OiNK Comic Reviews

OiNK! #66: PRODiGiOUS PORK

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This has been the best monthly issue of OiNK yet and feels like it’s really beginning to hit its stride in its new form. Such a shame there are only two more issues to go! Let’s concentrate on the one right in front of me for now though because it’s a riot. Horace (Ugly-Face) Watkins gets cover status thanks to co-editor Tony Husband, although just like last month I can’t help but feel there should’ve been a different cover star. Horace takes up three pages in a brilliant strip inside but the return of Pigswilla has nine! We’ll get to him in a sec.

On the second page is another artist’s profile, seemingly left over from the recent Holiday Special which contained ten of them. Lew Stringer’s can be found in this issue for some reason and I’ve added it to the ‘Cartoonists’ Profiles’ post with the rest of them as it’s just too good to miss. This is definitely an issue fans of Lew’s won’t want to miss out on with his strips taking up 13 pages, over a quarter of the whole comic! I’ve included them all here as highlights because they’re hands down the very best this issue has to offer, beginning with the return of everyone’s favourite giant robotic pig. 

According to Lew this particular Pigswilla strip was originally conceived as a weekly serial but, unlike The Street-Hogs last month, The Perils of Pigswilla had slight tweaks made to it (such as chapter length and the amount of comic violence) to help it work better as one complete strip for the new OiNK. I certainly agreed with Lew when he told me he was very pleased with how it turned out. Certainly, after previous strips of the character’s were double-page spreads, it’s great to see him get the kind of space his frame deserved.

It’s split into three parts of various lengths and kicks off with the British public in awe of their mechanical hero after his most recent victory against some banana people. So far, so normal. But the butchers of the world aren’t happy at all; sales of pork have plummeted in a world where pigs have been given equal footing in society as humans, a topical note that The Street-Hogs strip last issue kicked off with. They’ve only one option: to destroy the perception of Pigswilla in the public eye. How will this reverse the trends they’re unhappy with? Well, to answer this Lew takes a jab at something which is unfortunately still very much prevalent today.

Initially I thought the death of the professor may not have been in the original weekly serial version of this strip, what with that version of OiNK being aimed at a younger audience, but then I remembered Jeremy Banx’s Hieronymous Van Hellsong from those issues! Plus I remember this being very funny to the younger version of me as well. I love the chaos of the hypnotising panel, it reminds me of the Spirograph toy from the 80s. For the first time we also see the new OiNK logo depicted in one of the strips, confirming this was created for the monthlies.

It’s all hugely enjoyable and then I let out a roar of laughter when I saw the TV interviewee, his demeanour, appearance and especially his t-shirt. Showing how fickle the public can be and how easily they can be scaremongered by those with ulterior motives (the butchers in this case) we even see pigs’ homes being bricked to chants of “Sage and onion”. Yes it’s funny but it’s also making a point and very much poking deserved fun at people like that. It’s satire suitable for kids and I think I can say with certainty things like this (and Lew’s previous dig at bigots in a Pete and his Pimple strip) had a very positive impact on me at that age. It’s even funnier to me today of course.

Part one ends with this shocking moment of Pigswilla being blasted by the army and apparently taken offline. He’s got one friend though, his creator Professor Compton Codger’s lab technician Jenny Mercury (always loved the names Lew gave his characters). She climbs inside his giant noggin and begins to tape him back together, taking over the handy manual controls just as the butchers use their dark magical powers to create their own giant robot, formed from the spleens “of a thousand hogs” and scrap metal for yet another Pigswilla enemy.

The butcher robot goes from one pig owner’s house to another, collecting them to chop up later with us humans cheering it on(!) when, with Jenny’s help, the huge swine comes back to life, albeit with one key difference. Never passing up the chance to get some rhyming lyrics into a strip, Lew has made one of the after-effects of Pigswilla’s near complete shutdown a case of accidental rapping! Just when you thought it surely couldn’t be possible to add another level of absurdity to the proceedings. I also like how we can see out of Pigswilla’s eyes in the last panel of this chapter.

There’s come cracking (crackling?) dialogue as the fight continues and Pigswilla looks ever more defeated. Even a cow gets in on the act. Pigswilla and Jenny work together and eventually overcome his apparent death by tricking the butchers into taking a swing near an electricity pylon with obvious results. We then get a great big chunky written panel explaining how things were all okay in the end, finishing with Pigswilla dancing through the streets but thankfully without the rapping fixed.

That wordy panel is funny for another reason. Maybe I’m looking too deeply into it, but personally the absurdity of how simply things are reversed in the public’s opinion just highlights how absurd it was that they turned against him in the first place, again mirroring the real world. Even today people still fall for it every time! It’s all brilliant stuff and my very favourite strip from the monthlies. The only negative I can think of is the fact he didn’t get the cover to go along with this (although an intended weekly cover was used as the Next Issue promo).

One of the funniest OiNK strips ever and one I’ve been particularly looking forward to revisiting

We’ll come back to Lew in a moment but first let’s have a little interlude for what I described in the ‘Coming Up: OiNK! #66’ post as one of the funniest OiNK strips ever and one I’ve been particularly looking forward to revisiting. While it’s not from his Meanwhile… series it’s just as unique a strip from Kev F Sutherland as you’d expect. I love Kev’s art style, especially in this double-page spread with its great sense of place, the chaotic labs and superb use of shadow, and of course it’s hilarious.

The Three Scientists is one of those OiNK strips which has replayed itself in my head several times over the years, particularly when I’ve been watching Doctor Who and there’s been some neat twist in a plot involving time travel. This is always guaranteed to bring a smile to my face. Back in 1988 it had me creased up with laughter. Its elaborate set up all leading to a quick, simple, perfect gag is classic Kev. Enjoy this one.

Two quick highlights before we return to the Lewniverse and these may be two completely different entries in this issue of OiNK and by completely different contributors but they have a bit of a linked theme. First up is co-editor Tony Husband’s cover star, Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins. In pursuit of a regular, relaxing holiday with no football fans or weird occurrences, they’ve ended up meeting Dracula! Horace’s unique way of dispatching the vampire is just as funny today and leads nicely into the next highlight.

GBHDP is the new political party from OiNK’s in-house mail order gangsters and among the ridiculousness one particular section stood out to me. In recent years there’s been a clamouring among certain types of people, including readers of that aforementioned tabloid, for the return to older so-called ‘Victorian values’. This brilliant madvertisement from Simon Thorp shows this isn’t just a recent thing.

Horace Watkins by Tony Husband
GBHDP by Simon Thorp

In fact, the GBHDP party goes so far as to end their madvert with the slogan, “GBHDP – Together we can make Britain GRATE again.” Even 32 years later that says it all, doesn’t it?

Moving on and it’s clear Tom Thug’s strips are being aimed at the slightly older target audience with what occurs here, although I don’t remember it flying over my head or being in any way less enjoyable when I was still a few months away from my 11th birthday. History is made right here folks, because we have a first for a children’s humour comics character when Tom actually leaves school and moves out into the adult world.

“I’m gonna sign me cross fer a pocketfulla dosh!”

Tom Thug

This would only be a temporary situation of course. When OiNK merges into Buster in a few months the strip turns back time for more misadventures in school, but for now we get to see him actually sign on and, as you’d expect of him, he thinks it’s a way of getting as much money as he wants for nothing. Well, he is a pillock after all. The last gag may have been lost on me as a child. It’s a topical gag, not something OiNK did much of until these later issues. I probably grinned and laughed at his predicament without realising its topicality.

So yes, we’ve a couple of issues to go to see how Tom fairs in the big, bad world and I’m sure he’ll be even less successful (if that’s possible) than he was when he thought he could lord it over the smaller kids in school. At the bottom is a rare writing credit for someone other than Lew, who told me, “I think Mark wanted Tom to get older and sign on and suggested the basic idea of that but everything else was up to me.” A shame we won’t get to see much of this part of Tom’s life but I look forward to it regardless.

Finishing off his hat trick for this issue, Lew’s Pete and his Pimple gets three pages when a reader suggests blasting Pete into space to save the rest of us from being covered in exploding pus. There are so many great gags straight out of the gate with this strip; the caption giving away why the tanks are drawn that way, XL5’s cameo, the life support and more. It’s not an exaggeration to say there’s a real good giggle to be found in every panel of the first page, and is that a familiar guest star from Pigswilla? As for the rest, it just gets better and better as Pete gets Lost in Space.

I love the design of the aliens and seeing the caricatures of the cast of the 60s show takes me back to childhood Sunday lunchtimes with repeats on Channel 4. The fact one of them is labelled ‘The Boring Macho One’ is spot on (no pun intended) because he’s actually the only one I can’t remember! With some fun digs at the simplicity of 60s sci-fi and the usual description of a UFO being taken literally this is one of Pete’s best. There’s also a censored panel here too!

Lew originally drew Pete urinating on the robot

If you look closely at the first panel on the third page of the strip you may see a shape beside the “old junk”, almost like a very faint silhouette. As it turns out that’s exactly what it is. Lew originally drew Pete urinating on the robot rather than hiding him behind it and you can just about make out how he was standing, looking down at little splashes. It’s been edited, but not very well.

According to Lew’s personal blog, “My original art was censored in one panel! I’d shown Pete (with his back to us) having a wee against the robot but that was too much for [Fleetway]. They stuck a piece of paper over him and changed the tail of the word balloon so it looked like Pete was hidden behind the robot… BUT the paste-over was opaque and with a bit of Photoshop enhancement you can see Pete’s silhouette…”. Here’s the image as Lew presented it to show what he meant. Thanks to Lew for letting me share this.

It wasn’t the first time one of Lew’s strips was edited, although in a previous Tom Thug the edit made things worse!

There are just the five pages of reprints this time. One is the Johnny the Jet strip from #8 and the others are made up of the final two OiNK Superstar Posters, printed double-sided. Well, one ‘Megastar Poster’ and one simply named ‘Poster’. The latter was deemed a suitably bland title for Mary Lighthouse’s which was also taken from #8, while #6’s Uncle Pigg poster by Ian Jackson was renamed for a bit more grandeur. Naturally. This is actually the poster of him I’ve used in my home office since it meant I could use it without losing any strips on the back.

Without question this has been the best monthly issue so far and really feels like it’s hit its stride. The same thing happened with the weeklies and I get the impression that it could’ve really worked in this format if it hadn’t been cancelled. Of course, OiNK was still at its best in its 32-page fortnightly guise (first 44 issues) with its themes, all of its characters intact and aimed at the original target audience while still suitable (and read by) older fans too. But as a different, older version of the same comic this issue really works.

After all of the lengthy strips I just wanted to round things off with a couple of slices of miniature Ed McHenry nonsense. Ed’s Wally of the West debuted in OiNK much later in the run than I remember and now his mini-strips raise a laugh in every single issue. But Ed wasn’t content with just his regular characters, he’d also create lots of little random one-offs to be sprinkled throughout the 48 pages. Here are his best two from this issue.

With Ed rounding things off nicely for this month we’re back to waiting only four weeks until #67 of OiNK, the penultimate regular issue. We may be nearing the end but there’s still so much for this comic to give. This year really has flown in for me and I think part of the reason for that is OiNK. With those weeklies I flew through the winter and spring, and the summer has been one large Holiday Special after another. The next one will be reviewed here on Sunday 17th September 2023. September. Already!

iSSUE 65 < > iSSUE 67

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OiNK Comic Promos

COMiNG UP: OiNK! #66

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The Next Issue promo page in OiNK #65 elicited a level of excitement I didn’t know was still possible by this daft, silly comic after 35 years since publication and over two years of this read through. But Lew Stringer had an announcement to make and, alongside Pete Throb and his brilliant takes on Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins and Uncle Pigg, Pigswilla was the star and he was returning in the next issue with a huge nine-page strip! Although, “raunchy”? (That part would’ve been added by co-editor Patrick Gallagher.)

According to Lew this image was originally intended as a cover but was used in this context instead. A shame, but at least we got to see it. The strip itself was definitely one of the biggest highlights of these six monthly OiNKs. In fact, all of Lew’s strips in #66 are reasons to splash out on this issue if you see it on eBay, with Pete and his Pimple getting Lost in Space and Tom Thug making children’s humour comics history! Plus, one of the funniest OiNK strips ever comes from Kev F Sutherland, one I’ve been particularly looking forward to seeing again. You can see these highlights and more in the full review from Sunday 20th August 2023.

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Comic Reviews, Dragon's Claws

DRAGON’S CLAWS #3: SNiFFiNG OUT THE ENEMY

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Another sharp, exciting cover from Dragon’s Claws co-creator Geoff Senior welcomes us to #3 of Marvel UK’s comic which, judging by these first three issues at least, really deserved to find a bigger audience and last a lot longer than it did. The premiere issue basically dealt with Dragon himself in an 80s action flick-style story that set up the world we find ourselves in, the Greater Britain of the year 8162. Then last month we properly met the rest of the team and their nemeses The Evil Dead in what felt like part two of that movie.

So with the introductions out of the way it’s time to get into the meat of the next story and I’m glad to see Simon Furman‘s script isn’t going to be as episodic as I assumed a monthly from Marvel UK would be. This reads great in its own right while setting lots of things up for future issues, expanding the background plot the previous issues have hinted at and ending on not one, but two cliffhangers. The splash pages so far have been just as good as the covers, with colours by Steve White and letters by Annie Halfacree. I really do like the way editor Richard Starkings uses the Fastfax to introduce the stories within the setting itself rather than using a typical editorial style.

That’s The Pig, Dragon’s Claws’ ship, which feels rather suitable for this blog, doesn’t it? Even though they’ve only just been hired by N.U.R.S.E. (National Union of Retired Sports Experts) to bring in The Game teams still at large across the country who are abusing their positions of power, it seems some of the public are already turning on our heroes and viewing them as nothing more than government lackeys.

Their particular mission here is to head to Channel City, a huge metropolis that was built out over the English Channel to help with the overcrowding on the mainland, although it now overlooks nothing but a dried up seabed. No less than 20 teams have formed an army to protect someone called The High Father, an individual who the Claws were told had imprisoned hundreds of people in their own home. But now as they approach they’re under attack by those very civilians. Why? As the Claws discuss this and how they’re going to accomplish their mission without harming any innocents, unbeknownst to them a funny little moment plays out on the hull.

So why do these people not want rescued from this army and their apparent martial law? The strip does get to that by the end of the issue but first there are a few subplots thrown in for good measure. Kurran, brother of one of the Wildcats killed by Dragon as he protected his family, is out for revenge it would seem, at least in the interlude in the middle of the strip (more below). We also catch up with Tanya as she continues to try shielding their son Michael from Dragon’s violent TV coverage, but Michael wants his dad and it looks like she has no choice but to confront the situation and talk to his father.

I like these very human moments, although the most intriguing of the subplots this issue comes courtesy of N.U.R.S.E.’s Mister Stenson and Deller, the ex-Game player whose jealousy over Dragon leading the Claws almost ended with his death last month. It looks like they specifically need Dragon more than they’re letting on to him; having him as their poster child will mask their real intentions behind a cloak of heroism. But it’s the final couple of panels that interest me the most. Just who is giving these orders?

Any fan of Marvel UK’s Transformers comic will recognise the classic Geoff Senior pose there in panel three of page nine. So the main background plots thicken and I hope there’s enough time to give us a satisfying amount of development for these before the comic’s cancellation with #10. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing where the Kurran/Wildcats arc goes because on the final page of this issue he’s no longer concerned about Dragon. He’s smart enough to know that Dragon could easily have taken out the entire Wildcat team on his own (which he did do) so now he’s pursuing the reason behind the confrontation.

He knows his brother was stupid, but he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to go up against Dragon just because he hurt their pride. He beats up a woman at their hideout, wanting to know who paid them to do it and finds out it was Deller. Now that’s a cliffhanger. Even moreso than the main story’s, which we’ll lead up to now. With The Pig out of commission the Claws take to hover pads to make their way to Channel City and come up against a Game team hinted at in the pre-release marketing, The Vanishing Ladies.

There’s a particularly gigglesome moment when the strong and ever so macho Steel gets taken down a peg in the simplest of ways

First though, the mysterious Scavenger (already my favourite) breaks formation and takes off across the desolate landscape, disobeying Dragon’s direct orders. It’s such a sudden and dangerous move the reader instantly thinks something terrible is about to happen, that Scavenger has blasted away to stop it and save his teammates from whatever it is. The camaraderie between the members of this team is so tight it has to be something huge, right?

Well yes, as a matter of fact. I mean, an abandoned, starving animal is a big deal to this reader. It’s still funny of course. We now have our final member of the team. After all, this mutt was in those adverts for the comic too. He also gets named Lady Killer after what happens next. The Vanishing Ladies have special clothing that can bend beams of light (that old chestnut), essentially making them invisible. Cue lots of pictures of our team getting beaten up and using ingenuity to try to fight back.

There’s a particularly gigglesome moment when the strong and ever so macho Steel gets taken down a peg in the simplest of ways. Mercy isn’t so easily incapacitated and as she gets punched she deliberately rolls with the hit and is able to backflip and kick her attacker in the face without clapping eyes on her. Digit uses his computerised brain to accurately calculate probabilities for blocking attacks to find out where his attacker is. Dragon and Scavenger don’t have it quite so easy though.

Scavenger is getting strangled by one of the invisible foes and the only thing that stops him from being killed is his new dog who’s able to sense her and bite her on the leg, making her visible again. The newly named Lady Killer then helps Dragon and his reaction is another funny moment. I’m really looking forward to seeing this dynamic play out further in future episodes. The mightiest Game team ever now has a pet, one who is just as much a part of the team as the rest, whether they like it or not!

All of this is being televised across Greater Britain just as The Game was, N.U.R.S.E. adamant the people need to see Dragon’s Claws doing the government’s work in order to change public perceptions as they see fit. Then, as the team fight The High Father’s minions his voice panics Stenson. He recognises him, but he should be dead! He runs off to warn his superiors and stop the broadcast, and as Dragon’s Claws blast their way through into the area being protected by his army they come across a surprising scene, one of land cultivation and farmed animals!

As you can see there’s a moment when Dragon accuses The High Father of being just as bad as the government, that he’s creating his own privileged class. However, there’s a part of Dragon that doubts he’s really the bad guy in all of this. It’s when The High Father, unmasked as someone called Starick (to Stenson’s horror) explains further that we get our main cliffhanger. He says his former employers were good teachers, but they want him terminated now because they’ve found out how he’s actually looking after his people. The employers’ name is revealed when he tells Dragon he understands his surprise, “After all, you haven’t worked for N.U.R.S.E. for as long as I have!”

I love all this double-crossing, playing politics and subterfuge amongst the action. Add in the more human moments too and what we have here is a surprisingly deep action comic that manages to fit an awful lot into its 22-page strip without it ever feeling cramped or rushed. It’s quite ingenious really. Maybe a little too ingenious for the first letter writer on the new Dragon’s Nest page? Surprisingly, this first letter came from friend of the blog Andy Luke, whose podcast I previously appeared on to discuss OiNK for its 35th anniversary!

The first two chapters for Dragon’s Claws were highly entertaining and gave hints as to what the regular stories could be like. I could not have guessed the very next issue would’ve been so completely satisfying, that the comic would find its feet so quickly. I have a good feeling about the next seven months. The next one can’t come soon enough, but wait I shall for Sunday 10th September 2023. Join me then, won’t you?

iSSUE TWO < > iSSUE FOUR

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KNOW YOUR OiNK!: CARTOONiSTS’ PROFiLES

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This is a nice little bonus post even if I do say so myself. Although I can’t take any of the credit, that must go to ten of OiNK’s top contributors who each decided to tell us a little bit about themselves in the second Holiday Special, released in March 1988. Sprinkled throughout the issue were fun little quarter-page profiles containing a self-portrait of some sort and a description of the cartoonist or editor in their own words.

The last part of that sentence is key. Don’t be expecting any actual real information here. This is OiNK after all. If you chose ten of its talented team and asked them to tell the readers something interesting about themselves do you really think they’d waste that opportunity with actual facts? Or would you prefer they took the chance to use their unique senses of humour to have a laugh instead? It’s a no brainer. Let’s kick things off with the three people responsible for OiNK in the first place, shall we? Here are the comic’s creators and editors. These were the people in charge!

I particularly like Patrick Gallagher’s pen name and his unique way of presenting his age, and it’s hilarious to have the incredibly talented Mark Rodgers’ profile presented as so amateurish. Tony Husband’s artistic depiction of himself is so funny but poor Paul Husband! If you take a look at the very first OiNK, the special preview issue, you’ll see he doesn’t actually look like Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins. If readers had wanted to see what all three of these individuals really looked like they would’ve had to check out the article in Crash magazine from the previous year.

As a kid I never knew of Crash (or the unique free edition of our comic tucked away inside that issue), so as far as I was concerned these profiles were the closest I was going to get to really knowing those who made us laugh so much. As a kid I had no idea it was Patrick and Mark who had appeared in photo stories such as Castaway and Star Truck previously. The latter also starred Tony albeit behind an evil alien (chicken) mask,  but we never knew who they were in those strips. That’s what makes these silly not-so-fact files so funny of course; this is how readers would imagine the amazing talent behind the comic. It’s just a shame we didn’t get more!

Ian Jackson is synonymous with OiNK and did appear in a photo story alongside Mark way back in the Valentines issue but, like Tony, he was behind expensive (not really) alien special effects. In fact it was only two years ago, not long after I started this website, when John Freeman‘s Down the Tubes website published a spotlight article about Ian that I finally found out what the person behind Uncle Pigg, Mary Lighthouse and Hadrian Vile looks like.

This imaginative profile not only sums up his wacky sense of humour with far-fetched nonsense, he also manages to highlight the truth about being a cartoonist

Marc Riley appeared as another anonymous kind-of-actor in Star Truck but was probably best known for portraying Snatcher Sam during the first year of the comic and The OiNK! Book 1988. The grisly world of punk rock he refers to is The Fall, the band he was a part of for four years between 1978 and 1982 before forming The Creepers. Of course, Frank Sidebottom needs no introduction or indeed a silly drawing! We all knew him from countless children’s television appearances already and the man behind the papier-mâché, Chris Sievey, was always so brilliant with his fans that of course he’d take any opportunity to give them a chance to get in touch directly.

Below is David Haldane’s profile, he of Hugo the Hungry Hippo, Rubbish Man and Torture Twins fame and this imaginative profile not only sums up his wacky sense of humour with far-fetched nonsense, he also manages to highlight the truth about being a cartoonist! Then Steve Gibson, who’d go on to produce a range of very adult comics after OiNK brings us a depiction of himself that’s really rather disturbing and perfectly illustrates (no pun intended) his art style. If you’re interested in a full-page strip of that Judge Pigg he’s drawing then check out the review for #58.

Quite a few years ago now, perhaps about a decade back I had the pleasure of meeting Davy Francis a few weeks before Christmas and had the chance to purchase some of his original OiNK artwork which currently takes pride of place on my wall. I didn’t even know he lived in Belfast like me until I was at a film festival earlier that year, and while chatting about comics to someone and mentioning OiNK they told me they knew Davy. An absolute gent with a brilliant sense of humour and an incredible caricaturist his contribution here keeps to the theme of telling us absolutely nothing about him and instead giving us a good chuckle.

Like Ian and David, Davy works his usual signature into his profile so readers can instantly recognise who this is and then we finish the Holiday Special off with Davy’s good friend Ed McHenry. The drawing in Ed’s is in my mind probably the most accurate, based on my completely unknowledgeable assumptions about cartoonists’ work areas. I really like how he’s tried to incorporate as many of the little random details from his description into the drawing too, it’s packed full of little sight gags and details. Absolutely classic Ed.

A few months after the special one more profile appeared in one of the monthly issues, OiNK #66. While it got my hopes up there’d be more in future issues this was sadly the last but it’s a nice little bonus. Especially since it’s by one of my favourite cartoonists of all time and was in an issue where he contributed almost a third of the contents! Lew Stringer is very much a child of the 60s and plays up to that here, beginning with the profile number being made up of three key 60s movie/TV/comic series. I just wish I’d thought of his excuse for why I sucked at school sports!

There we go. Don’t you feel completely informed about who made the funniest comic of all time? Me neither. Or maybe we should. The details may not be entirely accurate but they portray the sense of humour OiNK encapsulated, the craziness and imagination that captivated us and the combination of comic talent that was like no other. These great profiles inside the second OiNK Holiday Special may not have been an introduction to these cartoonists, but they could very well be the perfect introduction to OiNK itself.

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Comic Reviews, Jurassic Park

THE LOST WORLD JURASSiC PARK #3: TRiMMiNG DOWN THE T-REX

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We’re already at the halfway point in this little mini-series adaptation of The Lost World Jurassic Park. The first issue fell into the traps of many a movie adaptation but part two improved things somewhat. It wasn’t perfect, but those improvements and the article from writer Don McGregor about the size of the task at hand gave me high hopes for what was to come. So how has our third edition panned out? Ignoring that annoying “Free” poster bit on the cover (see last issue for more on that) let’s get stuck in and find out.

We left things a fortnight ago with the Triceratops smashing its way through Peter Ludlow’s presentation tent after Nick Van Owen had freed the dinosaurs, and right at the beginning of this chapter we see a spectacular scene of them all running from the camp back into the wild. In the movie we saw this from the perspective of the humans as the animals fled all around them, but here I particularly like the grander scale this first panel brings, and that’s not something you can often say about a comic adaptation.

Upon further inspection though, how on Earth did the Ingen hunters possibly capture and contain that giant dinosaur on the left? If we go by the previous movie this would have to be a Brachiosaurus. I’d love to have seen the cage they kept that in! The rest of the page instantly contradicts not only the film but even its own previous issue, where it had correctly shown the baby Tyrannosaurus rex captured by Roland and Ajay tied up away from the camp. Here, miraculously he’s now right where the chaos is, ready for Nick to easily rescue.

The next page is printed in landscape format and once you realise what’s going on it makes for a wonderful idea

In fact, the page before this spread showed Roland and Ajay’s last second escape as a fiery jeep flew through the air and crashed onto the tree they were hiding in awaiting the adult Tyrannosaur, so really this is contradicting the very same issue! I’ve no idea why Don felt the need to do this. In the film we didn’t see Nick grab the baby, he appeared a little while later from a river nearby holding him in his arms.

The next page is printed in landscape format and once you realise what’s going on it makes for a wonderful idea and is brought to the page brilliantly by penciller Jeff Butler, inker Armando Gil, letterer Ken Lopez and editor and colourist Renée Witterstaetter. I know this film like the back of my hand so I know that while Dr Ian Malcolm, Eddie Carr and Ian’s daughter Kelly are in the High Hide at the upper tree level there’s a distant roar, the trees below shake and the stomps of both T-rex adults can be heard moving beneath them. However, despite this dramatic page, none of that is clear.

While it’s unlikely many would be reading this before watching the film (although I do recall my friends and I reading the adaptation for one of the Turtles films before we saw it), most readers will have only seen it once in the cinema by this stage. It would actually have still been playing in theatres when this was out. They’d be reading this to relive the story and as dramatic as that ‘ROAR!’ is on the page I’m not sure readers would’ve noticed it, instead possibly thinking it was just a unique set of panels to reinforce the moment. The characters not acknowledging the roar or any movement below doesn’t help either, making Ian’s decision feel decidedly random.

This of course leads to arguably the most terrifying sequence in the whole movie and one that had us on the edge of our seats in the cinema. Here it’s cut down, as it needs to be for reasons Don laid out last time, but the scale of the scaling back is quite shocking. When the adults arrive Ian simply danders out with the baby into the middle of the clearing instead of the tense moment by the door. He’s completely vulnerable but there’s no tension in his action. He’s even singing!

The next part of this scene is of course the moment when the two-part research vehicle is partly pushed over the cliff by the dinosaurs and while Eddie struggles to stop it from falling by winching it with his car he’s also trying to pull his friends up with a hand rope at the same time, and Dr Sarah Harding is on that slowly cracking pane of glass at the rear of the dangling half, looking right down the cliff towards the crashing waves far below. It’s all wonderfully tense.

Unfortunately one of the very best scenes in the film is reduced to a couple of pages. I did understand where Don was coming from in his article last issue but as I said in that review I don’t think he’s got the balance right; you’d think one of the biggest, most memorable moments would get a lot more space to breathe. Take the most basic key points of these ten minutes in the film (Sarah on glass, Eddie’s death, characters clinging to ropes as the transport falls) and eliminate everything else, that seems to be what the plan was.

There’s some fun art though.

I’m not sure if the narration is taken from the book or the draft script but it feels like it’s trying too hard, as if it’s attempting to make up for all of the missing bits. Not only is most of the action just not here anymore but the characters have absolutely no sense of fear about them, like they’re just going from one inconvenience to the next. Some lip service is played to Sarah’s fear of heights (something the film left out) but it’s not built upon.

I do love the art in the scene though, especially how it perfectly captures the invisible sheet of glass beneath Sarah. However the spider veins mentioned are conspicuously missing, and this won’t be the last time something like this happens which I’ll get to in a bit. Eddie’s whole ordeal trying to survive the T-rex attack is just not here but at least his end isn’t censored like the original movie’s adaptation would do. The final moment of the scene is also captured well here. The art is definitely the main thing driving me forward at this point. That and the great photography and extras.

The poster is a wonderful photo of one of the Velociraptors and I’m positive it would’ve been on my wall if I’d known about this comic at the time, showing off the gorgeous yet terrifying animatronic and the darker tone of this sequel. On the back of this is another dinosaur fact file with its terrible design once more not doing justice to Steve White’s interesting writing.

Back to the final pages of the strip which cover two large parts of the story and unfortunately after the promise of last issue it seems we’re back to rushing through the movie again just to get it over and done with. Dieter Stark is Roland’s second-in-command and his death in the film by the cute little Compsognathus pack may be rushed (with a sequence that’s just confusing for anyone not that familiar with the film) but I’m including it to show the two extremes of this strip; the rushed nature but the potential in the art (especially when you see the panel of his actual death).

I feel the beginning of that sequence can only really be followed if you’ve seen the movie and are familiar with the individual elements of how this transpired. Elsewhere we get some added character moments which again may have originally been in the earlier script, like some tender moments between Ian, Sarah and Kelly before we get to the T-rex pair catching up with our sleeping group. There’s a particular moment here in the movie which truly frightened me with its slow build up and drawn out danger for two of our characters. The suspense was a killer! Here it’s all reduced to one single, solitary panel that completely changes this to a game of peekaboo.

Something else missing is Ian’s moustache! From comments on social media after I posted the first two reviews this apparent inconsistency seems to have particularly irked some people when they read the comic, but for me it’s not really a big deal. It’s still kind of there, it’s now just part of a rough unshaven goatee area like Jeff Goldblum sported in the film. It could be it was decided Jeff wouldn’t sport a moustache after the first two parts of the comic were already drawn. Story wise, I’m happy enough to think that it’s all started to grow out again while he’s been stuck on the island for a few days. Either way, it looks much better now.

After the small additional character scene I mentioned we get a huge change from the film a few pages later when Roland Tempo, played brilliantly by Pete Postlethwaite in the film, is killed by the huge Tyrannosaurus buck! After finding his shotgun has been filled with blanks by Nick he reaches for the tranquillisers. So far, so familiar. But unlike in the film when the T-rex succumbs to it just in the knick of time, here he grabs Roland and throws him towards Carter, the man who gets trampled to death in the film.

This is one change I really don’t like. Roland was one of the best characters in the film and since he’s now dead we no longer get to see his solemn redemption later after Ajay’s death, when he tells Ludlow he’s seen quite enough death instead of accepting a job at InGen. The hunter became rather Ian-like in the end and accepting of his part in the inevitable chaos. This will all now be missing. If this was in the script Don was working from then I’m very, very glad screenwriter David Koepp and Steven Spielberg changed this character’s arc.

The penultimate chapter of the adaptation ends with our main characters trapped behind the waterfall (in a scene from the first Jurassic Park novel and depicted by Walter Simonson and Richard Cry on the cover) as Roland’s palaeontologist Dr. Robert Burke is grabbed by one of the T-rexes and dragged out. Just like the spider veins mentioned when Sarah was in danger, the curtain of blood described here is nowhere to be seen, somewhat dampening the moment.

Chapter three has certainly been a mixed bag then. I liked some of the extra character scenes but hated the death of another, although to be fair to Don that wasn’t his fault. Some of the very best moments of the film, (some of my favourite moments in cinema, period) were so rushed here they were barely recognisable, and the fun art has been on top form at times with some great images but plagued by inconsistencies elsewhere. I come away frustrated more than anything because of what this talented team could’ve created.

There’s no character mini-poster this time, instead we get five pages of a welcome pack for new employees to InGen and it contains a lot of photographs of model dinosaurs used in the pre-production of the first two films. I thought there was something strange about the little pictures of the animals in circles throughout #1 but now I know what they are they’re a delight to look at up close like this. All the main dinosaurs are covered, including this film’s Parasaurolophus Walkeri and the sick Triceratops from Jurassic Park.

There are also some funny moments such as the exceptions to staff’s apparently comprehensive insurance policies, which absolve InGen of any responsibility whatsoever if Chaos Theory rears its head. As with the previous two issues I’ve found the extras more enjoyable than the strip, so kudos to editor John Freeman and his team, these pages add a lot to the overall package.

We’ve only one chapter of the story to go and I feel just like I did when the first film’s adaptation finished its penultimate chapter; there’s just no way they could possibly cover everything still to happen in 22 pages. It’ll be interesting if nothing else! We’ll find out what survives in #4 of The Lost World Jurassic Park on Monday 7th August 2023.

iSSUE TWO < > iSSUE FOUR

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Comic Reviews, Jurassic Park

THE LOST WORLD JURASSiC PARK #2: SUPERiOR SEQUEL

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I’ll admit my eyes rolled a little when I saw this cover to the second issue of Titan Magazine’s The Lost World Jurassic Park comic for a couple of reasons. Not the photo of the glorious animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex of course, they’re always incredible to look at. No, the top-right and bottom-left made me sigh a little and to be honest it’s just me being pedantic, so apologies to all you blog readers for having to put up with me when you’re just trying to find out about some classic comics.

The Jurassic Park novels and films made a huge deal out of the fact that they were helping dispel the myth of dinosaurs being large, lumbering reptiles and who can forget the scene when Dr Alan Grant told people dinosaurs are more closely related to modern day birds. Hence why we saw fast, fluid movement from the animals in the films and yet here we’re asked “will the reptiles strike back”? Plus, it’s not a “free” poster when it’s part of the page count of the comic. To be fair many comics did this, OiNK included, but it niggles me. Or maybe it’s because I’m writing this at a very early hour and really should’ve got more sleep.

Anyway, eye rolling done, let’s move on to what is a much improved issue and one I enjoyed very much once inside!

I’ll give the Jurassic Park movie adaptations something, they certainly know how to write some atmospheric narrative captions. Walter Simonson did a superb job of this throughout his comic version of the first movie and here Don McGregor is certainly following suit. Of course, these could be taken from the script he was working with or indeed the novel, but we’ll give him credit where it’s due in pulling us in to specific moments like this on the opening page of part two. The art team are once again penciller Jeff Butler, inker Armando Gil, letterer Ken Lopez and those are editor Renée Witterstaetter’s gorgeous colours.

It’s just a shame these moments are rushed through for much of the comic strip. Don’t get me wrong, this is a much improved chapter over last issue’s. There are more character moments from the film left intact and even one or two which must’ve been part of that earlier draft of the script. We get the scenes of Dr Sarah Harding excitedly explaining her discoveries and Dr Ian Malcolm turning them around into accurately predictive doomsaying. But we also get a few moments here that weren’t in the film, such as this exchange between the two.

I’m not sure if this would’ve been in the script, I just can’t imagine Ian using the word “chick”. Then again, with so little room (88 pages in total) to convert the script to a comic I can’t see Don adding in extra dialogue either. When Roland Tempo’s team and the slimy Peter Ludlow turn up in their helicopters there are more examples of how the narrative captions can be used to eek out some characterisation that the brisk pace of the adaptation would normally struggle with. Nick Van Owen, as played by Vince Vaughn, was a good character and criminally unused in the climax of the film so I’m glad to see him getting some more exploration here.

With the hunters now on the ground we get to that heartbreaking part of the film where they’re capturing as many dinosaurs as possible, caring not for the fact these are living, breathing animals, never mind a miracle of science. Roland made his debut in the film at this point but of course we’ve had the bonus of the entertaining deleted scene last issue so we feel like we already know him by this point. Here you can see the viciousness with which his second-in-command Dieter takes down the Parasaurolophus, or ‘Elvis’ as Roland called it.

It’s all over very quickly and it’s here that the unevenness of the adaptation comes to the fore. I’m finding it hard to figure out what Don’s rationale was for what he keeps in and what he jettisons. Later on in the issue there’s a fascinating article written by the man himself about the challenges of adapting a long movie script into a tight four-issue mini-series. He mentions keeping characterisation is very important and I can see that in some of the scenes he’s included but elsewhere that’s simply not the case.

I can’t help feeling I’d have preferred a more balanced approach

While the examples above are nice to see (Sarah and Ian’s exchange lasted for a few pages, for example), ones featuring Ian’s daughter are inexplicably missing or cut down to a few lines and other scene-setting moments have been taken out completely while some of the big dinosaur moments are rushed through, eliminating any spectacle or menace, which seems a strange choice in a Jurassic Park comic. Obviously I’m not a comic writer and Don lays out his reasoning in the article but as a reader I can’t help feeling I’d have preferred a more balanced approach.

We’ll come back to that in a moment but first the story takes a four-page break with some adverts, another dinosaur fact-file page and a double-page spread. This is on pages 18 and 19 of the comic, it’s not a separate entity and so it’s not a free gift (can you tell that’s still niggling me?). It’s a shame these weren’t large separate glossy posters but at least editor John Freeman made sure there were no strip pages on the back of them.

Julianne Moore as Sarah Harding reaches out and touches the snout of the baby Stegosaurus in a moment that was excised from the story last issue. Over the page is another fact-file dedicated to one species from the film and the Stegosaurus gets top billing this time. However, remember how I thought the design of the page wasn’t finished last time? It appears that is indeed the finished design. It looks awful and does no justice to the great piece written by Steve White.

An ardent dinosaur aficionado, Steve has clearly done his research (or knew the subject matter extensively already) and this would’ve been a fascinating read to young fans of the films, adding depth to the scenes in the movie featuring these animals. It’s still fascinating for this much older fan too. We then head back into the story and the last eight pages of this 22-page chapter, beginning with two new scenes I hadn’t been aware of until now.

While overlooking the hunters’ camp it sinks into our team that the creatures are being taken off the island alive and exported to the mainland. After what happened in the park this is obviously a terrifying realisation and this is the part where we find out Nick was actually sent as back up by Hammond and he sets off with Sarah to free the dinosaurs. It’s during this we get the new element, one of Ian’s little speeches that we liked so much in the first film, this time about something called Gambler’s Ruin.

While it’s only for a couple of panels it’s something that’s referred to later in the strip and by Don in his article. Don states things like this are deemed important and must be kept in, which is ironic since it didn’t make it into the film. I reminds me of those little moments in the first movie that expertly summed up the pages and pages of fascinating monologue from Ian in the novel. It’s a shame it didn’t make it into the finished film, whereas I’m glad the next page didn’t.

This scene isn’t a deleted scene in the movie’s extras so I can only assume Steven Spielberg chose not to film it. On the screen we see Roland and Ajay watching the baby T-rex and coming up with a plan to use him to lure the male adult back to the nest. A few moments later the baby is seen tied up with one of its legs covered in blood. Later we find out it has a fracture and Sarah and Nick try to set it for him (or else he’ll become food for a predator). The implication of how it happened is clear but here the real reason is meant to be a pratfall.

I really don’t like this and it’s not Don’s fault of course, it was in the script he worked from but I can’t blame Spielberg for not including it. Roland is meant to be a seasoned hunter, the very top of their game in the whole world, so bored with it now that only the promise of killing a T-rex buck could lure him back into picking up his gun again. When I watch the film I like the way the reason behind the baby’s leg injury is kept ambiguous.

Spielberg left it up to the viewer to assume either the baby struggled and did this to itself as the two men struggled to tie it up or, more viciously, they deliberately broke it so the baby would cry out in pain for his parents and the scent of blood would bring the adult male quicker. But to have it as a result of Ludlow clumsily tripping just feels wrong. I prefer the film without this scene and clearly the director agreed. After this the chapter rounds itself off with the moment a Triceratops breaks out of the camp after being freed by Nick and that’s us for another fortnight.

If you’re thinking I’m being overly critical it’s only because the previous Jurassic Park comic showed how much potential there is in bringing this franchise to the medium. The last chapter of the first film’s adaptation may have rushed things too much but the first three instalments were fantastic and showed me it could be done. Then the vast majority of the sequel strips were great fun, full of action without sacrificing the characterisations. It even gave depth to a group of Velociraptors!

A pin-up of Pete Postlethwaite in character as Roland brings us to Don’s article, Script to Strip. I really do find this interesting. I like how he describes the difference in the comics medium, things we may not have considered as fans of the film. I found it shocking everything was written before he’d seen anything of the movie at all! Yes, the comic would be published to coincide with its release so deadlines would’ve been very early, but I expected him to have access to photos from set, pre-production art, maybe early footage but nope, he only had the written words to adapt into his own written words.

Part two really is a big improvement and after reading Don’s own words I can’t help but cheer him on

He makes several good points about the maths of adapting a film to a comic, namely the page count difference and when he lays this out for the reader you get a sense of the enormity of his task. I’m not sure I agree that each part of this mini-series should be able to work as a story in its own right though. Maybe if he was writing his own original comic but in adapting a movie it’s never going to come across like that to a reader, these are very much individual chapters of one story.

He makes good points about the risk of having no dinosaurs for too long, something a movie that’s building tension can do but a comic can’t. This was why Walter Simonson reworked the order of some scenes and added actual Velociraptors to Dr Alan Grant’s famous scene with the “That doesn’t look very scary” kid in his adaptation. I’ve mentioned Don’s characterisations and choice of scenes to include throughout the review, so without further ado here’s a fascinating look into how this insurmountable task was achieved.

While I agree with his sentiments and he clearly had good intentions I feel the adaptation hasn’t quite got the balance right. For example, instead of including every single word of some scenes and none from others would it not have been better to trim all of them down so that the essence of them all is still intact? Jenny (Ian’s daughter) in particular is badly served. The same with the dinosaur scenes; there are some great spreads (we got two pages of the Stegosaurus family walking away from Sarah at the beginning) at the expense of scenes that would’ve been the most memorable to readers waiting to watch it again on home video.

Part two really is a big improvement and after reading Don’s own words I can’t help but cheer him on for the second half of the comic’s limited run. I hope he’s successful, especially when there’s potential in his style and the art is so enjoyable. We’ll find out over the next month. The third of these four issues will be reviewed on Monday 7th August 2023 and if you’re just discovering the blog via this comic there’s a whole bunch of Jurassic Park comics already reviewed over the past couple of years that you can check out, including the first official sequel long before The Lost World Jurassic Park.

iSSUE ONE < > iSSUE THREE

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Annuals, Christmas, Comic Introductions

ANNUALS: iN REAL TiME

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Classic comics in real time. It’s what this blog is all about, it’s right there under the title at the top of the screen. Each issue of the various comics are reviewed on the dates we originally would’ve got our hands on them. Normally that means on the date they were released, but applying the rule to this section of the blog poses a bit of a problem. So we’re going to do things a little differently here. Just a little.

As anyone who collected books like these as a kid will know, they went on sale around the time we’d return to school after the summer holidays, usually mid-September. But we didn’t get our trotters on them until Christmas Day when the jolly man himself would bring them down our chimneys. So when do I review them? On their release dates or when we got them? Those aren’t the same dates for annuals.

I’ve fond memories of looking endlessly at the huge variety of annuals on the shelves of my old hometown’s newsagent’s, or their large table displays set out at just the right eye level for kids. But as tempted as I was I never looked inside any of them, believe it or not. I didn’t want to ruin the surprise of finding out what they contained during my very favourite time of the year. Instead, I’d let the anticipation build over those few months until I was looking forward to them just as much as the toys and games (and the food)!

So I’ve decided to review these during the festive season. They were always a Christmas treat, many of them including themed content and even if they didn’t they were still very clearly marketed for that time of the year. So this is where I bend the rule a little. As much as I love you all I’m not going to be spending my Christmas Day every year writing a handful of reviews, not even for Knight Rider (my favourite thing in the universe)! Many of the reviews will be spread over the month of December, with any relating to an ongoing comic series published on The Big Day itself (so they’re in the right position in their own read throughs elsewhere on the blog).

A section of the blog I have a particular fondness for

Patience will be a virtue with this particular section. The books were released once per year (the clue is in their name) so depending on the amount of books in a series they could take quite a while to cover. Also, the overall collection of reviews won’t be listed in the order in which they’re written for obvious reasons (they’re essentially all different read throughs).

Instead they’ll be listed in original release order, meaning you’ll be able to take a trip right through the years covered. Perhaps you’ll remember those holidays when you received these books, or check out ones you recall from those newsagents’ tables, or discover ones you never knew existed. (For example, a lot of people contacted me about the Visionaries Annual after the review asking if I had a spare, having seemingly slipped under the radar of many fans in 1988.)

All these years later I’m still just as much a fan of Christmas as I ever was, perhaps more so. As such, this is a section of the blog I have a particular fondness for and the fact I have to wait so long between new additions just makes it even more exciting when the time comes around again. So, even though it’s a once-a-year thing you can expect just as much attention paid to these as anything else, including the occasional special feature.

As you’ll see it won’t just be annuals based on comics, although those based on other properties such as televisions series will have comics content. You can expect a nice mixture of the books I collected at the time and those I wished I had. This is going to be a really fun section of the blog. I’ve a shelf full of content just waiting for each year to roll around (the will power is strong with this one, it has to be) and more on the horizon.

I hope you’ll enjoy this section of the blog as much as I am.

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Comic Introductions, OiNK Comic Reviews

OiNK!: iN REAL TiME

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November 1986. The issue that started it all. A month-and-a-bit before my ninth birthday, while I shopped for sweets in my local newsagent’s I stumbled across a big, bold and very pink logo with a funny picture of a pig picking a butcher out of a police line-up. It was #14 of OiNK and it would end up becoming my first ever comic and a fundamental part of my youth. I was hooked the instant I read it and the next two years brought so much laughter it’s not an exaggeration to say the OiNK team helped form my sense of humour.

However, time moves on. After I moved out of home my parents decluttered and all but key editions of my comics collections were binned. Thankfully three OiNKs made their cut and The OiNK! Book 1988 would get revisited now and again, always making me (and friends) laugh no matter how much my age had advanced beyond the range of the comic’s target audience. Then in 2010 the sad news broke of the passing of Chris Sievey, better known as the papier-mâché-headed 80s megastar Frank Sidebottom, a staple of children’s Saturday morning TV and the pages of OiNK.

I dug out my three issues to relive some of his comedic moments and ended up buying a few more from eBay, and then began tracking down the full run. Surprised at how well they held up decades after they were written I joined the OiNK Comic Facebook group and was soon chatting with some of the incredible talent who had brought the comic to life. One of them was Lew Stringer, who reminded me that the anniversary of OiNK’s original release was fast approaching and he suggested I could read them on their original release dates and enjoy OiNK in real time.

You can see where this was headed. Looking for a project at that point in my life I began the original OiNK Blog and waffled away about each issue every fortnight. I eventually covered them all but when the host website I was using started to crash more frequently (and wishing to create more of a full website myself rather than a linear blog) I moved over here to WordPress and began the real time read through all over again from scratch. This version of the OiNK Blog is all brand new and much expanded over the previous version.

Back in the 80s the UK’s comics industry was slowly declining. In the days of fashion faux pas and sarcastic talking cars, television and computer games were suddenly direct competition for the attentions of the nation’s youth and OiNK was a bold move on the part of its creators and its publisher IPC Magazines to reverse that trend. OiNK would be a comic to deliberately break all the rules of traditional titles, with its three co-creators and editors (from left to right above) Mark Rodgers, Patrick Gallagher and Tony Husband bringing in an eclectic team to produce what they felt 80s kids would actually find funny.

Tony was working in a jeweller’s repair shop when Patrick met him, both of them cartooning part-time at that stage, and Tony introduced Patrick to the idea of working on children’s comics. About a year later in a Manchester library Mark saw Patrick writing comic scripts for the same titles he worked on (Buster, Whoopee etc.) and they went for a coffee and immediately hit it off. Patrick saw the potential in the three of them working together and it was in a railway pub in West Didsbury that they started to develop an idea for an alternative children’s comic. That idea would eventually become OiNK.

Its strips brought a fresh inventiveness to the comics scene, many of its cartoonists having never worked for the children’s market before. Jeremy Banx created Burp the Smelly Alien and Mr Big Nose, J.T. Dogg’s incredible artwork on Ham Dare and The Street-Hogs wowed readers, The Fall band member and future radio DJ Marc Riley dressed up as Snatcher Sam in photo stories and created his own strip characters, Lew Stringer got his big break with Tom Thug and Pete and his Pimple, the likes of David Leach and Kev F Sutherland were first published in the comic and a teenager by the name of Charlie Brooker landed his first paying job as a writer and cartoonist for OiNK. (Whatever happened to him?)

I’ve only mentioned a fraction of the talent involved, which also included the likes of Davy Francis, Simon Thorp, Davey Jones, David Haldane and so many more. Even veterans of the more traditional comics such as Tom Paterson and John Geering would pop over to spoof their own work and legends like Kevin O’Neill and Dave Gibbons would lend a hand (or a trotter) upon occasion! This was a children’s humour comic with a creative team and vision like no other and that’s a key reason why it hasn’t aged in the years since.

What always stood out for me were its parodies of those things we loved at that age, like the big toy and television franchises of the day and even the other comics on the shelves. Famously a parody of classic children’s storybooks in a very early issue led to a couple of complaints to The Press Council. It was never upheld but it was enough for conservative retailers W.H. Smith to top-shelf OiNK away from the children. But the comic soldiered on and enjoyed a wonderful two-and-a-half-years in our little piggy hearts.

Very deliberately it was the punk rock of children’s humour comics and spawned a fan club, a vinyl record, clothing, a computer game and more. The story of OiNK is as fascinating as the comic was funny and this post is only the very tip of the plop, the tiniest little piglet of an introduction to what is still my very favourite, as well as the funniest, comic of all time. The blog’s namesake rightly has the pig’s share of space on this site and you’ll find sections devoted to everything from its creation to its marketing, from its merchandise to its media coverage and everything in between.

So, 35 years after its original release I decided to read through the whole run all over again and rebooted the entire blog as a full website devoted to reading not only this comic in real time, but also the others I collected in the 80s and 90s after OiNK introduced me to the medium. I hope you’ll enjoy all of the OiNK content so far and what’s to come in the future, and that you’ll have as much fun reliving the antics of its characters (and its creators and cartoonists) as I’m having. OiNK’s important place in UK comics history deserves to be remembered. More than that, its comedy deserves to be enjoyed for decades to come.

Let’s have some fun pig pals, as we make our way through this complete collection of complete and utter joy!

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OiNK Comic Reviews

OiNK! #65: POLiTiCAL PORK

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What we have here is the final Ian Jackson cover for OiNK, which is a sad moment. In fact by this stage Ian had finished his work for OiNK, with a page or two held back for publication in the issues to come. Not to take away from anyone else’s hard work of course but Ian was synonymous with the comic, as a child he was OiNK and his Uncle Pigg, Mary Lighthouse, Hadrian Vile, Golden Trough Awards and everything in between were highlights of every issue they were in.

Speaking of those characters, it’s also sad to see our editor Uncle Pigg permanently relegated to the letters page with no sign of Mary anywhere. On the cover of the first monthly there was a cheeky reference to two monthly humour magazines and it does feel like OiNK is trying to fit into that part of the market, instead of leading the way with something completely original for children’s humour comics like it had done for its first two years.

I remember thinking there was something different about OiNK now

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still got those regular characters and a unique line up of contributors who make me laugh like no other comic. As a kid it was still ‘OiNK’ to me, however I remember thinking there was something different about it now, other than the logo and frequency. Now I feel it was trying to be something different. I understand the change was well intentioned, but sometimes I wish IPC Magazines had never sold it to Fleetway Publications and that it had stayed as the themed 32-page fortnightly. But let’s concentrate on the fun!

Peter Porter, Post Office Sorter by Kev F Sutherland only appeared in three issues (this being the middle of the trio) and that’s a shame, although with only three regular issues left I guess there just wasn’t a chance to make more. From the three we did get I always got the feeling he was a new regular character. After he hunted down a customer to threaten them over not including a postcode last issue, this month’s is somewhat different but no less funny, showing how Kev could get great mileage out of just about any concept he came up with.

On to our cover star, although do I mean Nostrahamus or Ian Jackson? A little bit of both. For the cover character to only get two pages inside a 48-page comic feels a bit underwhelming but I think it may have originally been intended for the 24-page weekly OiNK where it would have been more of a headline act. Most likely written by co-editor Mark Rodgers it’s very funny and has lots of little moments you could easily miss, so take your time and you’ll find some real gems in here, such as the change to King Louie XIV’s name (sound it out).

That first page in particular feels very apt in this post-Brexit world we find ourselves, showing up the kind of people you just know voted for it without a hint of irony. I think this reads much funnier to me nowadays as a result. Nice little cameo from Tintin there too. Although, Ian’s art doesn’t feel as considered as normal, the people in the crowds not as detailed as they’d usually be for example. Perhaps it was one of his final pieces and had to be completed a little quicker than normal, but it’s still great to see his work regardless and of course there’s that wonderful cover.

David Haldane’s Incredible Amazing Bizarre World was a new addition to OiNK when it became weekly and has been an increasingly bizarre (it’s in the name after all) and random part of the comic with a handful of usually unconnected examples of David’s wild imagination. This issue the title is shrunk and on this half-page there’s just the one example of the crazy nature of our world, it needs the space all to itself to really get across the gag.

In fact there are three instalments this issue, although two of them are for competition winning entries from readers who wrote in and told David what they saw outside their window after he asked them to do so way back at the start of the year. Below, Richard Howard of Dublin’s entry was a particularly crazy entry, which David then had to draw of course! Another reader highlight can be found on the letters page with a particularly classic OiNK-like joke from Allan Maxwell of Cardross, perfect for Nasty Laffs and Specs.

Marc Riley brings us a rather morbid instalment for one of his long-running characters called Less than 101 Uses for a Dead Harry the Head! No, really. I mean, just look at that shoe! Lew Stringer’s Pete and his Pimple and Tom Thug both enjoy double-page spreads and will be able to stretch out further in the months ahead. Pete’s strip has an amusing opening that plays against the expectations of readers when a magical cure is suggested by a pig pal and Tom does something a humour comics character never did before.

David Haldane’s Incredible Amazing Bizarre World
Letters page compiled by Patrick Gallagher
Harry the Head by Marc Riley
Pete and his Pimple and Tom Thug by Lew Stringer

I remember those final panels and reciting Tom’s chant for years when school holidays rolled around, but little did I know how ground-breaking this strip was. Tom actually left school here, an idea Lew tells me was originally Mark Rodgers’. Humour comics characters are usually stuck in time, rarely developing beyond their original premise. OiNK had already played against type by having Hadrian Vile age along with the comic and seeing his mum’s pregnancy play out over months, but this was on another level. Next month Tom even signs on! I’ll definitely be including that as a highlight.

“Punk rock saved our bacon!”

Dirty Harry

We’re on to our final strip for the issue already and the reason has nothing to do with a lack of quality content, it’s because this final strip takes up no less than 13 pages. Originally created as a six-part serial for the weekly, The Street-Hogs’ return is included in its entirety in this one issue, spread out throughout in its requisite parts. (They really should’ve been the cover stars.)

Their previous serial ended way back in #35 and told us Emma Pig, Dirty Harry and Hi-Fat would return in Malice in Underland and finally that story is here. While the title is the one mentioned almost a year ago I wonder how much the story was developed in that time because this is very much a political satire and seems more suited for the older teen audience the comic was now trying to attract. As an adult it’s much funnier than I found it at the time and makes this issue worth tracking down on eBay if you can. It kicks off with the first ‘mixed school’, something that would’ve been very topical for my fellow Northern Ireland readers back then.

The name of the giant butcher is a bit risqué for a comic I was buying at ten-years-of-age.

While not as long as their original 12-part story it’s longer than their first sequel but there’s a certain something missing. Or rather I should say someone. There’s no sign of Hoggy Bear who, given the fact he was a spoof of the pimp character from Starsky & Hutch I thought would’ve been perfect for OiNK’s new older target audience. The tone of the story certainly is. I can remember J.T. Dogg‘s beautiful, vivid artwork as a kid and loving certain aspects of it, even the renderings of politicians who I only knew from Spitting Image rather than the news.

However, having read OiNK all the way through in real time to this point it seems a bit out of place, despite the reboot with #63. The comedic references to the names and characteristics of 80s politicians seem ill-suited to the comic we’ve come to know and love and I doubt they had much of an impact on my funny bone at the time. Thank goodness for our three heroes and their special brand of silliness (see Harry’s secret body language below) and the return of their arch-nemesis Don Poloney the mafia butcher!

Despite The Street-Hogs strips usually being just plain silly randomness I love the fact there’s actually a bit of continuation from the previous serial here, with Poloney’s appearance explained as being linked to one of the Triffics who ate him last year. The seeds of that particular plant were brushed down a drain and into the sewers, his brain living on in one of the seeds, from which he grew himself a new body. This could only have come from the mind of writer Mark Rodgers! Discovering underground caves with primitive creatures he brainwashed them with stolen videos from the surface of news and the aforementioned puppet show.

Moments like these remind us this is still very much an OiNK strip at its heart, even with the sometimes overbearing references to the politics of the day. As an adult reading this I find it all very amusing but I can’t help remembering my disappointment in it as a ten-year-old boy when so much of it flew over my head. Back to the story and the crazed god-like leader grabs the ‘Hogs with his vines and decides there’ll be no fancy schemes or death traps, just simple strangulation! That’s the cliffhanger leading into our three-page climax.

These final parts don’t have that big bold logo, just a photocopied name in the corner, but what the finale does have is a cameo from some former OiNK stars and it suits the comic perfectly that punk is the answer. It’s an enjoyable strip and funny today even if it doesn’t seem as wild as the Street-Hogs’ previous stories, lacking the wonderfully ridiculous cliffhanger solutions and basically having the one joke to play with (the political lookalikes) until Poloney shows up. But once he does it becomes classic Street-Hogs again. The back page of the whole comic was certainly memorable too. Such a shame that named fourth instalment never materialised.

There are no OiNK Superstar Poster reprints this month but there are half a dozen other repeated pages from earlier issues, albeit absolute classics. Seeing #6’s Fish Theatre with its page overloaded with puns always brings a smile to my face no matter how many times I read it. This issue was originally the first time I read these particular strips so they actually added a lot to the issue for the young version of me and even now, as a little selection of ‘Best of’ strips, their older (as in original, younger target audience) OiNK humour helps make this issue a great overall package.

The Next Month promo promises the return of a certain mechanical porker and from memory it’s a huge multipage strip, another originally meant as a serial but which actually ended up created specifically for the new format. That should be an exciting enough prospect to lure any pig pal, so make sure you come back on Sunday 20th August 2023. OiNK Monthly was released on the third Saturday of each month so we’ve five weeks to wait this time instead of four. Boo!

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Readers flicking to the back page of the latest OiNK back in 1988 may have let out a little piggy squeal of excitement when they saw the return of The Street-Hogs was almost here! Last appearing way back in #35, their return had been hinted at in the weeklies as one of a few new serials to come, but since then of course OiNK has gone through something of a facelift and so the entire story was printed in one issue! I can remember the excitement the moment ten-year-old me realised I could read it all at once when I flicked through the issue before reading it.

Promo art by J.T. Dogg

Surely there couldn’t be anything else in this issue that would be as memorable as that? Actually, there’s a first for a humour comics character which was kind of a big deal, at least for the remainder of the issues of OiNK. It’s right there in the caption on the bottom-right. I’m sure pig pals will remember which one I’m referring to. The next OiNK review will be right here this Sunday 16th July 2023. I can’t wait!

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