecting much of what they offered in just the first couple of years of my Commodore ownership. But a few years previous, the same couldn’t be said of their Spectrum ads.

That’s not really fair of me to compare the two, over the next four years new developments in Desktop Publishing saw leaps forward in magazine design and the advertisements changed with the times. For this fan of retro gaming and computing it’s interesting to see what the Spectrum range offered in terms of add-ons, although it does appear to be somewhat limited to devices which would give these British computers access to things their competitors already had built-in.

As the end of the 80s approached a new breed of 16-bit machines was beginning to make its mark, the Atari ST being the first. The Commodore Amiga would soon be advertised all over the magazines aimed at the 8-bit owners and many would be enticed away, so it was quite the feat that Future Publishing’s Your Sinclair (they bought the title in 1990 from Dennis) continued until 1993, Amstrad Action until June 1995 and Commodore Format until October 1995, just six months before the release of the 32-bit Sony Playstation!

I simply adored my Commodore 64. I also had great fun playing a friend’s Amiga, but it was always Atari’s machine which fascinated me the most out of the 16-bits. I think it’s a lovely machine and nicer aesthetically than the Amiga, but I think it was mainly due to a friend’s music set up that I rightly or wrongly thought the ST was the better computer.

He had a guitar, a keyboard and some massive speakers all hooked up to his ST and what he could do with it was phenomenal. This friend was a particularly adept musical genius as far as I was concerned, but the ST was known for its music creating abilities and what he produced in the 90s in front of us in no time at all thanks to that computer wowed us. Plus we played Worms and Lemmings afterwards. Some great memories thanks to the Atari ST.

John is being sarcastic, using the language of what we’d call ‘incels’ and ‘trolls’ today to take very deliberate aim at toxic male views of the world

Page 98 is the last before the back cover and it’s an article called Backstabbin’ by freelance writer John Minson about the subject of girl gamers. Firstly, remember this is in a magazine from 1988, a time when everything for children was very explicitly split between what was for boys and what was for girls, with no overlap. Thankfully that’s changed a lot but at the time computer games were seen (incorrectly) as the exclusive domain of boys.

When you start reading this article you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a patronising piece aimed at placating any female readers. However, keep reading and you’ll see John is being sarcastic, using the language of what we’d call ‘incels’ and ‘trolls’ today to take very deliberate aim at toxic male views of the world (in this case the world of home computing). The fact Your Sinclair was edited by a woman (Teresa Maughan) should tell you there’s more to this than you initially think.

It’s disappointing that something like this would ever have needed written in the first place, but at the same time it’s quite a delightful surprise to see it in Your Sinclair of all places, and way back in 1988. It rounds off a fun look at another retro computing magazine, a genre I never thought I’d be covering when I started this blog, but one I’m enjoying immensely. Don’t forget there’s a lot more coverage of the OiNK computer game on the blog already, just click on the link below to go to the full menu.

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Comic Reviews, Death's Head

DEATH’S HEAD #4: DOG-GEDLY BRiLLiANT

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The front cover to this fourth issue of Death’s Head may be drawn by the familiar team of Bryan Hitch and Mark Farmer but inside Plague Dog is drawn by renowned Transformers artist Lee Sullivan (also Havoc (RoboCop), Doctor Who), with Annie Halfacree on letters, Nick Abadzis colouring and Simon Furman writing of course, with Richard Starkings editing. While I love Geoff Senior’s art being in every issue of Dragon’s Claws, I like the mixing of styles here.

Last month we saw Death’s Head’s new office wasn’t the perfect purchase Spratt seemed to think it was, having spent his new partner’s hard earned cash before he’d earned it. This issue sees that picked up and developed into two separate stories, one for each of our main characters. While our mechanoid anti-hero is hired by one gangster to hunt down and kill his rival’s pet mutt, Spratt comes face-to-face with it in their new property.

We kick things off with Death’s Head arriving at Jules ‘Kneecap’ Venici’s birthday party in his usual understated style. A huge birthday cake arrives but Venici has seen this movie before and fills it full of lead. Surprised at finding no one inside he still insists on killing whoever sent it because his own actions have made him look stupid. He then sits down to eat a slice, not noticing the highly conspicuous waiter in his latest in a long line of ridiculous wigs.

Predictably a huge shoot-out occurs between all of the gangsters and our lone hero, although even in this dire situation there’s time for some comedy. Elsewhere, Spratt is checking out their new digs and the lights are out. After we see a clawed hand swiping down in the darkness he lets out a blood-curdling scream and we’re led to believe the hand has made contact, until you read the following caption. Simon once again playing with our expectations.

I particularly like Spratt’s reaction to the sound effect of the plague dog, the alien monster used by Venici to take revenge out on those who wrong him. Last month we saw someone who looked like an undertaker sell the office to Spratt and in this issue we find out he is in fact called The Undertaker, a killer-for-hire whose method of assassination is somewhat gruesome.

But yes, that sound effect. We get all sorts of wording to describe sounds in our comics. Sometimes they’re downright bizarre to say the least. The fact Spratt correctly names this rather random sound effect is very funny and just shy of the character breaking the fourth wall and identifying he’s in a comic. It genuinely made me laugh. Back in the other half of the story, as the issue constantly flicks back and forth between the two scenes, Death’s Head is still at it even when cornered and out of ammunition.

Death by cocktail sausages! As a form of getting back at the bad guys it seems appropriate for this blog. Death’s Head isn’t the only one up against the odds, nothing to shoot with and having to use his ingenuity to get out of a tough scrape. As the rotten internals of the office building collapse around him, Spratt is trying desperately to escape but is hopelessly out of his depth.

In fact, the crumbling of the building saves him on more than one occasion, luck playing a huge part in keeping him alive. He could be learning a thing or two from his new boss though, or perhaps they’re just more suited than the mechanoid realises, because despite his fear (or perhaps because of it) he can’t help making quips.

Slipping out of his boot and shoving it into the monster’s mouth (complete with another joke) he makes a run outside and finds a car parked (well, hovering, it’s in the future after all). This is Spratt’s speciality. Quietly boosting cars is a particularly useful skill that Death’s Head needs him for. There’s a little bit of tension here as Spratt struggles to get inside, panicking as the plague dog bears down on him.

The engine doesn’t immediately kick in either and the tension rises further as the thing makes a leap for him and crashes through the rear window, clawing at the interior, getting closer and closer to Spratt until it finally places a claw on his shoulder. The escape vehicle now seems to have become a death trap. We know Spratt can’t die, but even if he takes off surely the thing’s head and arm are already inside so what can he do? Well…

Just like last month when an accidental slip of the hand by Spratt turned the tide of battle, here his mistake with the gears sends him rocketing backwards, squashing the monster against the building. Fuel tank ruptured, the dog roaring out to his “Foood!” as it starts to push the car off itself, Spratt characteristically can’t help but bask in his glorious victory, no matter how accidental.

The final spread of the issue sees The Undertaker making a phone call, apparently to activate the plague dog at its lair. So are we to assume he actually sold the lair to Spratt? His job also done, Death’s Head makes his way to the office and finds chaos has ensued, although Spratt seems somewhat subdued and not showing off for once. Of course, our mechanoid friend can always turn a situation around when money is concerned and our story ends.

On the next page a somewhat tacked on cliffhanger has The Undertaker hiring someone called Big Shot, a muscly man with a big gun. I can’t help but be a little underwhelmed with this after last month’s ending. Surely having a plague dog lying in wait was the more dramatic cliffhanger. I’m aware I haven’t read the next issue to see how good this guy is with his gun, but I feel this is a bit of a muted ending by comparison and the two should’ve been the other way around.

Head to Head is the comic’s new letters page and there’s an anonymous letter from my home city of Belfast. Although, if this person had actually read Death’s Head’s adventures in Transformers and properly understood them I don’t see how they could think he’s commonly seen as a full-blown villain. Not too sure who “Bob” is that the first letter is addressed to (Richard Starkings is the editor and Jenny O’Connor the Managing Editor) but there’s definitely a lot of high praise here and I agree with it all.

I just wish Lierne Elliot had been right when he said “seems we have a hit here”. Of course, it may have seemed that way at the time, especially since this was a comic based on a very popular character from another Marvel UK title, but alas the sales figures wouldn’t be good enough to make up for the cost of producing the comic, as Richard explained to me in the introductory post to this series.

But let’s not dwell on that, we’ve another six months of this to go!

On the back page is an advertisement for a new fortnightly Marvel comic that would never actually appear. The William Tell TV series was apparently shown on ITV, although I don’t ever remember seeing it advertised. There’s a chance it either wasn’t broadcast on Northern Ireland’s UTV or it didn’t last long before ITV pulled the plug, despite it running for three seasons of 72 30-minute episodes in France and elsewhere, where it was known as Crossbow.

I remember this comic advert alerting me to the TV series and yet I still never caught it in any TV listings magazines. Marvel’s confidence must’ve been knocked as the plan for a fortnightly changed to a Summer Special, an annual and a run of strips in the Marvel Bumper Comic, plus a collected graphic novel, the strips for all of these already created for the defunct fortnightly. This is why I think the show must’ve failed to pick up viewers here in the UK, as Marvel suddenly realised the audience wasn’t there for what they’d assumed was going to be a hit.

You just might see some of it on the blog at some point though, as the Bumper Comic is on the cards for the future, I just don’t know when yet, but you heard it hear first! (As if you’d hear it anywhere else.) For now, that’s us finished with another outing for Death’s Head… well, really more of an outing for Spratt this month. We return to Earth of the far future on Monday 4th March 2024.

iSSUE THREE < > iSSUE FiVE

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Comic Reviews, Dragon's Claws

DRAGON’S CLAWS #9: OOH, MATRON!

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Last month there was a feeling this fantastic comic was shifting gears towards a suddenly imposed ending, which with hindsight we know is coming in #10. At the very end of this penultimate issue of Dragon’s Claws it feels like there’s a rush to finish it all off before the unfortunate cancellation. For the majority of the strip however this isn’t obvious and it’s another belter of a chapter with these sadly short-lived characters.

The issue’s FastFax, normally a way of adding depth to the world in which the comic resides or hinting about future storylines or guest characters, is a more straightforward ‘Story So Far’ page like we’d get in other comics. While the fictional news service would obviously focus on the events in N.U.R.S.E.’s headquarters, it adds to the feeling of the title wrapping things up, when I was so used to this page being used as a way of looking forward. A sad reminder the end is nearly here.

The strip itself is called Treatment and the main focus is Matron’s capture of both Dragon and The Evil Dead’s leader Slaughterhouse. All three of them are linked up to a mind control machine Matron uses as a way of accessing their memories, then torturing them with those same memories. Yes, it’d be much easier to just kill them both and she mentions this at one point, but like all the best James Bond villains she wants to have her fun first.

She’s completely confident in her success and feels the destruction of both teams and the deaths of Deller and Golding are inevitable, so she wants to drag it out and savour it as much as possible. Despite an underwhelming cliffhanger involving Matron last month, the character is superbly written by Simon Furman here, her psychotic nature making me wish we’d seen more of her all along.

We get to see inside the minds of both team leaders, with Dragon being made to watch as his wife Tanya and son Michael confront him before being killed by Deller, which as we know didn’t happen despite Matron’s orders. In fact, I’m assuming their arc will be the final part of the story to get wrapped up next time. In a particularly dark and shocking scene Deller shoots and kills the young boy! We see the shot and then his dead body on the ground in the next panel!

It’s all rather harrowing for a Marvel UK title young Transformers fans may have been collecting after it was heavily promoted in that comic. Outside of his mind we see Dragon curled up and crying desperately, his own insecurities around the ones he loves leading to that scene playing out in his mind, Matron merely triggering them rather than forcing the scenario. At this point I was intrigued as to what resided in Slaughterhouse’s mind!

But first we head back down the building to catch up with the rest of the characters. Matron has seen on her screens that Stenson is dead, The Evil Dead and Dragon’s Claws are about to decimate each other’s ranks and World Development Council ambassador Golding and Deller are trapped in a burning room dozens of floors up from the ground. No wonder she’s confident.

For the unlikely pairing of Golding and Deller there’s only one option for escape, and that’s out the window and back in again to a different room. There’s a pole sticking out from the building which Deller can use to swing out and back in again through another window, then break down the locked door to get Golding out. But first he must overcome his fear of heights!

This is something that hasn’t cropped up before simply because the story has never put him in such a position. It adds drama to a sequence that plays out over a few pages scattered throughout the rest of the issue. In fact, we come back a few pages later to see he’s frozen to the spot and it’s Golding who encourages him to take the leap, to believe in himself after all the humiliation he’s faced in previous issues (albeit by screaming at him).

There’s a definite theme this issue of people from all sorts of backgrounds and from completely different sides coming together to fight a greater enemy. An enemy that’s using them all, that’s creating division and fomenting hatred to turn the populace against each other for their own selfish needs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Dragon’s Claws could easily be released today and be just as relevant, if not more so than it was in the 80s.

Death Nell and Steel’s romantic history gives the story an opening to bring the two teams together to launch a united frontal assault on the upper floors of the building where the majority of security has amassed to protect Matron. As a reader you know it’s coming, even as the opposing sides continue to fight, Mercy in particular sticking the boot in. (Boom, boom!)

On a side note, I was surprised to read Nell saying, “Wise Up!” because as far as my friends and I were concerned this was always a Northern Ireland phrase. Indeed, when I used it myself in Scotland with some friends there in my teenage years it completely confused them. Perhaps we were wrong, but most likely it’s just a coincidence and wasn’t known to be a popular phrase in this part of the UK.

It’s at this point we finally get a look into the mind of Slaughterhouse. I was really looking forward to this and Simon doesn’t disappoint. His memories start off hard with an abusive father hitting him with a baseball bat because Slaughterhouse’s own mum died during child birth. Damn, this goes dark. This was enough to lead him to a life of crime, then once captured the corrupt government experimented on him in return for reducing his sentence.

The side effects included his pointed teeth, his skin colour and blood red eyes and Slaughterhouse, who was very much the victim of his life’s circumstances, couldn’t handle it and he turned on the whole world, the world that had beaten him down so cruelly time and again. But his mind was lost by this stage and he began killing people, seeing everyone as an imaginary enemy, and within just a couple of pages Slaughterhouse’s entire origin story is told.

“We do this my way!”
“The weak way… the stupid way!”
“Let’s just kill ’em!”
“Try it, curly!”

Dragon’s Claws and The Evil Dead

We can only guess if it would’ve been told at this stage (or so quickly) had the comic not been cancelled but somehow it doesn’t feel rushed. In fact, it just makes me lament the fact we can’t see more character development for him now that we (and Dragon) know the truth. The whole chapter is a great piece for both leads. Dragon’s own insecurities while leading his team and in his position in the world could’ve made for a wonderfully deep character too.

As the Claws and The Evil Dead make an uneasy alliance to take down N.U.R.S.E. and rescue their respective leaders, the two men’s minds are thrown into a climactic final battle, one which Matron fully expects will mentally tear them apart, leaving them gibbering wrecks and essentially dead. But she hasn’t reckoned on the power of said minds. Dragon slowly realises he’s in his old Game uniform and tries to convince Slaughterhouse it’s all fake.

He does so through reasoning. Yes, they’re physically fighting of course, we have to have our action in an action comic, but they come to realise they’re flip sides of the same coin, that they both do what they do because they believe in it, they’ve both been manipulated into becoming what they are and they agree giving in now would be the easy way out. But they don’t do easy. For once the hardest thing to do isn’t to fight each other, it’s to work together and they turn their minds on Matron’s.

They start to take her mind down in another physical battle but we’re inside her thoughts now so she’s all-powerful and the two men have to fight side-by-side if they’re to survive. Dragon only wants her beaten, so she can face justice for her crimes in the real world, but Slaughterhouse can’t stop himself. His thirst for revenge is too much and inside the mind machine he slits her throat just as Nell does so to her physical body.

It’s a shock ending but then it all kind of deflates on the next page, the final one of the strip. In just five panels we get a lot of exposition and explanations about what takes place next instead of actually seeing anything. The Evil Dead are let go, Dragon knowing they could never work together, Deller is somewhat redeemed in his own eyes, the team decide what they’re going to do now their employer is no more… a lot happens ‘off-screen’, dealt with through a very quick conversation between the team.

I understand the next issue is the last and it’ll most likely wrap things up for the Dragon family’s arc, but so many other important story arcs just seem discarded far too easily, like one of those final scenes you’d see at the end of an old 80s cartoon. To be clear, it’s only disappointing because of the quality of what came before, not just in this exciting chapter but in the whole run up to now.

The team should be incredibly proud of this chapter though. Writer Simon Furman, artist Geoff Senior, colourist Steve White and editor Richard Starkings are to be congratulated. What the final page lacks is what the other 21 pages do superbly, quickly wrapping up as much of the main story as possible without feeling rushed. Which is why page 24 feels so unlike what we’ve come to expect.

To round off this penultimate review is Digit’s fact-file and more interesting tidbits of information on Dragon’s teammate that would’ve been elaborated on in future issues. These include the fact he’s Scottish, a missing amount of time in his life and just how stable/unstable he actually is. I bet his lost memories would’ve made for some great stories. Instead, we must say goodbye. That’ll happen a little over a month from now. The final issue didn’t go on sale the same day as Death’s Head for the first time, instead it appeared a week later. So watch out for the review of #10 of Dragon’s Claws on Monday 11th March 2024.

iSSUE EiGHT < > iSSUE TEN

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Transformers

TRANSFORMERS: WHAT’S NEXT? LOTS!

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I’ve just completed an epic real time read through of a mammoth comic series over on the blog’s Instagram, so what’s next?

First, let me tell you a story from about 12 years ago. I discovered hit television show NCIS through a crossover episode between Hawaii Five-0 and NCIS: Los Angeles. I was immediately hooked and wanted to go back to the beginning, the very beginning of the show NCIS itself spun off from originally, Jag, about Navy lawyers. I remembered watching some of it with my parents in the 90s and, created by Airwolf’s Donald P. Bellisario I’d enjoyed it. So I started there.

One season of Jag ended with a helluva cliffhanger when a main character stood on a landmine and had their leg blown off! I had the next season on DVD already and immediately binged all 22 episodes in two weeks. In that fortnight the character had gone through physical and mental anguish, rehabilitation and was walking on a prosthetic. That was quick, I thought! It felt anti-climactic. But that wasn’t Jag’s fault, it was mine.

That storyline was meant to last about nine months, not half of one. I’d completely ruined the drama of this character’s arc. I swore I’d never binge to that level again. Several years later, having started the original OiNK blog site and already reading that comic in real time, I decided I wanted to do something with Marvel UK’s Transformers, a comic I’d binged all of in about six months around ten years previous (before the Jag incident). Knowing how that Jag arc had felt, how would reading Transformers in real time over seven-and-a-half years differ to bingeing? 

Reading OiNK in real time is one thing, but here was a comic with great character arcs, epic storylines and its fair share of cliffhangers, and I relished the challenge of using all my will power to not jump ahead in what was a massive read through! The UK version of Transformers had a whopping 332 issues and (during its run) 19 specials, seven annuals and a variety of other books. The word “epic” can be overused in comics, but it’s the right one to use here and reading it one issue per week just heightened that to a completely new level. Every Thursday I became a kid again, eagerly anticipating the next issue.

Why did I do this on Instagram instead of the blog? When I began I thought the stories were so well known that I wouldn’t be bringing much new to the table. However, showing off every UK issue, including covers, back up stories, letters pages, Lew Stringer strips, features, adverts and more could be a unique angle not covered before, especially for international fans. Instagram was the perfect outlet for doing a photographic journey through my collection rather than in-depth reviews.

My decision proved successful and my Transformers posts became the blog’s most popular on Instagram for seven years, and you can now check it all out in whatever order you wish via a special blog post. But what’s next for the Cybertronians on the OiNK Blog? I’ve adored every single second of this read through and the thought of not covering them doesn’t bear thinking about. First up though is Transformers: Generation 2, the short sequel series also written by Simon Furman. I’ve never read it but recently completed the collection. This is the American original I’m talking about, a first for the blog.

In the UK it was actually Fleetway (OiNK’s second publisher) who acquired the rights for Generation 2 but their monthly only lasted five months. (For me at the time it only lasted one!) They’re very hard to come by for a decent price these days so I’m going to cover the full story in its original form first and do the UK version later. In the US it also began life in G.I. Joe so for this fan of the Joes it’s going to be exciting getting reacquainted with their original comic after it was unceremoniously dumped from later issues of the UK’s Transformers.

Watch out for that in a few months here on the blog, but what about Generation 1? I could say it’s been covered already and it’s time to move on, but a key design flaw with Instagram has me thinking otherwise. My original plan for this post had been to reminisce over the past seven years and give you links to key issues so you could work your way through it all if you so desired. But when I link to an individual Instagram post there isn’t any way to navigate beyond it, which is a strange thing indeed. So unless you wanted to scroll back over seven years’ worth of Instagram posts you’d only see the issues I linked to.

As a result, and given the nature of social media, in a few months anyone visiting the account wouldn’t even know I’d covered the comic! So yes, I do want to review the collection I’m most proud of in a more in-depth, permanent fashion here on the blog. But not yet. For two reasons. The first being that I’ve just finished it. I want to have a lengthy break again so that it feels fresh and it can surprise me once more; my ageing memory and the sheer amount of them will both help.

The other reason is it’ll require a huge amount of my time and over the next four or five years there are a range of other comics I wish to cover first. Yes, I do plan very far ahead! If I was to start many years’ worth of in-depth weekly Transformers reviews before then I’d have to cut back on the others. That’s not something I want to do just yet. But all is not lost. To bridge the gap between now and being able to dedicate the time needed to one of the greatest comics ever created, I’ll be doing something special every Christmas.

You all know I love my Christmas comics and the annuals we received from Santa Claus as kids, and Transformers did a particularly great job of both every year. From 2024 onwards each of these festive issues and hardback books will be celebrating their 40th anniversaries and it felt like a waste not to do something on the blog. So I’ll be celebrating those festive editions and books every holiday season for the next eight years! More on that much, much later in the year.

Plenty to come from the Robots in Disguise for the foreseeable future then (and hopefully beyond). I’m always receiving comments from people who are shocked when I reach the end of a read through, no matter its length, telling me the time has flown in, so be patient and you’ll not see the time go in either for more Transformers content. Yep, I’m promising much more OiNK Blog content for many years to come. As long as people keep reading it then it’s not going anywhere! I hope you’ll stick around too.

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Commodore Format, Merchandise, Round the Bend

ROUND THE BEND GAME: COMMODORE FORMAT #17

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This issue of the simply superb Commodore Format, on sale this day 32 years ago, was my fourth at the time and the first I bought after finally receiving my Commodore 64 computer for Christmas. (You can check out a more personal look at CF in my retrospective on #14.) This was a memorable issue for sure, with certain game reviews leading me to some lifelong favourites which I’d countless hours of fun with, as well as having a super addictive covertape game. However, I’m including it on the blog for none of these reasons.

Instead, CF makes its fourth appearance on the OiNK Blog because of a review inside for a game I didn’t purchase. It may have been based on a favourite TV show but there was only so much pocket money I could splash out on my C64 and it had very stiff competition this month. Now, decades later it’s time to take a closer look at that review because the game is based on a series dear to the hearts of pig pals everywhere, namely Round the Bend.

In case you’re wondering what those icons mean, they represent
‘One-player’, ‘Joystick control’, ‘High score table’ and ‘difficulty levels’

Originally intended to be an OiNK television show (much more on that at a later date) Round the Bend was an electronic comic show created by the same trio of Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers. With the huge Spitting Image Workshop puppet of Doc Croc as its editor and various animated comic strips with a certain sense of humour, it was OiNK in all but name. Running very successfully for three series, and winning awards as it did so, it was inevitable we’d see a computer game at some point.

Taking the tired old formula of turning a licence into a platform game, the general consensus appears to be that it plays well but was far too easy. So it was fun but not for long enough to justify the full price. As was customary at the time this would be rereleased a year or so later as a budget game for a few quid, but at a tenner or more it got knocked down for its value for money. It seems to concentrate completely on Doc Croc and his ratty writers too, which seems a waste as the show was chock full of zany characters who could’ve brought many different forms of gameplay. At least John Potato Peel makes a cameo!

Like the OiNK game before it there was nothing too original then, but what was there was fun. A quick glance at a “64%” score and it’d be easy to dismiss it, but reading Stuart Campbell’s review has me thinking it may have got a higher score upon rerelease. I can find no evidence of a further CF review, however Zzap!64 scored it 52% initially but this jumped to 74% after its price drop. Nothing to write home about then, but an interesting look into a curious OiNK-adjacent piece of merchandise nonetheless.

As is customary when looking at these old magazines I can’t help but reminisce and have pulled out some other highlights that had me fondly remembering reading this for the first time. First up is one of the games on the covertape. According to some sources online this was a copyrighted piece of software hacked and distributed illegally through the public domain, CF unknowingly giving away commercial software. But as you can see here in the first paragraph of the instructions page that’s incorrect; a piece of misinformation that gained traction in C64 circles despite the explanation of a hacker’s name on it being front and centre here.

The idea is a simple one but it is oh so addictive. You control that little silver circle and must destroy all the tiles on the screen and make your way to the exit. Thing is, the tiles explode one second after you touch them, so forward planning is essential. You must plot out your route over increasingly complex layouts because once you’re moving you can’t stop or else you’ll explode too. It’s just as addictive today as it ever was and is best played on a real machine with a joystick. One of my top C64 games of all time and it was a freebie!

Speaking of favourites.

More icons, the Octopus meaning ‘Multiload’ (the game is in bits)
and, brilliantly, the paws mean ‘Pause Function’

In the Commodore Format retrospective I showed you the preview for First Samurai and the Making Of feature for Creatures II: Torture Trouble (and I also embellished on the magazine’s scoring system), both games impressing me from my first issue. Now at last both were available to buy! They blew away anything I was playing on friends’ consoles at the time and each had me glued to the screen for hours. For a computer created long before Nintendo even released their first console, these were pretty incredible.

The little egg character was a megastar in the 8-bit computer days

They both played like a dream too. As I’ve said before, Creatures II remains in my top five computer and video games of all time to this day. I remember buying it on cassette to begin with, but the mutliload (where each level has to load individually for a few minutes) was destroying the flow, so when my parent’s bought me my disk drive a few months later I used my pocket money again to buy it on 5.25” floppy disk (loading was so much faster) and never looked back! Two glorious games. No wonder Round the Bend never got a look in.

Also this month was the concluding part (obviously, the game was finished) of The Clyde Guide by the geniuses that were John and Steve Rowland, creators of Creatures, who provided a fascinating look into the creation of the game. I loved things like this and when they returned later in the magazine’s life it was for a game called Mayhem in Monsterland which they documented from the very earliest design stages.

Elsewhere in the budget games section was a game with a title that rather stood out. It was a difficult one I remember. You had to avoid all the buildings and enemy craft (even UFOs) until you got a chance to crash into and destroy the enemy HQ and rescue the hostages! Dizzy also makes an appearance this issue. The little egg character was a megastar in the 8-bit computer days and despite simplistic graphics and controls his adventures proved extremely popular thanks to great gameplay and puzzles.

That feature about the user-created, free-to-distribute software that made up the public domain showed what this little machine could really do graphically. A few years later I even put together my own Public Domain Library (amongst others who did the same) to help distribute said software. Parallel Logic Public Domain (thanks to lifelong friend Colin McMaster for the name), or PLPD as it went by, was even listed in CF as the third best PD library in the whole of the UK! I was dead chuffed.

I’ve also pointed out before how the game adverts of the day often didn’t even show us what the thing looked like in action, instead relying on exciting artwork and descriptions. Given how the games would look completely different across the many formats they’d be released on I can understand why. No one wants to buy a game thinking it’s going to look one way and then realise those images were from a much more powerful computer. One such advert in this issue was for the conversion of the arcade hit, Smash TV (think ‘The Running Man: The Game’).

Smash TV was a corker of a game. Copying the controls of the arcade cabinet you could use two joysticks to control your character, one for their feet (their movement) and one for their gun (which direction they’re firing). Hand one joystick to a friend and the shouting and hollering as you try to work together, clearing rooms of enemies in this violent gameshow while trying to pick up brand new toasters etc. was hilarious. Even seeing this advert brings back all the feels.

Finally, a look to the future. Not the future of the 21st century though, instead let’s take a look at the future according to Commodore in 1992 and their CDTV. The 90s would be a hotbed for CD-ROM machines promising us a multimedia future. I personally invested in one of Panasonic’s 3DO machines (3DO was to be a new standard like VHS) and to this day I think it’s criminal it was never the success it deserved to be.

They were expected to revolutionise our world

Of course these days we’re used to our electronic devices doing pretty much everything, but at the beginning of the final decade of the last century it was the norm to have a dedicated machine for each piece of entertainment, like games, music, movies etc. While 3DO at least tried something new and the various machines looked cool, Commodore went with a rather boring rectangle, possibly thinking it wouldn’t alienate people too much if it looked like their current VCR or HiFi (I assume).

Needless to say it never took off. It was basically a Commodore Amiga with a CD drive and no keyboard; the fact you could buy a keyboard, mouse and even a floppy disk drive for the CDTV didn’t help distinguish it from the computer range either. For me it’s always fascinating to read contemporary magazines from around that time and the hype for The Next Big Thing, and how they were expected to revolutionise our world. It took a little longer but in the end we got there.

I’ve had great fun reading this magazine again and reliving the hype I felt at the time for the games inside it. Commodore Format remains my top mag even to this day and you can check out other issues on the blog if you like. Namely, the one that gave away the OiNK game on the cassette, another which printed maps for said game, and as mentioned above my first issue as well, which just so happened to be my first ever magazine too. It also contained that advertisement for Round the Bend. Great memories. Still a great read.

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Creating Comics, Ring Raiders

RiNG RAiDERS LiCENSEE STYLE GUiDE: PART ONE

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A few years ago the wonderful former UK comics editor Barrie Tomlinson and his writer son James Tomlinson very graciously answered my questions about a favourite childhood comic of mine, the very short-lived Ring Raiders, based on the Matchbox toy planes of the same name. Created by Those Characters From Cleveland and with a range of merchandise, a UK comic and even an American cartoon, Ring Raiders was set to be the next big franchise.

It wasn’t to be but I still loved the toys and I collected a mountain of them including all of the extras I could get my hands on. I also owned whatever videos were made available over here but the comic was far superior. I’ve covered the series already and you can read all about it, as well as the interviews with Barrie and James, in the Ring Raiders section of the blog. However, chatting with me wasn’t the only thing these two gentlemen very kindly did. They also sent me this folder.

This is the official licensee folder sent to Fleetway Publications (and other companies wishing to produce anything related to the franchise) in 1989 with all of the information needed to create an accurate depiction of the characters, their aircraft and the world they inhabited. A ‘Style Guide’ if you will. It includes details on the backstory, the individual pilots and even the correct colour codes to be used on each plane to ensure the exact right tone of each was used.

It goes much further too, showing a selection of suggested merchandise 12-year-old me would’ve given his right arm for, images of how the packaging would look on shelves, and logos and the variations allowed. It even contains the legal side of things, guides to marketing whatever the companies were producing and fun promotional ideas for children’s favourite planes if it had all been successful. As a fan this is a bit of a holy grail, but I think a lot of blog readers may find it just as interesting.

A lot of the comics covered on the OiNK Blog are based on franchise properties such as toys and cartoons. These licenced titles made up a huge part of my childhood and were quality publications in their own right. Each would’ve had their own variation on a folder like this, so I thought it would prove to be a fascinating look into producing a licenced comic, not only for Ring Raiders fans but for those of licenced comics in general.

Over this and the next four months (on the 13th of each) I’ll break down the folder into its separate parts and show you all of the details within, from designs to copyrights and beyond. We begin this month with the introductory section, under the banner ‘Philosophy’. This contains the background information on the potential franchise and its storyline; a storyline that both the cartoon and the comic would pull from, despite producing two very different final products.

First up is this ‘The Command is in Your Hands’ page, which was the tagline for the toys. Now, remember this was the late 1980s, a time when toys were marketed strictly at one gender or the other. This continues today of course but thankfully to a much lesser extent and with much more crossover. There’s less stigma today with boys and girls just playing with whatever they want, which is much healthier in my opinion. This first page sums up not just the thoughts behind Ring Raiders but all so-called “boy’s toys” of the time.

That last paragraph in particular is a bit cringe-worthy 35 years after the fact, but you can just imagine how other toys such as Transformers and Masters of the Universe may have been similarly marketed, can’t you? The regular use of the word “confidence” is a rather strange one to focus on for a children’s toy, is it not? For me, they were about a pre-Pokémon kind of “gotta collect ‘em all” mentality as well as the time travelling storyline, which was used to explain the huge variety of aircraft in the collection.

The year is 1998 and the world is on the brink of a cataclysmic war. There were always pilots who, twisted by war’s cruelties, were willing to join the evil air force.

The then-future storyline of Ring Raiders

Next up is the overall scenario, which I’ve covered before during the real time read through, detailing how the comic changed some elements, such as giving the individual Ring Raiders planes the ability to time travel. Originally it was meant to be this interesting set up including the major difference between how the two sides conducted their time travel. But it felt like a natural progression in Barrie’s comic and an obvious one for the stories included. The comic also introduced a range of gadgets tucked away inside the rings which as a kid really fired my imagination (I constantly wore one of them that winter).

Again there’s a focus on the noble elements of the characters involved, something the various licensees could pull from to appeal to parents I’m sure, while we kids focussed mainly on the action and the dogfighting in the palms of our hands. We’re only two pages into the folder and I can already see (even before any images or photos of the toys) how this could’ve stood out at the time amongst the vast array of other wannabe franchises vying for position.

They fired up the imaginations of kids just like me and gave us ideas for our own bedroom battles

Unfortunately, the late 80s and early 90s were awash with unsuccessful toys that at other times could very well have been hits. Even a lot of toys that had been enjoying success were floundering by then; a bit like the UK comic scene in those same years, when over saturation helped to dilute the success of individual titles. Ring Raiders would succumb, the comic and cartoon cancelled after only a few outings, although the toys would continue throughout 1990 with two more series of planes to collect.

However, as you’ll see later in this series the Ring Raiders were meant to be on far more than just the toy shelves. For now, I’ll finish with these two examples of the fold-out mini-comics that came bundled with the plane sets. They fired up the imaginations of kids just like me and gave us ideas for our own bedroom battles.

Of course this was before Barrie’s comic came along and blew us away with its incredible battle scenes coupled with three-dimensional characters and epic twisty-turny storylines that only a full-sized 24-page comic could do justice to. Having Barrie, James and a plethora of top UK comics talent (Ian Kennedy, Angus Allan, Carlos Pino, Don Wazejewski, John Cooper, John Gillatt, Sandy James, Scott Goodall, Tom Tully, Geoff Campion and Terry Magee) didn’t hurt either!

That’s it for this month and that’s just the introduction out of the way. Next month I’ll show you all of the leaders’ planes in the Ring Raiders half of the range, each with character introductions the comic would develop further, as well as the colour codes and details that the artists would have to abide to. That’ll be here for your delectation on Tuesday 13th February 2024.

GO TO PART TWO

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Comic Reviews, Death's Head

DEATH’S HEAD #3: DEADLY FUNNY

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Alongside Dragon’s Claws #8 the first week of 1989 (and 2024) brought us the third issue of Death’s Head and, while the story inside may be light on plot, it’s aim is to establish the relationship between our mechanoid friend and Spratt. Spratt was the young fella who rebuilt the Freelance Peace-Keeping Agent in #1 after he was nearly destroyed by Dragon and his team, and it seems he’s determined to help Death’s Head navigate this era on Earth, as well as balance his books so he’s never left broke again.

We kick off with this scene setting display below. There’s nothing quite like a good old 80s dystopian future, is there? Mass consumerism, unhealthy food, sex and violence may seem like a clichéd way of depicting the future but it was created in the late 80s and this style was very much in vogue, pencilled by Bryan Hitch, inked by Dave Hine and lettered by Annie Halfacree. Even the basic way in which it’s coloured by Nick Abadzis adds to the overall feeling of grime in the Los Angeles Resettlement. (Resettled why?)

Tracking down a man for information on his target, Death’s Head follows him into a packed club where he uses non-lethal projectiles in the crowded space. Aimed with precision, they end up only affecting the one person. Whether this is because he didn’t want to harm innocents or because he only injures/kills those he’s paid to do so (see his rules in #1) is up to the reader to decide. Once outside for interrogation things take a turn for the worse.

The target grabs Spratt and Death’s Head instantly regrets letting the kid tag along. However, the man makes one big mistake. Spratt tries to tell him this, that he’s made a bad move and the man argues back that he can’t be killed while holding a hostage, so it’s clearly a good move. But this wasn’t what Spratt was referring to. No, in the heat of the moment the man had called our main character a bounty hunter! Oh dear. This leads on to this page below.

This is just the first of several laugh-out-loud moments in this issue and it’s clear writer Simon Furman intends to bring as much comedy as possible to this comic, certainly a lot more than in Dragon’s Claws anyway. They get the information they need but Death’s Head is warned he’ll be no match for his objective, a person named Ogrus, especially if he takes the kid along.

Death’s Head can’t help but agree. While he appreciates Spratt’s help in doing things he’d find difficult, like blending in or stealing a car for example, and he’s good at the accountancy stuff, he’s far too keen to impress and prove himself. As such, Death’s Head inwardly questions why he let him come along in the first place and we get a brilliant flashback to a transport vehicle skimming over the Atlantic Ocean a few days prior.

On board, a hostage situation had kicked off and in the end it was Spratt who had saved the day, albeit in an overly flamboyant way involving an automated rubbish cart, some acrobatics and a lot of showing off. However, what’s so funny about this scene to me is seeing Death’s Head, after everything he went through in Transformers, doing normal things like complaining about the food, or just sitting there watching the whole situation unfold with interest. Maybe it’s just me but I was giggling along to all of this.

There’s some hilarious chemistry between these two already and despite the title character’s protestations he still takes his new recruit to the rendezvous in a rough looking bar and casino. Now remember, this comic was created in the 1980s, the characters have just walked into a bar full of dodgy criminals, the main character is a no-nonsense individual looking for one certain person and has no interest in anyone else there. You know what this means, don’t you? Yup, that’s right, a massive bar brawl.

There are some knowing nods here to this sort of thing inexplicably breaking out in the movies of the day, when one or two punches from people in the foreground somehow leads to everyone in the background laying into each other. Here, it begins with Death’s Head taking out one person who had innocently said something to a dealer at the casino, knowing full well what it would cause, thus allowing him to simply walk up to his target in the middle of the chaos, unchallenged.

The little bits of dialogue on the second page make it feel almost like a spoof of those movie scenes, especially the one about someone’s mother. Outside, Spratt has been ordered to stay in the car he stole (that was graciously received by the Peace-Keeping Agent), but Spratt knows Death’s Head will be outnumbered and can’t help throwing himself in to help. Crashing the vehicle through the casino wall and shouting at everyone to freeze, his diminutive frame leads to nothing but uproariuous laughter. He’s not down and out yet though.

Climbing into a position above Death’s Head’s fight with the mark he questions whether he should get involved or not, tossing a coin to decide. By now it should be clear to the reader that anything Spratt sets out to do will not normally have the intended outcome. Here, he can’t even make the decision to get involved or not without something happening, albeit this time it’s one that distracts Ogrus enough for Death’s Head to start turning the tide of the fight he was clearly losing.

A quick gag or two from the mechanoid and he’s back on top again and a final one-two from the both of them together (Spratt jumping feet first into Orgus’ back as Death’s Head punches him in the stomach) and the battle is won, the contract complete. We close off this chapter’s main story with Spratt joyous that he actually helped and some reluctant praise is even thrown his way.

The “Partners/Don’t push it” exchange perfectly sums up the strange working relationship these two seem to have. Spratt is all in and as far as he’s concerned they’re already partners, he’s just clamouring for confirmation and a rhetorical pat on the back, especially from someone of Death’s Head stature. The fact his apparent partner is so dead pan and doesn’t show emotion easily is just another challenge for Spratt, which makes him even keener.

Death’s Head on the other hand finds Spratt annoying. He gets in the way. He’s too keen. He even wants conversation! Death’s Head would rather continue to work on his own. But he can’t deny the kid has helped with his money problems and has been a good guide to this strange time in Earth’s future, both things he promised he’d help with. Plus, he can get into places inconspicuously, something Death’s Head can’t do. Well, in theory Spratt can, but his wish to show off can hamper that somewhat.

It was only upon finishing it that I realised the plot was so simple, I’d just been swept along with these characters

As the duo walk off with their client’s trophy we turn the page and find ourselves “Elsewhere”. In that final panel above Spratt makes a throwaway comment that he’s managed to secure a new office (since Death’s Head’s previous one is thousands of years in the past), spending their money before they’d even earned it. Well it seems that’s where “Elsewhere” is.

Poor Spratt. His heart was in the right place, but not only has he spent Death’s Head’s reward money, it looks like even this good-intentioned gesture will come back to haunt him too. Poor kid can’t catch a break. Hopefully next month’s story will pick this mystery up as its main thread.

This third issue may be very light on plot but as I said above that wasn’t the point. The point was to establish this (very) unlikely pair as a working partnership. Having the plot as just another simple contract for Death’s Head and using this to show how enjoyable that can be with the two of them working side-by-side was a brilliant idea. It was only upon finishing it that I realised the actual plot was so simple, I’d just been swept along with these characters. I look forward to more sweeping on Sunday 4th February 2024.

iSSUE TWO < > iSSUE FOUR

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Comic Reviews, Dragon's Claws

DRAGON’S CLAWS #8: BEGiNNiNG OF THE END?

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Here we are at the beginning of 2024. Or should that be 1989? I took my Christmas decorations down yesterday (the 5th January is the 12th day as you know, and I like to enjoy that one final day with them), the snow on the blog’s logo has melted and it’s time to kick off the New Year with something not very new at all, the latest issues of Dragon’s Claws and Death’s Head, both available to buy today 35 years ago.

This striking yet funny cover has Slaughterhouse of The Evil Dead taking centre stage and inside they’re very much back in the thick of it. The Fastfax on the editorial page makes another mention of the Miami Bloodbath, this time linking it to this Game team (a dead ambulance crew in London has been killed with the same precision used in Miami). Cue Slaughterhouse and his new cohorts entering N.U.R.S.E. Central dressed as that crew has been described and accessing the upper managerial floors.

After losing three of his men in #2 to Dragon and his team, Slaughterhouse has recruited Hack, Rend and Slash who remind me somewhat of Hook, Link and Sinker, other creations of writer Simon Furman’s in Transformers. This isn’t the first (or indeed the second) time aspects of this comic seemed to contain a knowing nod towards that other title. Not much is made of these three, they’re really just here to make the numbers up, but Slaughterhouse and his true love, Death Nell play major roles this month and not just in administering a bit of chaos.

First we check in on the Dragon’s Claws HQ where Steel, Scavenger, Mercy and Digit are relaxing between missions (Scavenger fixing the hole created by a certain mechanoid in Death’s Head #2) and we find out Dragon himself has taken off after fielding a telephone call from the World Development Council’s Ambassador Golding, who we saw meeting Stenson and Deller last time in N.U.R.S.E. HQ.

Mercy is on top form after her recent run in with Scourge, her copycat from the previous two issues. It seems to have exorcised some ghosts for Mercy and she’s reinvigorated and ready for whatever lies ahead. However, what lies ahead is The Evil Dead. The team are called into action to stop their enemies from slaughtering everyone inside N.U.R.S.E. Even the shadowy Matron (seen above) is uneasy and soon we’re catching up with the people she’s trying to track down.

At the farm in Norwich Dragon is in need of restraining. Who could blame him after what happened with his family? Over a few pages here we get some surprising revelations and by the end of this chapter things seem to be heading towards a climax between the Claws and N.U.R.S.E. I can’t help but wonder if Simon knew the comic was going to be cancelled at this stage already or if this storyline, which I’d assumed would last a lot longer, was just the beginning of what he had in mind.

Geoff Senior’s art is powerful in these scenes combined with Steve White’s bold colours. I think the images he produced of an enraged Galvatron in Transformers are seared into my retinas. I’ll certainly never forget the impact they had on me. I can feel that same rage here in Dragon’s eyes, the powerful anger behind Golding’s and the desperation in Stenson’s. There’s no way you could read these few pages without the characters screaming at the top of their lungs in your head.

But even amongst all this tension there’s always a chance for a quick moment of levity, such is the craftsmanship of this comic’s writer and artist. When Stenson tries to threaten Dragon and Golding by telling them they’re out of their depth it backfires spectacularly, the ambassador seemingly suggesting if he doesn’t cooperate there’s nothing he can do to stop Dragon from killing him, to which Dragon responds by showing he’s more than up to the task.

It works, but you can see as Dragon walks away there’s a cheeky grin on his face. Despite not communicating their intentions with each other it’s clear the former Game player and Council ambassador are in sync with each other and want the same thing. It’s a surprising working relationship and fun to see it seemingly come out of nowhere here, these two men clearly working from the same page.

Meanwhile the rest of the team are taking on The Evil Dead to protect their employer. The three new recruits are making quite the impact but even amongst all the chaos Scavenger still has the ability to make light of things. He’s such a fun sadistic character. But it’s the match up between Steel and Death Nell, who we know from a previous issue used to be lovers, that really heats things up and I don’t mean that in the clichéd way.

We find out in this issue that N.U.R.S.E. is basically running a protection racket on all of the Game teams who were still playing when it was shut down, employing Dragon’s Claws as their enforcers and feeding them disinformation on their targets so they would think they were doing the right thing. This was hinted at when Dragon went up against The High Father in #3 and when another team was desperately worried about a non-payment to someone in #5.

As such, it’s a bit of a disappointment that this was the answer to the mystery all along. I’d guessed it months ago and so assumed it couldn’t be something as obvious, that it was misdirection. As a result I discounted the idea and was looking forward to finding out the complexities behind all of the mysteries. That’s not to say if the comic had continued it wouldn’t have kept developing the plot into something far bigger of course, but for now this seems to be it. Maybe the next couple of issues will prove me wrong.

After kissing him, Nell pleads with Steel to work with her like in the old days. She easily could’ve ripped out his throat with her jagged teeth during that kiss and so this has Steel questioning everything, asking himself if he should believe her and if they’re fighting the wrong people. The reader already knows he should be fighting N.U.R.S.E. but will we see a turn of fortunes for Nell in the remaining issues?

Matron starts cleaning house, eliminating her top managerial team in a Bond villain-esque way before moving on to a much more dangerous target. After containing Golding and Deller in a flaming death trap room, Stenson is the first of our main characters to die as he escapes only to unknowingly step into the same room as Slaughterhouse. However, only seconds later Dragon finds Slaughterhouse unconscious and barely alive on the floor before a voice in the darkness tells him they’re delighted to have the two of them “to play with now”.

Then we turn to the final page.

Okay, look, I know this is meant to be a shocking ending with the reveal of who Matron is but Dragon’s exclamation seems a bit over-the-top. With a name like ‘Matron’ and the glimpses we’ve seen I was expecting a woman in some form of nurse’s outfit (especially with the name of the company she runs) and if Dragon stood up her size isn’t really an issue either. Maybe in the 80s, when times were different this would’ve made an impact but nowadays she looks a bit like a lovely former manager of mine, her facial expression even matching the one my previous boss would pull when telling a particularly rude joke.

As a result, for me personally it’s hard to judge how this would’ve been received by readers at the time. As it stands it’s the first story moment in eight issues when I’ve been left a little disappointed so I can’t complain really. On the opposite page sits Steel’s fact-file with information on his father belonging to the Yakuza so apparently they’re still around thousands of years into the future.

It’s not confirmed here if Steel’s (or rather Ikeda’s) dad was killed so I’m assuming this could be yet another little breadcrumb of possible future storylines if the comic had been a success. Sadly we just won’t know. The letters page is conspicuous by its absence this issue. Not enough coming in? Or perhaps the comic’s cancellation gave them pause in answering questions about future stories?

Instead, two adverts and one of those Classifieds pages we saw all the time in Marvel UK comics make up the remainder of the comic. Marvel’s own promotion for three graphic novels isn’t the most inspired design but gets the point across and on the back page is an advert for a movie I’ve never heard of before, which is surprising given the director and that cast!

Just two issues of Dragon’s Claws remain and that makes me sad. Cliffhanger aside this has been a blast, although there’s a definite feeling of the pace very suddenly quickening and a lot of exposition happening. Only with hindsight does it feel like Simon is quickly trying to move the story towards a satisfying climax. At the time I don’t think anyone would’ve guessed that.

If I’m right then at least that means we should get more answers and hopefully a nice conclusion for most of our characters over the next couple of months. Perhaps some threads planted in earlier issues won’t get elaborated on but if the main ones get tied up instead of the story just suddenly stopping (like we saw with Havoc) then I’ll be very happy, I’m sure. The penultimate review will be here on Sunday 4th February 2024.

iSSUE SEVEN < > iSSUE NiNE

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Christmas

HAPPY NEW YEAR: 2024 iS HERE!

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For me personally, 2023 has been a pretty good year, culminating in the best holiday season yet. So yep, after a couple of tough years things are definitely on the up and looking pretty for the one ahead. I know for some the 1st of January is “just another day” but to many it’s a symbolic moment of newness, a chance to look forward to a whole 12 months of possibilities. That’s certainly true for me this year, I have to say.

As you can see Christmas has been full of friends, fun, laughter, food, cherished traditions and a cat. A cat will always make everything even better. I’ve had a wonderful December, not just in real life away from this MacBook, but also while I’ve been in front of its screen writing the blog. The site has also beaten its previous record for visitors this year (again) and I couldn’t be more thankful to you all for your support and kind words throughout 2023.

There are big plans afoot for both the blog and myself in 2024. In fact, there’s so much happening on the OiNK Blog this coming year that I’ve had to plan pretty much all of it out, working out what’s going to be published when for the entire year. There’s just so much to come and I want to make sure I write it all! There’s also a pet project of mine I’ll announce later in the year when I’ve actual concrete work to show you, something that will spin off from the blog into the world of physical paper.

I’m really excited for the year ahead and I hope you all have a Very, Very Happy New Year and a fun 2024!

CHRiSTMAS 2023

Classic Comics in Real Time