There was no issue of Marvel UK’s (Epic imprint) monthly comic during October 1989. The fifth issue of The Sleeze Brothers was released at the end of September (just three weeks after the previous issue) despite its cover date being ‘December’. The sixth and final issue wouldn’t arrive until just two days before Christmas either. Why the big gap? I have no idea. I just know these were the release dates thanks to information in sister titles Transformers and The Real Ghostbusters.
But after really (really, really) enjoying the issues so far that’s just too long a wait with nothing new from El’ Ape and Deadbeat for the blog. Thankfully, there was a neat little extra in the first issue that I decided to hold back to help plug this gap. It’s a page at the rear of the issue where the Sleezes looked upon the team responsible for bringing them to life in the first place. Suitably enough, it’s a criminal line up! But it’s even better than that.
Drawn by the regular team of penciller Andy Lanning and inker Stephen Baskerville, it paints quite the picture of Marvel UK’s finest, doesn’t it? I’ve praised this team endlessly these past few months and for good reason. Looking at this it’s clear to me the weird and wacky world of The Sleeze Brothers needed an equally weird and wacky team behind it all. It gives the impression this was a fun comic to work on and from speaking to originating editor Richard Starkings, that was certainly the case.
I adore all the little in-jokes in the descriptions of each person, although my favourite part is the fact Steve White is drawn as a dinosaur. He produced some gorgeous colouring for another favourite comic of mine, Dark Horse International’s UK Jurassic Park comic, and today his incredibly elaborate and, frankly, bloody stunning dinosaur illustrations fill his Instagram, website and self-published books.
The final issue of The Sleeze Brothers will be reviewed here on Monday 23rd December 2024 but that won’t be the end of their coverage on the OiNK Blog. You’ll have to wait for that final regular review to find out what else is to come in the future, but until then I hope you enjoyed this little insight into the offices of Marvel UK as much as I did. We’ll return to the apparently “not-too-distant future” Earth this Christmas.
Originally published back in 2016, I first covered Jeremy Banx’s hilarious book on the first incarnation of the OiNK Blog. Now, eight years later and as part of the monthly OiNK Contributor Releasesseries, I just had to include it again because it’s so damned good! It still feels fresh, exciting and original, and of course there’s plenty to giggle about.
Frankenthing is a prose book lavished with the kind of illustrations fans of Jeremy’s Burp will lap up and narrated in a style only he can do. It all kicks off when the monster created by Doctor Frankenstein (or, Doctor Henry Victor Lionel Basil Kenneth Edison Clive Edsel Frankenstein to give him his full name) is down in the dumps because he’s lonely, so his creator makes him a little friend thanks to a ‘toy’ brought into the castle by Igor, the one-eared cat. Not that anyone actually knows what he was when he was alive.
Any pig pal should be leaping for their wallets after reading these samples. Jeremy’s style is such that it’s completely suitable for younger readers too. In fact, in parts it reads like a classic children’s book, the likes of which we may have grown up on ourselves. I can just imagine OiNK fans and their children having the greatest time together with this as their bedtime story over the course of a few nights.
There are funny little footnotes which elaborate on passing comments within the text, the book is full of brilliantly original sound effects for kids to repeat out loud and as you can see, even though Frankenthing is such a diminutive little character his creation is still shown in epic Universal monster movie style. Jeremy’s descriptions paint a picture too, with phrases such as, “his bottom quivered like a fried egg in an earthquake” and “his knees shook like a road-driller’s watch chain”.
The friendship between the two characters is genuinely sweet if completely unorthodox and the main bulk of the story has them playing a game of hide-and-seek (with the monster’s seeking hindered somewhat: “Because he had no idea how to count to a hundred he had to count to one a hundred times”), during which Igor the hungry cat eyes up the new addition. The resulting chase and back and forth involving all three characters feels like a hectic Wallace & Gromit scene in written word form, and who better to do that than Jeremy Banx.
Jeremy seems to have a particular penchant for anything to do with eyes, as they pop up in comedically grotesque ways throughout the story. The highlight of laughable grossness is a bucketful of loose eyeballs Frankenthing falls into and the job he has in trying to get back out again! It’s an addictive read and you’ll speed through the thirteen chapters and enjoy every single second of it. Told in a quick-fire style, you’re only ever a few sentences away from something funny (or surreal and funny).
The idiocy of the two main characters spills over into the narration as well. While they’re about to talk (or, in the case of the monster, grunt) the narration gives us insights into the inner workings of what should be their brains, in funny moments like the first sample below. Then in the second photo is an example of a call back to one of the paragraphs above, something else Jeremy does so well in this book that brings some genuine laugh-out-loud moments.
Also included are some appendices which are referred to at random points within the main story. For example, the first one takes a good long look at the historical contexts of the Frankenstein family emblem, every elaboration getting more ludicrous than the one before. There are also instructions on how to make origami trolls (the monster’s favourite pastime), a map, medical certificates and more.
Frankenthing is unmissable for any fan of Jeremy’s. I loved every single page and I can see parents and their children having a blast with it! It’s available through Amazon at £5.95 for the gorgeous paperback edition or £1.99 for the Kindle version. (Oh, and for some reason there’s a French version on Apple Books for £5.49 too.) So treat yourself or your kids… or throw a hint for the little holiday coming up next month.
On a chilly November morning in 1989 I innocently toddled off to my local newsagent’s to pick up my Transformers, The Real Ghostbusters and Big Comic Fortnightly, only to be met with a lovely, glossy OiNK-shaped comic handed to me from the reservations box too! I’d no idea this was coming. I’d thought the Holiday Special from earlier in the year was the final issue ever. Seeing no annual on the shelves by now I’d given up hope of ever seeing a new OiNK again.
So you can imagine my excitement when this surprise 68-page OiNK Winter Special slid out from behind the others. You can probably also imagine the speed at which nearly-12-years-old me ran back to my house to ask my mum and dad for more money, and their shock when I told them exactly how much it was. Needless to say my other comics were ignored that day. Oh, and the cover image was drawn by co-editor Patrick Gallagher and that’s his brother and OiNK photographer James as David Smellamy.
Inside, it begins with an OiNK Book-like introduction page. Unfortunately these little glimpses of Psycho Gran, The Spectacles of Doom and Greedy Gorb are all we got of them as they don’t actually appear anywhere else, and Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins only pops up in a reprint, but at the time I was just so excited to get a new OiNK I don’t think I realised how much of it was reprint material. I’ll get to that later but first up I have to talk about the paper quality here.
This is very much in keeping with the tradition of the previously published Buster and Wildcat Winter Specials from 1987 and 1988 respectively, including their price. Inside the thin but gorgeous card cover are 64 shiny, high-quality pages far above that used at any stage in the regular comic. It may have the same amount of pages as the second annual but the paper stock makes it feel a lot thinner. It’s gorgeous to look at and hold though. Can’t fault it at all!
We kick things off with a fun three-page Pete and his Pimple and it’s great to see him back after missing him in the Holiday Special earlier this year, when he and Tom Thug (who also returns in this issue) kept themselves to Buster comic instead. With this being the final Pete strip in an OiNK, Lew Stringer decided to pick no less than ten reader ideas for ridding Mr. Throb of his pimple and, while they’re all fun, the best part for me is Lew’s interpretations of what the readers could’ve looked like!
I would particularly like to know what Kevin Leeden of Goole’s reaction was upon reading this, and poor little Janice Hogan of Cumbria! (At least her dungarees provided a little context.) Lew began asking readers for their suggestions way back in the first weekly issue, #45. Inspired by Ken Reid’s Dare-A-Day Davy strip from Pow! in 1967 (readers sent in dares for the character), Lew ended up receiving many more than he could ever possibly have used, hence the list at the end.
There are some fun little additions too (although that alien on the first page wasn’t Lew’s), like an apology to fellow OiNK cartoonist Davy Francis and marking the occasion of David Leach’s wedding. At the end you’ll see Pete was due to reappear in the Buster Book 1990 which readers of that comic would soon receive for Christmas. I didn’t move over to Buster (the comic or books) as I explained when I reviewed the early merged issues, but that’s something I’m going to correct this year.
Starting this Christmas I’ll be reading each of the remaining Buster Books, one per year, so watch out for Lew’s Pete and Tom strips this festive season. They’ll both be brand new OiNK character strips for me, for the first time in decades for these two in fact, so I’m very excited to say the least. Although due to changes made for Buster, the pages above would be the last time readers saw all that ‘orrible pus exploding everywhere.
I remember laughing so hard at The Pig With No Name as a kid that I developed a little pain in my side
There are a few even larger strips here too, such as an eight-page story for The Slugs, although it’s written by Charlie Brooker and Mark Rodgers instead of Tony Husband, the first time that’s happened, but it’s still brilliantly brought to the page by Lezz. It involves the band being told they need a female lead singer by their agent and it’s funny what their main complaint about this is! But Anna Key is even louder and more obnoxious than they are and it brings their adventures to a happy ending.
David Haldane‘s Rubbish Man also returns in the nine-page Plague of the Zombie Tortoises and it’s much better than his last strip in the monthlies; his idiocy has returned, as has (I’m very happy to say) his disgusting superpowers. So Jimmy got the send off he deserved in the end. Then on Tom Thug’s page is another classic Lew Stringer rhyming script with a plug for where we could find Tom for the next several years.
The third and final multi-part strip was most likely created for the weeklies, seeing as how it’s made up of two-page spreads with edited cliffhanger captions and even looks like it may have originally been in colour (there are black and white reprints of colour strips elsewhere with the same finish to them). Drawn by Chas Sinclair, The Pig With No Name takes on all of the clichés of cowboy and western movies. It’s one I remember laughing so hard at as a kid that I developed a little pain in my side. That moment comes on the second page below and I’m sure you can work out what bit I’m talking about.
After I picked myself back up from that bathroom door scene the rest of the story is a cracker (crackling?). In part two the usual man-enters-a-saloon-and-everyone-stops scene is spoofed, quickly followed by the evil butcher villain and his men having a complete panic and showing the reader what really must go on behind the door in such scenes in these movies. Then finally, it all builds up to the stereotypical quick draw and ends with a hilarious, surprising defeat!
So who wrote this incredibly funny strip? Patrick confirms that it was his fellow co-editor Tony Husband, who worked so brilliantly with Chas on many strips, but strangely it includes no credits all. In fact, Tony’s signature is nowhere to be found in any of the new material. There are reprints of Horace Watkins, one of Tony’s Golden Trough Awards from an early issue and some of his quick gag pages from the weeklies, but for all intents and purposes he’s absent. I asked Patrick about this and he tells me the reason is most likely because they were simply so busy on the Round the Bend TV show by this time.
It’s all very funny, but a few bits and pieces feel like they would’ve been better suited to a comic like Gas
Altogether there are 12 pages of reprints. As a kid I remember recognising some but I’d no idea until right now there were so many. They are some of the very best examples of OiNK’s humour though, so for those unfamiliar with them they add a great deal to the package.
The photo of Patrick is reprinted from an earlier Grunts page but everything else here in GBH’s newest scam is brand new. The small print under the “All Goods At 1/2 Prince Unless Otherwise Stated” headline, the not-at-all-subtle dig at 80s marketing for new fangled music equipment and of course the boasts about the very ordinary features their TV includes are all classic GBH! I’m going to miss these gangsters.
A couple of pages later comes a double-page which shows how much OiNK had changed since its early days. Drawn by Mike Peek with admittedly very funny lyrics written by co-editor Mark Rodgers, this went way over my head at the time. The same thing happened a few times in the monthlies after publisher Fleetway’s well-intentioned (but misguided) tampering to push OiNK towards a slightly older teen audience.
This and some censored, but still very obvious, bad language (in particular in The Slugs) shows OiNK wasn’t a young children’s comic anymore and I think that’s very sad. Its humour was always cheeky, rude even, but it had an innocence about it. While some contents, like most of what I’ve shown you here, could still fall under that category, this spread and a few others contribute to an overall feeling of OiNK no longer being the same publication I remember so fondly.
The team that were still working on it were definitely producing the goods, however OiNK was at its best when it was a children’s comic that could be read and enjoyed by anyone of any age, rather than a comic with a teen-and-older target audience that could (upon occasion) alienate its younger readers. Don’t get me wrong, as an adult it’s all very funny, but a few bits and pieces feel like they would’ve been better suited to a comic like Gas, which a lot of the OiNK team did contribute to (look out for that at a future date).
For the final time, let’s sign off the issue with some new Ian Jackson art.
If you look closely at the first and last speech balloons, the words “effort” and “Holiday Special” seem added in after the fact, like there was originally mention of a “Book” or “OiNK Book” respectively. I asked Patrick who confirms some of the material here was indeed intended for The OiNK! Book 1990 before OiNK was cancelled and he thinks I’m right about the edited words above too.
This particular edition of OiNK is a bit tricky to track down these days, only rarely popping up on eBay but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye out for. It truly is a gorgeous issue and, while there’s a reprint collection to come, this feels like a fitting swan song for a comic that was so fundamental to my life. It feels like a very special issue when held in your trotters and gives some fan favourites a suitable ending after the sudden cancellation last year. Coveted by a lot of fans, the OiNK Winter Special is a treasured piece of my collection and contains a lot of happy memories.
Well this second issue of Marvel US’s Transformers Generation 2 feels a heck of a lot lighter after the extra long strip (and 16 page advert in the middle) of last month’s premiere issue. The contents is also more like the UK comic than the previous G1 American title, with a 16-page main strip and a seven-page back up strip which was originally printed in a special mini-comic given away with toys for Halloween that year (1993).
The cover immediately tells us this issue will pick up from where the G.I. Joe crossover finished in #142 of their comic so I was excited going into this one, but absolutely thrilled to see the first two pages! Not only are favourite characters of mine, Scarlett and Snake Eyes right there in the very first panel of the story, but on the title page we see a team of artists were involved this time, including the simply wonderful Andrew Wildman and Stephen Baskerville working alongside each other.
Inside The Ark, Megatron still has Dr. Biggles-Jones captive on his way back to Cybertron but Spike is also on board and sneaks off to find the rest of himself, namely Fortress Maximus. Not sure why Max has been left in his decapitated robot form (Spike was his HeadMaster companion) to protect the spaceship instead of his battle station form , but oh well.
Hot Spot is one of only two survivors of the battle with Megatron and Cobra, and realises the humans have access to advanced Cybertronian tech, unaware Megatron has made it unusable. Knowing humans can’t be trusted, he sets off to destroy it and I did laugh at Cobra Commander’s threat having to use a different word than “head” in the panel below. Then, is that Starscream Megatron is reactivating? Oh, this could be interesting.
Fortress Maximus seems to have slimmed down somewhat, but then again various artists in the original comic would draw him at different scales, although here he doesn’t even look like himself and more like a regular Autobot. (There’s also no mention of Spike transforming into Cerebros first, instead he just changes into Max’s head directly.) Skydive also joins in the fight and I’d completely forgotten he was lying waiting for his timer to ding and reactivate himself after G.I. Joe #142.
Look, I know this is a classic Transformers comic, and a new classic Transformers comic as far as I’m concerned, but that doesn’t change the fact my main highlight is the return of the Joes, especially Snake Eyes. They may only be on a few pages but when those pages are drawn by Andrew and Stephen you can’t blame me. I had no idea these characters crossed back over into this comic.
They aid Hot Spot but after the weapons are destroyed Cobra surrounds him; they want any Cybertronian technology they can get their hands on, no matter how. He ends up sacrificing himself and explodes(!), although from the art that’s not 100% clear until it’s mentioned later. Meanwhile, Spike and Fortress Maximus also seem to sacrifice themselves by entering the “antimatter stream” powering The Ark, allowing Skydive to rescue Dr. Biggles-Jones.
The ship explodes with Maximus on board, apparently taking Spike with him, although it appears Megatron was also destroyed and we know he’s not easily killed. Plus there was a new toy of him just out, so we’ll see who all return in a future issue. Then it’s on to the back up strip.
Light on plot but heavy on the action, character moments and throwing in a few laughs, it reads very much like one of writer Simon Furman’s monochrome strips from the latter part of the UK comic’s run. Anyone who followed along with my real time read through of the original comic will know this isn’t a complaint, far from it in fact. It’s a brill little strip, and to complete that UK comic flavour it’s even drawn by Geoff Senior (and kudos to Richard Starkings and John Gaushell’s letters below and Sarra Mossoff’s excellent colours).
Even Bumblebee and Bludgeon are back. It feels like the original comic had never been cancelled! On one of the planets Bludgeon and his Decepticons had randomly selected to terrorise, the Autobots have arrived. There’s an underground cache of advanced weaponry and Optimus Prime et all can’t allow them to fall into Decepticon hands, although there’s a hint within his thoughts that Prime actually wants them for himself, playing to the darker version of the character we saw last time.
Hot Rod has been sent down to activate some kind of auto-defence system to help them out, so when this monster appears Prime assumes it’s a hologram. He’s mightily impressed with Hot Rod’s capabilities, especially when its huge alien eyes take out one of Bludgeon’s minions. Then the young Autobot reappears, apologising for not being able to find anything to help in the battle, producing this funny moment from Optimus!
Confirmation then that they were also here to secure weaponry. They leave with the understanding they can’t go down that route again, as that would defy everything they stand for and recalls the war they fought for millions of years. The Next Issue caption mentions “Primal” and “Old Evils” and I still can’t shake the feeling of this leading to a path well trodden. Hopefully Prime’s speech is a hint in itself, that the story won’t simply be treading the same ground again.
To finish off with I couldn’t help but have my attention drawn to two of the advertisements in this issue. One is for a reissue of the original G.I. Joe 12” figure, which we knew as Action Man here in the UK, alongside a cool action figure version to sit among kids’ 80s toys. The other advert is for pants.
Not wishing to end the review on a bum note, I’ll just say how much I really enjoyed both stories this time. I’m not sure if it’s a one-off thing having two strips but I hope it’s something we can have at least once in a while over the next year (no spoilers please). Fingers crossed for more of the same on Sunday 24th November 2024 then. Actually, just typing that has made me realise my decorations will be up just in time for that next issue! Oh, now I’m excited.
Back during OiNK’s weekly issues young readers were treated to five cut-out play masks. They were the typical fare we’d see in comics of the day. Super Naturals gave such masks away with their first two issues, albeit printed on glossy cardboard. OiNK’s may have been printed on regular paper and required gluing them to the customary empty cereal box to make them wearable, but these character faces were so much more entertaining.
Obviously a Dead Fred mask is the most suitable this time of year and in the above selection it’s the only one drawn by the character’s original artist, Eric ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson, the rest were drawn by Mike Peek. Thanks to co-editor Patrick Gallagher for confirming this after Mike mentioned drawing the Tom Thug one on the OiNK Facebook group. Tom’s face may have incorrect proportions (it isn’t as squished as it should be) but then again it had to fit our faces and none of us had a noggin like Tom’s!
They weren’t originally printed as part of any Hallowe’en celebrations. In fact, they were inside #51 to #55 during February and March 1988 but I thought they’d make for a fun extra post at this time of the year. If you do decide to print them out (and if you do I expect photos to the blog’s socials!) please note that to make sure they’re of a good enough quality when printed they are very big files. The pages were scanned in to measure 22cm across and 30cm top-to-bottom so they’re quite heavy on the memory front (between 15MB and 20MB each).
Also, don’t forget to follow Uncle Pigg’s instructions very carefully, folks. Especially step 3.
I didn’t include these in the reviews at the time because I wanted to keep them for a Hallowe’en after the regular issues had stopped. However, they were part of some of the very best weekly OiNKs and you can click on their covers above to go straight to them. #51 includes Pete and his Pimple and their trouser-press, in #52 Frank Sidebottom had an exclusive scoop about a top BBC radio DJ, #53 saw the debut of Wally of the West, the comic gave a clear (and rhyming) message to bigots in #54 and Tom Thug finally assembled his gang in #55.
Happy spooky season pig pals, and of course let’s not forget the true message of Hallowe’en: Christmas is coming!
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