OiNK Blog

OiNK! #53: FiT TO BURST

3 March 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Comic covers don’t come much more creative than this. Lew Stringer’s latest OiNK cover is definitely one of my favourites, right up there with those from #6 and #43 by Ian Jackson. The OiNK logo being pushed off the page was all Lew’s idea, who pencilled out a rough of the whole cover for approval by the comic’s editors. After it was approved he then drew the Pete part of the design, leaving the logo for Patrick.

Co-editor Patrick Gallagher was the famous logo’s original creator and told me he thought Lew’s cover was a “swell” idea, pun very obviously intended, and that it was a doddle for him to rejig the letters and complete this eye-catching front page, a highlight of the issue for sure and really makes the issue stand out in the collection. Just as well the inside is as good then. The first interior highlight comes from Davy Francis and Greedy Gorb, along with a special guest star.

Although he goes unnamed, that’s Doctor Madstarkraving (“He’s Bonkers”) who has appeared in his own strip a couple of times (#27 being one example) with more to come later in the run. Showing how uncontrollable his appetite is, Gorb shoots himself in the foot by eating the doc’s inventions when they could’ve fed him even more food! I particularly like the name of the shop, a little dig at how other comics seemed to have sweet shops on every street corner, a hang up from their more traditional (read: old-fashioned) days that OiNK liked to rib.

Speaking of old-fashioned tales, James Bond author Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang wasn’t a film I loved as much as my friends seemed to. However, I certainly knew enough of its story that the following spoof by ‘Ian Phlegming’ (Simon Thorp) was very funny indeed. It starts off silly and quickly escalates, culminating in an over-the-top ending that couldn’t be further away from the original saccharin tale. Then again, that’s the whole idea.

Spoofs were something unique to OiNK in the children’s comic market at the time, yet in the case of Twitty Twitty Bang Bang this wasn’t the only thing that set it apart. While comics such as Beano and Buster did have text adventure serials in their early days, it wasn’t something humour comics had any more, or any children’s comics outside of the nursery and very young children’s market. Later on in this year (1988) other comics such as The Real Ghostbusters and Thundercats would bring back the prose story, but for the time being pages like this really stood out.

Simon’s other contribution to the issue has plenty of panels of text packed with gags, this time as part of a full-page illustration in his usual entertaining style, with a rather more dreary colour palette than usual which is all part of the joke. This time of the year family holidays would be planned and paid for; I remember the TV listings magazines being full of them the first few months of the year. These were just ripe for a makeover, selling trips to the Porkshire Riviera’s Outlet-By-The-Sea.

While it’s not a GBH Madvertisement their presence is still very much felt with their Spamtins Holiday Camp and Multi-storey Caravan Park. Growing up in the 80s and 90s I really found the caption for the Top Class Variety Acts very funny, even as a fan of the person at the butt of the joke. In the image itself there are so many funny little details, such as the quick sand, the periscope, a pair of socks that seem to have survived beyond their owner and the rigid man who I don’t think is sunbathing anymore.

This wasn’t the only time Simon would try to entice us away to sunnier climbs. Watch out for his special cruise ship cutaway later in the year. That particular contribution will definitely be featured in the highlights to come. This issue’s highlights are particularly good too, beginning with Invisible Charlie (who appeared in three issues) and Davy Francis’ trademark background gags. (Check out the posters in this example.)

“Baby George! The Beastie Babies! And Paul Extremely Young!
Tiny Tots TV, Vaughan Brunt

On the Grunts page a reader must’ve had the fright of their lives on their high street, Tiny Tots TV suggests some more baby based television hits after the success of Muppet Babies and Frank Sidebottom has two colourful pages this week. One is a competition, the other is his recurring Frank Sidebottom and his Fantastic Showbiz Gossip column which incudes his diary and, while he slips in a couple of joke entries, it’s an interesting look into the busy life of the man behind the mask, Chris Sievey.

**Invisible Charlie** by *Davy Francis*
**Grunts** compiled by *Patrick Gallagher*
**Tiny Tots TV** written by *Vaughan Brunt*, drawn by *Mike Green*
**Frank Sidebottom** by *Chris Sievey*

The life of a superstar, eh?

There are a ton of mini-strips in here, including two full pages of them. Over these two pages alone we have the return of Uncle Pigg and Mary Lighthouse to strip form, Zootown, Harry the Head, Doctor Mooney He’s Completely Looney, a GBH Madvertisement, a one-off strip by Charlie Brooker called A Day in the Life of a Typical Schoolboy and the first strip of a perennial favourite, Wally of the West. Oh, plus the weekly funny newsagent coupon.

I want to show you a few of these in quick succession and it’s been difficult to decide which ones to pick out from this brilliant selection. I’ll begin with Charlie’s Typical Schoolboy, simply because it’s so daft.

GBH returns with a tiny madvert with big prices. Their special modelling clay promises plenty of “steaming” fun from the offset, so I’m sure you can draw your own correct conclusions as to what the product actually is. There are so many jokes following on from the theme of that ‘clay’, including the variety of colour schemes and even a special free gift and another dig at radio DJ Gary Davies (also see Outlet-By-The-Sea).

I’m not sure who wrote it but the couple of tiny illustrations are by Steve Gibson, so given past examples in the weeklies of his work with Charlie on quizzes and the like I’m going to assume Brooker wrote this one too.

My eyes lit up and I’m sure I had a great big grin across my face when I saw our next mini-strip, the first appearance of Ed McHenry’s Wally of the West. The character would appear in 12 OiNKs altogether, sometimes more than once in an issue and was a main staple during this final year of the comic. Often accompanied by his long-suffering friend Fungus, the strips were a series of short gags about a very dimwitted cowboy set in the American Wild West of the past.

The jokes revolved around his stupidity which might not sound that original but Wally had two things going for him. The first was the setting which gave it a unique feel and opened it up to new ideas. The second was the most important though, Ed himself. Creator of many quizzes and one-off strips, Ed was now beginning to move into his own serials having also recently created Igor and the Doctor which was an exciting prospect for any fans of his work so far in OiNK.

Back in 1988 Beano reached its 50th anniversary, after The Dandy had the previous year and the first combined celebratory book had been released in 1987. I actually received that book myself for that Christmas, when I also got the first OiNK! Book, although I do think the Dandy/Beano tome was originally for my brother but he’d grown out of comics by the time Santa came to town (as a lot of us mistakenly do at some point before correcting course again). In fact, at the same time I was reading DC Thomson’s book my other annual was making lots of jokes at its expense!

This wasn’t going to stop anytime soon by the looks of this week’s newsagent reservation coupon by Patrick Gallagher.

I’ve one more little mini-strip I want to show you but I’ll finish with it after I round up this review. From the brilliant front cover which showed right there on the shelf OiNK didn’t follow any of the traditional comic rules, to its huge array of mini-strips and strong one-offs, this is by far the best of the weekly editions so far! In fact, it could easily be one of the best issues of the whole run up to this point. I remember being very excited at getting OiNK every single week from issue 50 onwards as a child and that remains true today.

Even though I know there are only nine weeklies left until we have to wait much longer between issues I’m still just as excited at the prospect of those to come as I was 35 years ago. To wrap up this excellent issue we even get a tiny little Uncle Pigg and Mary Lighthouse strip, something we haven’t seen in the regular comic in a long time. They used to introduce every issue, or would pop up in multi-page strips now and again but for a long time now have been relegated to the Grunts page so it’s nice to see Ian Jackson bring them to life again. This time they’re not written by Mark Rodgers as they usual are, but Kev F Sutherland instead. Thanks for bringing them back, Kev.

OiNK #54’s review will be here on Saturday 11th March 2023.

iSSUE 52 < > iSSUE 54

OiNK! #52: PiNK MiRROR

25 February 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

The first cover drawn by Chris Sievey, better known as Frank Sidebottom, is a delight of what must’ve been time-consuming details. As a kid I always loved his unique style but I don’t think I gave it the appreciation it really deserved. Look at the panelling in the wooden fence and each individual window in those distant buildings, never mind the brilliant colour work all completed with felt tip pens. I’ve already discussed previously that co-editor Patrick Gallagher told me how long Chris would spend perfecting his OiNK work and this is the perfect example.

On the Grunts page, under a list of the most popular characters (every reader who wrote in was asked to include a coupon with their top three strips) is news that some of those listed will be returning in new mini-series soon, namely The Street-Hogs, The Spectacles of Doom (you can check some of it out in Andy Roper‘s obituary) and Rubbish Man. In #50’s review I touched upon characters some cartoonists had rested. It’s interesting to see the once-regular Rubbish Man alongside two strips that were always mini-series. Perhaps this was how they’d get around having fewer pages for the large amount of characters readers wanted to see.

So what about those showbiz scoops of Frank’s?

My favourite part of this is the difference between the Springsteen headline and what the story actually is; it’s very clever and very funny, reminding me of those headlines you’ll see from certain websites where every word has a capital letter. You know the type. Nice to see the Smokebusters still going strong after first popping up in #46 (and of course the special edition) and the huge headline on the cover is reduced to a tiny side panel with another hilarious non-story behind it all, aping the tabloid press of the day. (Of the present too.)

Elsewhere there’s a fantastic photo collage of Frank’s time recording a sketch for Saturday morning children’s TV show No.73. I loved that show and the page in question will be part of a special post later in the year. That’s all I’m going to say for now, other than it’ll be worth the wait. Back to the issue at hand and underneath a three-quarter-page Pete and his Pimple (backing up what I said for the last two issues about the return of a more varied layout to the comic) is the latest Cowpat County from Davy Francis.

Last week we had a full-page colour strip, now a quarter-page black and white mini but fans wouldn’t have felt short-changed. This was the nature of OiNK; your favourites could pop up irregularly, in different formats from longer stories to quick gags such as this. It’s great to have that feel of the fortnightlies back again and to be enjoying it on a weekly basis. Davy is a master of the quick gag strips so that’s another reason I wasn’t disappointed to see Cowpat County in a much tinier space this time, because I knew I was guaranteed a good chortle.

The highlight of this issue for me is Jeremy Banx’s Burp. That shouldn’t be a surprise, I’ve never made a secret of the fact I’m a huge fan of Jeremy’s work, especially his strips for this particular smelly alien from outer space. But if you cast your mind back to the previous review, when I was delighted to see the return of Alvin and found the now-sentient coffin so funny, you’ll understand why this week’s strip was a particular thrill to read.

As always with Burp’s pages it’s very funny from the offset, giving us this surreal experience of a tax assessor coming to his UFO as if that’s a completely normal thing to happen in this man’s day-to-day working life. In fact, as he’s presented with ever more bizarre creatures he doesn’t run off as we’d expect, instead he just gets angrier, the “This is going to cost you, lad” response to the Pet Specimen from Uranus being particularly funny.

It’s a great pay off that we didn’t even know we needed

That surprise return is just one of three (well, more if you count his internal organs), having disappeared over the last several months. Always seen dangling from Burp’s belt in earlier issues, here Jeremy even gives us an answer to where he’s been. In what must be one of Burp’s many inventions the specimen can now go anywhere he pleases, giving us a reason as to why he hasn’t been seen dangling. But it’s the other two characters I loved seeing again the most.

Alvin popping up again was a hoot, so certain was I that we’d seen the last of him (I’ve been wrong on that before, right regular readers?) but then to see the coffin, after I said how funny it would be to see these two even just hanging out in the background of future strips, is just hilarious! The coffin even has a name now. I know I’ve said this already but this really is one of my very favourite Burp strips, but only because it works so well after reading all of the previous instalments. It’s a great pay off that we didn’t even know we needed.

**The Slugs** written by *Tony Husband*, drawn by *Lezz*
**Billy the Pig** written by *Tony Husband*, drawn by *Chas Sinclair*
**Tom Thug** by *Lew Stringer*

Cherry-picking some other highlights from the issue I’m not sure how I feel about the word “crap” in The Slugs. While according to Uncle Pigg last week the audience for OiNK was changing from what was originally intended and it was always meant to be the punk rock of children’s comics, it was still a children’s comic. Can you imagine if Whizzer and Chips used this word? It’d have been all over the tabloids. So yes, I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Elsewhere there’s a wonderfully dark yet silly moment as Billy the Pig continues his search for his rustled family, and in Tom Thug there’s a surprise return for big brother Ernie who first popped up seven days ago. This time he’s off for good though, when we find out he’s been charged with being AWOL and in his final panel the character’s bravado we’ve come to know for these two issues disappears completely. Speaking with Lew, he’d forgotten all about Ernie. He was never mentioned again, even in all the years Tom was a regular in Buster.

This is a phenomenal feat for someone still at school to be writing so much for a mainstream comic.

Billy Bang, Brian Luck He’s Really Unlucky, a quiz called Are You a Compulsive Liar?, Transmogrifying Tracey, The Adventures of Death and a GBH Madvertisement all have one thing in common in this issue. They’re all written by Charlie Brooker. This is a phenomenal feat for someone still at school to be writing so much for a mainstream comic. We obviously know of his incredible talent and genius comedic writing in later years but one look at this GBH Azid page and you can see even as a teenager he was already there.

This is simply a brilliant page, Charlie’s excellent script expertly brought to life by Eric ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson and his unique textured style. Obviously the OiNK editors saw something in the young Black Mirror creator to give him his first paying job in the first place, but with how many times I’m seeing his name already (I knew he contributed a lot to the later monthlies) it’s clear they were impressed with him from the offset and were asking him for more. This is becoming a fascinating look into the early career of one of my very favourite television writers.

We’ll stick with Charlie for one more strip I think and the return of The Adventures of Death, one of those favourite not-as-regular-as-you-remember regular characters. Death was in every edition for six issues to begin with but as Charlie’s repertoire expanded the Grim Reaper became one of several of his creations he had to split his time between. Remember folks, he was still at school! It appears he’s now becoming one of OiNK’s main contributors though. Personally, Death is still a favourite character after all theses years.

I found myself lingering on that penultimate panel. That’s genius comic timing in a comic strip. I can’t help but wonder if OiNK had continued on in this guise and lasted longer than it ultimately did, would Charlie have continued as a contributor, and more so would he have continued with a cartooning career? We’ll never know. What we do know is what Charlie did after OiNK’s eventual cancellation. He produced cartoon art for CeX before moving on to writing for PC Zone magazine, including a comic strip.

From here it was a natural progression into TV’s Games Republic, which led on to writing for such shows as Channel Four’s The 11 O’Clock Show and the infamous Brass Eye paedophilia special. At the same time he created his TV review column Screen Burn for The Guardian. These career paths would culminate in Screen Wipe, a BBC series I adored and really miss. A phenomenal career which all began with our piggy pink publication.

Patrick Gallagher‘s reservation coupon rounds things off as usual and it’s been another fantastic read this week. I’m even getting used to the 24-page format. There’s more crammed in now so it’s taken longer to read than the first handful of weeklies. Great stuff. The next OiNK has one of the best covers of the whole run. If you thought what Lew Stringer did with the logo last week was something special just wait ’til you see what he does with it in just six days on Friday 3rd March 2023. (1988 was a leap year, so we’re missing a day.)

iSSUE 51 < > iSSUE 53

OiNK! #51: OFTEN COPiED…

18 February 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

The latest cover from Lew Stringer is one of my most memorable simply because of how inventive it is. Surely OiNK’s was one of the best comic logos ever created, right? Of course I could just be biased, but the logo co-editor Patrick Gallagher created always seemed so bold, so different and so joyful as a kid. It still gives me all the feels today. Tom Thug appearing behind a sea of it is a great idea and you can take a look at the original artwork and the overlaying of the logos in a post on Lew’s own blog from 2015 when it was up for sale.

On the Grunts page Uncle Pigg tells us how the audience reading OiNK is rather different from the one it was originally created for, apparently now mainly made up of teenagers and young adults. I asked co-editor Patrick Gallagher, who also compiles the Grunts pages, how they found this out.

Patrick says, “When we said the audience had changed, I think that was based on audience research from Fleetway plus our original audience (like yourself) was getting older too, but we couldn’t disregard the ‘Whizzer and Chips and Buster‘ younger end of the audience, hence plugging Tom and Pete later in those particular comics (which didn’t cost anything).”

This would in turn lead to the comic slowly changing over the course of the weeklies until it rebooted itself as a monthly “magazine”, to quote #63. For now though, let’s concentrate on the issue at hand and inside our cover star had a page-and-a-half to cause chaos with and a cut-out mask on the back cover (which you’ll see in a future post) so he’s very much the star this week. His strip has a new guest star too, in the shape of his newly created brother.

Like all the best Tom Thug strips it moves into brilliantly scripted slapstick, only it’s not Tom who’s the main recipient of Lew’s penchant for comic violence this time. Well, apart from the front door, with that funny little detail of the wall going down to the brick from the force of Ernie’s entrance. Ernie would be back in the next issue before leaving for good (adding this little fact after reading the next issue seven days later). It’s always fun to see their mum too, what with her being the complete opposite of everyone else in this little dysfunctional family.

“Today’s the day we discover the teddy bear’s graveyard.”
Burp, Jeremy Banx

Reading this in this digital world we now find ourselves in I can’t help but think, given Tom’s attitude towards the army and what he thinks his brother actually does, that our resident bully would definitely have a flag or a football top as his Twitter profile avatar. Lew has said before that Tom would definitely be a cowardly internet troll today. Also, is it just me or does Tom’s mum remind anyone else of their own mum in the 80s? It’s uncanny. Must be the hair.

Moving on to Jeremy Banx’s Burp and I was delighted to find out I was initially wrong about having seen the last of a certain character. Back in #32 in a bid to fix a little girl’s broken teddy bear our friendly smelly alien mistakenly created sentient life. Puzzled by the toy’s lack of organs, skeleton, brain or in fact anything, he thought this was the cause of the girl’s heartbreak so he brought Alvin to life, only for us to see his owner tear him limb from limb in a game of doctor and patient. He returned in #46 and ended up sizzled like a well done steak.

It’s always fun to see another ludicrously-named gadget Burp just happens to have either lying around or invented, with appropriately hilarious results. Will Alvin reappear in the remaining issues that include Burp? Well I’m not going to try and answer that since I was so wrong last time, but given how some of his internal organs have become recurring characters I’d love to see the bear and the coffin pottering about in the background of his spaceship! (UPDATE: Ahem… they did indeed just the following week.)

I showed the punchline from last issue’s Billy Bang and then realised I haven’t showed a full strip of Billy’s since way back in #4’s review when he was drawn by Shiloe (Viz’s Simon Donald). Nowadays Eric ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson has the duty of exploding the bad tempered lad every week and the puns, which had started to become a little repetitive, are now fresh and funny again thanks to a mixture of writers taking on the task. This week it’s the mysterious ‘Griffiths + Kane’. Also watch out for the facial expression of the fish in the water which I just love.

Billy’s original creator Mike Knowles even admitted he never thought the character would last because of the limited premise but he did, passed on to other creative teams as the comic evolved over time. This ever-shifting roster of talent defied odds again and again and he’d remain a regular all the way through to the end. Well, when I say “regular”, even before the reduction in pages (with #45) OiNK’s roster of regular characters was too big for any one issue.

While all other humour comics had a set amount of regular strips which would neatly add up to the amount of pages needed OiNK was (as always) different. It still had those strips which would appear every fortnight/week, but there were a load of characters that were still deemed regulars who didn’t appear all the time. It was always exciting when your favourites popped up and it kept things fresh, and if OiNK had continued for years and years I’m sure we would’ve seen the return of some of those absent these past couple of months.

**Horace Watkins** by *Tony Husband*
**Cowpat County** by *Davy Francis*

Here’s a perfect example. Two strips we’d all agree were main OiNK strips. Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins continues with his ever-more-ridiculous spoof football drama, a strip which appeared in all but one issue. Then we have Cowpat County which appeared in the first 14 issues (plus the preview) but as new characters were introduced it began to appear irregularly, sometimes every issue, sometimes there’d be a gap. Its length also became more fluid, appearing as mini-strips as well as full pages.

I don’t think any pig pal would argue this made Cowpat County any less of a regular strip, it was just the OiNK way of doing things. In fact, it’s been a while since we got a full page from Davy’s Farmer Giles and it’s an extra special treat to see one in colour, complete with what has to be described as a ‘classic’ joke, surely? Speaking of regulars though, the absence of The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile Aged 8 5/8 Years is glaringly obvious. This is the first regular issue he hasn’t appeared in. Some good and bad news about that in a few issues’ time.

I’m sure we can all agree with the trouser press

One of those characters introduced back in #15 when OiNK’s line up got a shake-up was Lew Stringer’s Pete and his Pimple. This issue sees the first of the reader suggestions for a solution to Pete Throb’s massive spot problem. First asked for in #45 these ideas came thick and fast for the rest of OiNK’s run, starting points for the majority of Pete’s strips to come. I’ve included this one here for two reasons. The first is simply because it’s the first one and I wanted to mark the occasion, the other is for its co-star, the trouser press. Read it, enjoy, and when you get to the final panel you’ll understand.

I’m sure we can all agree with the trouser press in this situation. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.) The colouring might seem a bit odd on first glance but I think it works. There were a few pages which would feature two set colours on this thinner matt paper instead of the various grades we got even in black and white strips on the glossy pages (up to #35) and the higher grade matt used for the remainder of the fortnightlies (beginning with #36). A lot of traditional comics had examples of one colour being used to make certain pages stand out, usually red.

OiNK’s contemporaries like Buster and Whizzer and Chips had a lot less colour than OiNK despite being eight pages longer, and would still use the one colour to set some of those apart, but mainly they were in black and white. Billy Bang and Tom Thug also use just the two tones in this issue to produce the feel of a colour page. I think Wilkie does it best since he has a lot of water in his strip, and in Tom’s look closer and you’ll notice only the small tub of water and the inflatable ring are coloured. But the effect works, cleverly highlighting these items before they became part of the slapstick.

It was rare for Psycho Gran to get a full-colour strip. Fans are used to seeing David Leach’s gorgeous technicolour in her stories today in new digital and physical comics he releases now and again. In OiNK her strips would be of varying length but always in black and white so it’s a lovely surprise to see her latest in colour, albeit limited due to the page stock. Also, for once she’s acting in self defence and not inflicting her unique sense of humour upon others.

I’ll be covering the little old lady’s post-OiNK life at some point on the blog but in the meantime it’s a bit of a shock to realise that after this she’ll only appear in one more regular issue before the comic’s cancellation!

If there was ever an OiNK cartoonist who liked to make sure readers got plenty of value it was Davy Francis. Some of the biggest laughs have come from the backgrounds in Davy’s strips, the incidental moments happening behind the main characters, the little gags squeezed into spaces usually left for scenery by others. While little one-off Mabel the Model doesn’t have as many as some of his previous, this particular one had me giggling with its nod to a favourite TV show.

Davy would always elaborate upon the script in his art and Mabel’s script was written by Hilary Robinson (2000AD, Mindbenders, The Worm: the longest comic strip in the world) who you can read all about on her page of the Women in Comics Wiki, including details of her scripts for 2000AD and what ultimately happened to that working relationship. Just like Davy (and myself), Hilary is a resident of Northern Ireland and I assume a friend of Davy’s. Unfortunately, this would be her only contribution to the comic.

Another newsagent reservation coupon by co-editor Patrick Gallagher rounds off another review. I can confidently say last week’s issue (the celebratory 50th) wasn’t a fluke, OiNK really has settled into its weekly guise; it’s back to its random nature, as evidenced with Tom Thug’s larger than normal strip above most of all. Some missing characters have also popped back in and best of all, until it changes format again we have another 11 weeks of this to go! The next one of which will be reviewed in seven days on Saturday 25th February 2022. See you then.

iSSUE 50 < > iSSUE 52

OiNK! #50: HALF-CENTURY HiLARiTY

11 February 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

It’s time for another celebratory issue of the world’s greatest, and funniest, comic. OiNK reached its 50th issue on this day 35 years ago, although technically speaking if you count the special editions this is actually the 55th edition, but let’s not quibble. Not only that but it feels more like the OiNK of old again. With the team caught up on the new weekly schedule characters no longer appear on exactly the same pages anymore, there are more wonderful one-offs and everything is put together in recognisably random fashion again like the fortnightlies.

This is signalled by a move away from the simplistic yellow covers and a fantastic full-page photograph of Frank Sidebottom receiving his knighthood from the Queen, in reality a young passerby. As co-editor Patrick Gallagher told the Dazed website, “I had this Queen mask with me and I’m looking for someone to put it on so Frank could get down on his knee for the photo. Only one kid would do it so we had him with the Queen’s face on and Frank being knighted. He paid twenty quid for it but obviously it was worth nothing. Frank got ripped off. Sometimes adventures with Chris became nightmares.”

Ed McHenry first appeared in OiNK #4 and has contributed to 18 issues and the first annual so far, including many a puzzle page. After an eight-issue absence he makes a grand reentry with Ringo Pig and Golden the Wonder Horse. A beautiful daft full-page strip that signals the beginning of a glorious run of work from Ed. In fact, he’ll contribute to every single issue (including all specials) from now on. His Wally of the West was always a favourite. He’ll be popping up soon on the blog.

But Ed isn’t done with this issue yet as he also drew the wonderful poster in the middle pages that marks the 50th issue with a party for all of OiNK’s main characters, but it doesn’t sit in the issue in isolation. Instead it’s sandwiched between two Lew Stringer strips, namely Pete and his Pimple and Tom Thug who cross over for this special occasion (they also did in #34). Pete’s strip is a bit of a two-for-one deal in the story department, firstly trying to take Lovely Lucy to the party and this backfiring before he runs into Tom outside the shindig itself.

The Lucy part of the strip sets up the pimple’s ability to suddenly flare up to full size without warning (in case you’d forgotten) before it’s used at just the right moment as a way to see off the thug that is Tom, launching us (literally in his case) to the full-colour poster by Ed in the middle pages.

Ed also drew the similarly celebratory poster for the comic’s first birthday, although there it was called an ‘anniversary’ party and here a ‘birthday’ party, which seems the wrong way round. Co-editor Mark Rodgers provides the scenario and script for the chaos reigning here. A script for a poster? Unlike the previous poster which was designed as a portrait of the comic’s stars this is more like Rubbish Man’s New Year’s Party from #44, taking a snapshot in time of the party in progress.

As I’ve said before I always love seeing different cartoonists’ takes on characters created by others and this is a smorgasbord of just that. Ed does a wonderful job of representing a wide variety of characters created by his colleagues while giving each that McHenry twist. Nice to see Mr Big Nose make a cameo after he was dropped from the comic (last appearing in #44) but he’s not the only one I’m happy to see. Roger Rental hasn’t been seen since the latest Christmas issue (and will only make one further appearance in a monthly), and upon seeing Rubbish Man here I’m suddenly aware he also hasn’t been seen in the weeklies! In fact, just like Roger he’ll only be back once more, albeit in a massive strip.

It’s sad to realise some of those included no longer have regular character status

Patrick tells me, “Largely it was the contributors who made the decision to rest certain characters. In the case of Rubbish Man, David Haldane was still busy with his other work. For example in #50 he contributed Torture Twins, Zootown and Haldane’s Amazing, Incredible, Bizzare World. Ian Jackson and Jeremy Banx were also very busy on their other work outside of OiNK and since we had a healthy stockpile of other artists’ material building up, we were never short to allow them a break.” At this stage they’d no idea OiNK was going to fold and fully expected the likes of Mr Big Nose to return later.

Even though it’s sad to realise some of those included no longer have regular character status there are a lot of laughs to be had with this poster, such as Burp’s upset tummy (perhaps still upset from the oyster incident), the punch bowl, a selection of awful puns and even though it’s most likely a coincidence I did laugh at the use of the word “frazzle” to describe the little pig on the receiving end of Billy Bang’s temper, given how Frazzles are a bacon flavoured snack! After the poster we’re treated to the end of the crossover tale. This issue is the gift that keeps on giving.

Even though it’s not really a four-page story starring Pete and Tom (which just so happens to co-star a lot of the others) it sure feels like it. It really was something special for a milestone issue and it ends on a perfect note with Tom’s strip. The moment he crashes to the ground from not realising his braces are elastic gave me a chuckle and of course it would have to end on a few more puns, just to round everything off nicely. There are plenty of highlights in this issue, of which this is just one.

All in, this is the issue where the team really settled into the new format. In fact, from next week the ‘Weekly’ would be dropped from the logo on the cover, cementing the fact it was now well-and-truly a weekly comic alongside it stablemates. Alongside the celebrations in #50 Hieronymouos Van Hellsong’s strip ends with Jimmy ‘The Cleaver’ Smith using poor Hellsong to escape in suitably silly fashion and the ever-reliable Billy Bang’s strip ends with one of the best gags he had written for him.

**Hieronymous Van Hellsong** by *Jeremy Banx*
**Billy Bang** written by *Griffiths+Kane*, drawn by *Wilkie*

Fleetway Publications may have decided to produce double the amount of OiNKs (in order to produce more sales) and bring it in line with the likes of Buster and Whizzer and Chips but that didn’t mean OiNK wasn’t going to continue parodying its stablemates. Whizzer and Chips in particular was an example they’d use to dress down traditional comics as staid and formulaic. Who can forget the wonderful Tom’s Toe from #12 drawn by none other than John Geering himself?

Next to follow in this OiNK tradition (of not following comics tradition) was Charlie Brooker. Still at school while working on OiNK, Charlie would become more and more prolific throughout this last year of the comic (even writing for Lew in #47), not missing a single issue and contributing more with each successive edition. Both The Adventure of Death and Transmogrifying Tracey would continue to pop up now and again, he’d write a ton of quizzes and text features for the monthlies, has a five-issue run of The Swinelight Zone coming up very soon and on top of all that still had time for little one-off additions such as The Check-Up here.

At the back of this issue comes a little public service message and while the Smokebuster Special isn’t mentioned it neatly ties in to the free edition recently handed out to school kids in the north of England. For all the efforts of those people who wanted to ban OiNK or have it banished to the top shelves of newsagents, OiNK had more examples of using humour to teach good values to its pig pals than its contemporaries, so those aforementioned critics were just doing potential readers a even bigger disservice.

Fifty issues of a comic in the late 80s was not to be sniffed at

I hated smoke. Everyone in my household did it (my parents weren’t aware even my siblings were doing it). I hated the smell. I hated the way it scratched at my throat. I hated the way it made my clothes (and me) smell when I visited friends whose parents didn’t smoke. As I’ve said before I never knew about the Smokebuster Special at the time but additions such as this Madvertisement for John Slayer Specials just reinforced my feelings – while also producing a laugh at the expense of smokers, naturally.

Just like the dental hygiene-related Trendy Wendy strip from #42 a few months ago, these anti-smoking jokes made an impact on the young version of me, staying with me throughout my formative teenage years. Would I have relented to peer pressure if it hadn’t been for OiNK? I doubt it, but this certainly helped keep me on the straight and narrow, if only for the fact I didn’t want to be the butt (no pun intended) of the jokes . I’d remember them at opportune moments throughout my teens as a result.

Fifty issues of a comic in the late 80s was not to be sniffed at, especially for one such as OiNK which was unlike anything that had come before, and which had faced a complaint to The Press Council and been subjected to the whims of conservative shop owners and critics alike. The cover of this issue feels like a dig at those self-proclaimed stalwarts of decency in its use of a royal image honouring the comic. Little did we know there were only another 18 issues to come. It’s heartbreaking to think of that now in hindsight. Best make sure we don’t miss any, right?

Out of all the comics I had a regular order for back then only a few saw this milestone (OiNK – 68 issues, Transformers – 332 issues, The Real Ghostbusters – 193 issues, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends – still going with 819 issues at the time of writing). That didn’t mean I loved the others any less of course; one of my all-time favourites lasted only 6 regular issues. At the time of OiNK #50’s release it really did feel like it was here forever, that nothing could stop it and with a new found confidence in the weekly I couldn’t wait for the next 50!

In a few issues there’ll be a look at the positive feedback the comic had received in the press to counteract those aforementioned eejits, reinforcing that feeling of the comic’s success and it being here to stay. OiNK would now go from strength to strength as a weekly, finally producing wildly different issues once again. The next one of these will be reviewed next Saturday, 18th February 2023.

iSSUE 49 < > iSSUE 51

OiNK! #49: A SUPER COMiC

4 February 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it announcement on the cover of the latest OiNK from 35 years ago, and a rather big announcement at that. The art is by Marc Riley and despite his strips being loved his style is rather simplistic for a cover image. As a fan it didn’t matter to me, but would it have been too simple for any new readers the now-weekly OiNK was trying to attract? The little box on the right may have had more of the desired effect but I’m not sure if anyone would’ve noticed it on the shelves.

The news of course was that Dave Gibbons (Batman: Black & White, Judge Dredd and of course Watchmen) had drawn a brand new superhero strip for this issue. Released the previous year Watchmen had been a phenomenal success, hence the design of that box, so to have Dave contributing to OiNK was huge. As such I think the news of his inclusion really should’ve been sung from the rooftops, or at least with a banner above the logo which could’ve been seen on the shelves above the other comics. We’ll get to him in a minute but first up as usual in these early weeklies are The Slugs.

Last week their page was taken up with the results of a lyrics writing competition and now we’re still sans strip but what we’ve got instead is just as enjoyable. This was thanks to pig pal Jane Streathfield’s incredible work for the LP Sleeve Design Competition. A very worthy winner I’m sure you’ll agree! The runners-up aren’t to be sniffed at either. These entries, along with the promotion of Watchmen’s artist on the cover show how OiNK’s actual audience was shifting somewhat from its original 8-13-year-olds target audience, something Uncle Pigg would confirm in a later issue.

Page five of each weekly so far has been a quick one-off gag strip by co-editor Tony Husband. They take up the full page yet are only a few panels in length, almost like a giant version of a mini-strip. A Grave Joke is my favourite of the series and the perfect example of Tony’s sense of humour and his easily identifiable art. It may seem simplistic at first glance but Tony’s style was always so full of character and wit, up alongside the likes of Ian Jackson and J.T. Dogg as synonymous with OiNK.

Speaking of Tony, pig pals weren’t the only ones to appreciate his talent as the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain can attest. In 1987 Tony won their prestigious ‘Cartoonist of the Year’ award. He would also go on to win the Pont Award for “depicting the British way of life” according to his website. In the case of the 1987 Awards for Cartooning Excellence Tony wasn’t alone from the pages of OiNK.

We all know how modest Uncle Pigg was, he would never boast about his fine publication. No, not at all. Well, given his penchant for proving to the world he was editing the greatest comic that ever existed I think it’s just right that OiNK decided to blow its own trumpet, giving half a page to the news of the awards. Sitting proudly alongside Tony were Clive Collins (Maggie Pie) and Pete Dredge (Master T), all of whom received this (cow)pat on the back.

So now on to what has to be the main event. Was the news on the cover exciting to me at the time? No, but only because I’d no idea who Dave Gibbons was. I do now of course! At ten-years-old I’d only collected two comics. My first was OiNK and then I added Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends so you can forgive me for not being aware of Watchmen or any of Dave’s mountain of incredible work. Now though, I can see this for what it would’ve meant to the teen and older readers OiNK had been attracting (especially potential new readers) and it’s amazing to me that he contributed to OiNK.

“All credit to Lew’s brilliant writing talent for providing Dave with a killer script.”
Patrick Gallagher, co-editor

From the very first issue of 2000AD to Watchmen, Dave is a giant in the industry and this was certainly the case back in the 80s, so how did this come about? We have Lew Stringer to thank. The two men had been friends for several years by this point and Dave’s son was a regular OiNK reader (Transformers too apparently, he obviously had taste) and after they discussed the possibility Lew approached co-editor Mark Rodgers about the idea, who understandably jumped at the chance.

Lew wrote the script and Dave produced this incredible page below, adding in little flourishes according to Lew such as the kid reading OiNK, the newspaper headline and the dog’s face turning blue in the depths of space. As a child I loved this page and having been a fan of Christopher Reeve’s Superman films at the time I got all the little jokes (my personal favourite being him signalling the bus) even if I didn’t appreciate the significance of its inclusion in the first place.

I asked co-editor Patrick Gallagher what it was like to have Dave working on their comic. “Yes, when Mark told Tony and me Lew’s idea to collaborate on a page with his friend Dave Gibbons, we were thrilled and all gave it the big OiNK thumbs up with our trotters! And all credit to Lew’s brilliant writing talent for providing Dave with a killer script that matched the super-heroic credibility of his drawing talent. Lew did the same thing with the late great Kev O’Neill when they collaborated on Lew’s brilliant Truth About Santa script. So, hats off to the super-talented OiNK icon Lew for bringing in the super-talented Dave Gibbons and Kev O’Neill.”

You can read more about the creation of The Superhero’s Day Off on Lew’s Blimey! It’s Another Blog About Comics. The site is no longer updated but it’s a trove of comics information and you can still follow Lew’s career on his Lew Stringer Comics blog. Alongside Dave, as Patrick mentioned OiNK also had Kevin O’Neill contributing to the first Holiday Special and The OiNK! Book 1988, and later on this year you’ll see the result of Davy Francis bringing in John McCrea for a Lost in Space spoof!

Time for a quick glance at some other highlights from this issue.

**Burp** by *Jeremy Banx*
**Frank Sidebottom** by *Chris Sievey*
**Sherlock Hams** written by *Lew Stringer*, drawn by *Ron Tiner*
**Tom Thug** by *Lew Stringer*

After succumbing to plastic surgery last issue Burp’s leftover gastric juices grow a clone of himself and see off the shiny new him so we can get things back to normal (or as normal as that is), the cliffhanger from Frank Sidebottom‘s page gets wrapped up in one ludicrous panel, Sherlock Hams finally confronts The Beast in the concluding chapter to Hog of the Baskervilles and when Tom Thug thinks ‘gel’ is spelled ‘jel’ even readers didn’t think he’d be that thick!

Jeremy Banx’s Hieronymous Van Hellsong mini-series doesn’t conclude until next week but this issue sees an ending of another kind, despite the fact the character would return in a new mini-series in the not-too-distant future. Previous chapters have relished in some very dark humour. While that continues, it’s more about the ludicrous nature of the battle between our hero and Jimmy ‘The Cleaver’ Smith rather than laugh-out-loud moments, beginning with what seemed impossible in OiNK up to this point.

Let’s ignore the fact Hellsong seems to have regrown his arm in the bottom-left panel and concentrate on the ridiculous fact that this over-the-top maniacal villain is actually just a shop butcher, seemingly representing those on the street corners of every town in the UK, able to chop speeding bullets with his cleaver while fighting a human-sized pig to the death. It also continues Jeremy’s comically exaggerated gore he brought to previous Burp and Butcher Watch strips. How did they get away with this is a children’s comic? Well, Hellsong isn’t a human.

Similarly, Marvel UK’s Transformers didn’t show any humans dying, if they did it happened out of sight or in an explosion for example. The poor Transformers however could be decapitated, ripped limb from limb, cut into hundreds of pieces or even violently tortured or melted alive. But they were robots so in the conventional sense weren’t ‘real people’ to those who would normally complain about such things. Pigs being cut up by a butcher (or a young girl pulling apart a sentient teddy bear) is all so ludicrous we kids just laughed at it all.

Each strip was its own entity, linked by Kev’s easily identifiable art and his great sense of humour

After making his debut appearance back in #38 Kev F Sutherland finally returns to the pages of OiNK with the first of his Meanwhile… strips. In fact he has two in this issue but I just had to choose this one because I found it so funny. Each Meanwhile… strip was its own entity, not linked in any way to the rest. They could vary from being mini-strips to full pages, linked by Kev’s easily identifiable art and his great sense of humour. He’d end up producing a huge variety of scenarios, each guaranteed to raise a hearty chuckle.

These would appear in nine issues altogether, including every monthly, but often there’d be more than one in each edition. As mentioned before, Kev was so prolific in his OiNK work he’d produce nearly a sixth of the final issue himself! The Meanwhile… strips contain some of my most fondly remembered jokes so it’s great to finally see them on the blog and I can’t wait to relive them all over again this coming year.

Before I sign off for this week there’s just time to take a look at this week’s newsagent reservation coupon put together by Patrick Gallagher. As ever he’s trawled the pages of his book of Victorian illustrations (first used back in #23’s How Radio Sound Effects Are Produced), this time for a Great Moment in Art instead of a great moment in history. More specifically, he’s used it to give us an insight into one of his fellow co-editors.

Next week is something of a celebration as OiNK reaches the 50th issue milestone and we get a glorious cover photograph of Frank Sidebottom receiving his honours from the Queen herself. The comic also really settles into the new weekly schedule and 24-page format so there’s plenty to be looking forward to. Make sure you check back here on Saturday 11th February 2023 for the big party!

iSSUE 48 < > iSSUE 50

OiNK! #48: GREEDY FOR LAUGHS

28 January 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Welcome to the latest weekly edition of OiNK and Davy Francis’ only comics cover of his career. Outlined by Lew Stringer, Davy’s creation Greedy Gorb gets his teeth into the issue and that’s what we’re here for too. Continuing the basic yellow cover theme it’s not the most elaborate in OiNK’s history, although next week’s would be even simpler. But as mentioned before this was a necessary evil to get ahead of the new schedule, doubled from a few issues ago.

Greedy may be a mini-strip but that doesn’t stop him from producing one of my biggest belly laughs for quite a while and you’ll see that towards the end of this review. As I promised back in #45’s write-up I’m going to take this issue to look at the more serialised nature of OiNK Weekly, starting off with the very funny Sherlock Hams in The Hog of the Baskervilles. Written by Lew and drawn by Ron Tiner, it’s packed to the rafters with silly characters and even sillier plot twists.

The red herring gag from #46 is still my favourite and here the outraged cook reveals themselves as Meatyarty, based on Sherlock Holmes’ own nemesis Moriarty. As with Ham Dare, Lew’s script plays up to the clichés people associate with these types of story (hamming it up you could say) including Holmes’ love of the violin. His ability to deduce clues where no one else would see any is also parodied here, his supposed super intelligence revealing what are actually very obvious giveaways.

It concludes next week with part five while Jeremy Banx’s Hieronymous Van Hellsong will continue on until the celebratory #50. In this fourth chapter the atmospheric scene-setting is done and it’s time for the butcher hunter to meet his nemesis, Jimmy ‘The Cleaver’ Smith, the Dracula to his Hellsing. The main thrust here is their first battle, with Jimmy spectacularly crashing through a window and swiping at our enigmatic hero with his blade. It’s animatedly realised by Jeremy in some of his best work yet.

There are loads of little details I just love here, such as portraying Jimmy’s residence as a dirty hovel in the first panel showing the OiNK villain doesn’t have a home as such, instead sleeping rough in dirty, abandoned buildings as he makes his way around the country for his pie fillings. The confrontation itself in the middle panels is all exaggerated limb movements and bloodthirsty stares, and is that even saliva spilling out of Jimmy’s mouth as he edges closer to his prey?

Here is a cartoonist whose imagination and sense of humour know no bounds

Thankfully only the tips of Hellsong’s hat and scarf end up on the chopping board and in the final panels that Dracula inspiration is really brought home with the holding up of the cross. But it’s the reveal of what that cross actually is that made me genuinely laugh out loud. This is about as unique a children’s comic strip as you could ever possibly get and shows how original OiNK still is nearly 50 issues in. Co-editor Tony Husband once told me Jeremy was basically given free rein to do as he pleased. Here is a cartoonist whose imagination and sense of humour know no bounds.

Moving on, from early issues where he’d often be the butt of jokes to ones where he’d get the upper hand and prove that beauty is only skin deep, Tony’s Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins had already been on quite the journey when his strip was changed to a serialised comedy drama of sorts, chronicling Horace’s new football career, like an exaggerated version of the already far-fetched newspaper football strips of the day. His talent spotted by Melchester United, his headmaster refused to let him attend practice but the readers convinced him otherwise in #43. A jealous member of his team has now been laying traps for him and last issue a mysterious figure had broken into a military facility and stolen a nuclear missile! Well that escalated quickly.

There was still plenty of time for humour (and sometimes the strip would revert to a one-off for a good gag or two). I love how William’s mum just casually mentions the weapon in passing, the ‘Ground to Horace missile’ and the fact it’s easily flipped up to avert all of the disaster in a scene which could be right out of a Naked Gun-style spoof. Well, I say it’s been averted but this issue’s cliffhanger has different ideas. From memory the football story would continue for quite a while, dipping in and out until the happy ending in the final issue, the long serialisation making the final strip all the better for it.

Frank Sidebottom wasn’t averse to an ongoing story either, although it was rather more ad-hoc. Case in point, back in #46 he brought us 100 Fantastic Show-biz (sic) Moments No.2. But that second list of moments would then be elongated and spread over several issues, so last week we had (and I quote) “Frank Sidebottom’s Part Two ‘Fantastic Showbiz Moments’ Part 2”, but that wasn’t enough for Frank. He decided a previous plot point needed further explanation, so now we have the third part of the two-part story to the second part of his showbiz moments. Phew!

And of course he can’t resist building on this serialisation joke by starting another on the very same page, this time announcing the amount of parts won’t tally properly before he even begins. The diversity of his pages play out brilliantly in these issues; the first was a photo montage of him with his Smokebusters, the second a photo strip, here we’ve a lovely hand-crafted written page and as it goes on it’d revert to a comic strip again. There was never a predictable moment within his pages.

That newspaper article is hilarious too.

Elsewhere the creativity of the readers knew no bounds as evidenced with these winning song lyrics by Lyn McNicol for the comic’s resident punk band The Slugs, fellow OiNK cartoonist Marc Riley made an unscheduled (and I’d assume surprising even to Marc) cameo in Lew Stringer’s Pete and his Pimple, and our already perfectly smelly alien from outer space, Burp, was convinced to undergo some rather extreme plastic surgery!

**The Slugs** by *Tony Husband* and *Lezz*
**Pete and his Pimple** by *Lew Stringer*
**Burp** by *Jeremy Banx*

The mini-strips are still collected together in one section of the comic. This will change soon and for now it’s actually quite fun to get a handful of quick gags in succession. However one in particular stands out, so much so that the image in the final panel has stayed rent free in my mind all of these years later, resurfacing every time I see the instrument in question.

This isn’t just the best mini-strip, it’s the biggest laugh of the whole issue and quite possibly the very best Greedy Gorb strip of his 33 in total, by the incredibly funny and unique Davy Francis. Now and again Davy’s characters would be written by other OiNK writers but here it’s all him, complete with the backgrounds that magically change from one panel to the next so he can squeeze in as many extra sight gags as possible. A classic.

As you know I’m showing the newsagent reservation coupons from each of these weekly issues because they’re a series of jokes in their own right, and to accompany them this time is a full-page strip written by co-editor Mark Rodgers and drawn in glorious full colour by Eric ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson. It’s a very unsubtle dig at the likes of W.H. Smith who had been placing OiNK on the top shelves out of the reach of children after a few parents complained (although you can guarantee their children shared the same sense of humour as the comic).

“OiNK is such a rude, outrageous comic, we like to make it difficult for you to get!”
GBH Newsagent (Mark Rodgers)

A few people trying to ruin everyone else’s fun because they personally don’t like something? Some things never change. There’s no denying this move had to have hurt OiNK’s sales and IPC Magazines for their part did try their best to negotiate with the chain. It also couldn’t have helped they were one of the main distributors though. Thankfully they weren’t to be found here in Northern Ireland at the time (the one store that did open in Belfast many years later didn’t last long before going out of business), although DUP leader Ian Paisley did try to get the comic banned at one stage but that fell on deaf ears.

Uncle Pigg had already informed his readers to ask for OiNK if they didn’t see it on the shelves, explaining how some folks who owned the shops thought OiNK was too clever for us kiddies. In fact, this was how he introduced the reservation coupon way back in the first issue I ever bought. It was a cheeky little joke at the expense of such shops while making the point they wouldn’t stop OiNK from being published. In this latest issue that same message came with a bit more bite to it.

It makes a great point; if OiNK was so bad why not just refuse to stock it? The answer of course is that they were hypocrites, although some WHSmith stores did refuse to have The OiNK Book 1988 on the shelves when it was released. I do love how Wilkie’s art looks on the matt paper. His style always had texture to it but now on this paper stock this is heightened, creating a gorgeous finished strip that feels like this is the original artwork, drawn directly on to this exact piece of paper by Eric. I love it.

Fittingly, we finish off this review with the latest newsagent coupon put together by co-editor Patrick Gallagher. While the coupon itself is very polite for addressing the shop, the accompanying joke is anything but. It also contains the best description of a dentist I’ve ever come across in my life.

“Gob mechanic”! Ahem, anyway, that’s us at the end of another review. We’re really getting through them now aren’t we? Enjoy it while you can pig pals, as the comic will change to a different schedule again later in the year. Until then though, we still have another 14 weekly doses of pigs, plops and puns to come, continuing with #49 in just seven days on Saturday 4th February 2023. I’m sure I’ll see you then.

iSSUE 47 < > iSSUE 49

OiNK! #47: iT’S WHAT’S ON THE iNSIDE THAT COUNTS

21 January 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

So I told you this issue’s cover was the ugliest of the whole run. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it! What we have below is Tony Husband’s Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins and another yellow background cover. After the first two great weekly covers by Ian Jackson and Lew Stringer the next three (of which this is the first) are rather basic, possibly a symptom of the increased schedule.

They all feature fan favourite characters which is always a good thing for already established pig pals but I’m not sure how well they’d do at bringing in new readers. Fortunately the covers return to more complex pieces of funny art in a few weeks and the artists (with the team no longer rushing to get them finished) will once again have time to turn out covers the likes of which we’ve been used to since OiNK began.

At the time of OiNK there was a certain teatime telly show which captivated everyone who watched it, despite it being a basic question and answer quiz. At ten-years-of-age I can’t remember knowing many of the answers the university students were asked but that didn’t matter, Bob Holness and that electronic Blockbusters game board made it, the whole family sitting together for half an hour. It appears Charlie Brooker was also a bit of a fan as he wrote a script for Lew Stringer’s Pete and his Pimple strip, the only time someone other than Lew wrote for the character.

I particularly like the little signs held up to excuse the caricature of Bob and the “convenient” way of not having to draw him at the end of the story. The only thing missing is that silly dance everyone did in their seats at the end of the Friday episodes. Uncle Pigg pops up to remind readers to send in their suggestions. There’d be shedloads of them and they’ll start to be used very soon and (apart from the occasional issue) all the way through to the end of OiNK.

“Naughty terrorists had taken some important top nobs hostage…”
Storm Farce, Mark Rodgers

In the 80s action figures became more complex as rival companies battled against each other and videogames for kids’ attention. They’d boast about everything from the level of articulation to the fact they had an elastic band inside to make them ‘punch’ when twisted. One of the most popular was G.I. Joe (or Action Force as it was called here until the end of the 80s) and I was a big fan of the comics as they ran as backups in my Transformers comics. When Hasbro took over the Action Force name in the UK in the early 80s and decided to use it to rebrand their G.I. Joe line IPC Magazines also lost the licence to Marvel UK.

IPC needed a replacement and Storm Force was co-created by legendary comics editor Barrie Tomlinson with Richard Burton (not that one) for the pages of Battle. In fact, you can check out early design sketches in the review of Barrie’s book. Barrie often said they’d have made a good toy range themselves and they were definitely designed to resemble such a line with a never-ending array of characters and their unique weaponry and add-ons. As such, they were perfect for a Mark Rodgers spoof in the sister comic.

As kids we’d obviously never think of the impracticalities of such attachments and that’s what made this so hilarious at the time, it was pointing out something ludicrous that was right in front of our young eyes. If you think about observational comedians who point out normal things to us that are actually stupid, it felt like that when I read this for the review. Eric ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson‘s art is always gorgeous too, especially when he gets the chance to have a full-colour page.

The story is on the same page as the previous Disney parodies and has the same banner title at the top. Again, I think this may have been for new readers so they wouldn’t be expecting more of the same spoof each week. Seasoned pig pals didn’t need such explanations. It’s a brilliant parody and one I’m sure Barrie would approve of.

As if being eaten alive wasn’t bad enough…

A quick look at some highlights from other pages in the issue now, starting with The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile (Aged 8 5/8 yearƨ) and he’s beginning to teach his new baby sister the important things in life, like crawling without being clumsy. The lengths he goes to are classic Hadrian and he gets up to the usual mischief, but it also shows that as far as his baby sister goes his heart is in the right place, which is sweet. Haldane’s Incredible Amazing Bizarre World is particularly funny for this fan of everything Ancient Egyptian and Frank Sidebottom meets Edwina Currie as she tagged along with the Smokebusters.

**Hadrian Vile** written by *Mark Rodgers*, drawn by *Ian Jackson*
David **Haldane‘s Incredible Amazing Bizarre World**
**Frank Sidebottom** by *Chris Sievey*

If you’d like to know more about the Smokebusters you can check out the previous issue for more on Frank’s trip and a special free edition of OiNK given away to schools in parts of England was also reviewed just a few days ago on the blog. That’s right, there was an extra issue of OiNK you may not have seen before. I didn’t know about it at the time either and only got my trotters on it for the review. So go check that out.

I’m not a fussy eater (stay with me here). I eat almost anything and try almost anything too. Except one thing. That one thing is oysters, I just can’t fathom how it can be pleasant swallowing a live slimy, salty little bit of sludge (you can tell I’ve never tried them) down my throat. I mean, the poor thing is still alive! Burp is a fan though and in this week’s strip we get to follow that aforementioned poor little oyster down his gullet. But as if being eaten alive wasn’t bad enough…

I think the phrase is, “Well that escalated quickly”. I find the expression on the oyster in the large panel on the left just hilarious, as is the stomach’s horrible realisation in the next. It seems stomach and myself share a similar view on the matter. My favourite Burp strips always involve his organs or gratuitous, over-the-top cartoon violence and this strip manages to have both. Although, I do wonder where his pet specimen from Uranus has got to, we haven’t seen them in months.

Something I’ve noticed in recent issues is how Marc Riley’s strips such as Harry the Head and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth are no longer being written by him. He may still be drawing them but a range of different talent has been scripting his creations including Doctor Mooney He’s Completely Looney, written here by Mike Taylor, one of OiNK’s contributing artists who has drawn everything from a GBH Christmas Catalogue to Ye Ballad of Snatcher Sam and the advert for the OiNK sweatshirt.

An endless stream of visual “Doctor, Doctor” jokes, the gags in this strip remained fresh throughout and perhaps this was thanks to the now ever-changing scripting roster. Apart from the occasional absence the good doctor would be a regular in OiNK all the way to the end and I can’t remember if Marc would ever write any more. His Harry the Head strip, once a full-page main character would remain a mini-strip from now on so perhaps Marc’s music and DJ work was taking up more of his time.

The back page calendar of this issue caused some controversy at the time, although not on the scale of Janice and John from #7 which resulted in a complaint to the Press Council. I can’t even remember where I read that this next page caused a bit of backlash from certain quarters, it could be from a press clipping in a later issue so I’ll look out for it. But what could Patrick Gallagher’s piggy-themed sports calendar do to upset people? I really don’t know, it’s only pigs playing football with a butcher’s head after all.

As I’ve mentioned before I never cut up my OiNKs. The Tom Thug Christmas Angel was finally made when I was in my 30s and the Frank Sidebottom zoetrope just last year for the blog, so I definitely never cut out an entire page to put these calendars up on the wall. I never even cut out the coupon to give to the newsagent, I just asked my shop to reserve it for me. However, those coupons did give co-editor Patrick Gallagher a chance to give some drawings from an old book of Victorian illustrations (previously ransacked for #23) a new lease of life and they became a series of cartoons in their own right.

That’s us for another issue and so far I’m enjoying reading OiNK and writing about it every single week, even if the comic hasn’t quite settled into its new format yet. This’ll come over the next few weeks and I’m really looking forward to that. So should you. In the meantime remember to come back next Saturday 28th January 2023 for #48 of the world’s funniest comic.

SMOKEBUSTER SPECiAL < > iSSUE 48

OiNK! SMOKEBUSTER SPECiAL!: RARE FUN

18 January 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Not many pig pals will have seen the OiNK Smokebuster Special before and until last year neither had I, apart from the occasional photo of the cover as part of a heavily overpriced eBay auction. Then last year someone finally listed it at a sensible amount and I was able to snap it up. It’s been sitting in my OiNK collection between #46 and #47 ever since and now (after 35 years) I’ve been able to read it at last. I can’t tell you how excited I’ve been at the thought of reading a brand new OiNK all these years later! Was it worth the wait?

A little background first. Co-editors Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers teamed up with Project Smoke Free to produce this special 16-page edition to give away to school kids in the north western region of England. I have to say it’s good to have the logo on glossy paper again and inside we get mostly all new strips which don’t hold back in their messaging. In fact, I’m quite surprised at just how hard-hitting some of the humour actually is, such as the very first strip called A Tale of Two Sisters by Tony.

In fact, all three of OiNK’s editors (and Chris Sievey aka Frank Sidebottom) smoked at the time but they still wanted to try stopping the children who looked up to their characters from making the mistake of starting themselves. One cartoonist who never started the habit and was more than happy to contribute was Lew Stringer and Tom Thug seemed the perfect fit. Tom was someone who liked to present himself a certain way and would be stupid enough to think being seen smoking cigarettes would help with his image.

“I remember being commissioned to do an anti-smoking story for Tom Thug,” Lew told me. “I’ve never been a smoker and hate the damage it does to people so I didn’t hold back. I enjoyed doing my page and hopefully the comic had the desired effect on kids. Comics shy away from such things now but anti-smoking strips were commonplace in the comics I grew up with.” This strip is also notable for featuring a girl who actually fancies Tom… for a whole three panels.

Lew also told me the word “moron” was changed from the original “plonker” by the editors for reasons he’s unsure of. In Lew’s own blog post about such strips from the 60s he mentions one which featured a character telling the reader what they could afford to buy if they weren’t paying for cigarettes. That’s exactly what Frank does with his page and between him and Tom they cover the lighter end of the spectrum of content. More of it deals with the ultimate consequence of smoking. In fact about half of the comic drills home the fact that smoking leads to death. Like I said it doesn’t hold back.

Jeremy Banx certainly doesn’t either with his double-page Burp strip, particularly on the first. Starting off with a silly little panel of Burp hoovering the lawn it soon gets very serious indeed. Yes, he’s talking to his lungs who are having a crafty smoke behind the outside loo but the actual words Jeremy puts into Burp’s mouth are very serious indeed. They’re even accompanied by factual captions giving more context, something you don’t expect in a children’s comic.

Then again, this was an OiNK created to be supplied to schools so ideally it needed to educate the kids on the dangers of smoking alongside the laughs, and Jeremy really went to town on teaching the pig pals (and potential pig pals) about the background to the nasty habit. Of course, the second half sees it descend into more typical chaos and we get yet another weapon creation of Burp’s (remember the tractor beam?), this one producing a somewhat accurate result, at least until the men set themselves on fire.

Finishing off with the internal struggle (literally in his case) that comes with being an alien with sentient organs this is the main highlight of this special edition for me. Not that it’s lacking in others of course. Mike Peek brings his unique art style to a quiz overseen by an equally unique version of Uncle Pigg that I just love, and a smoking taxi driver gets a shock when he asks his passenger why they think smoking is unhealthy in Dead Fred written by Tony Husband and drawn by Eric ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson.

Even though this issue never made it into the hands of the larger OiNK audience there’s still a Grunts page with reader contributions and there are a couple of reprinted strips from the regular comic which fit in perfectly. The first is Plopeye the Sailor from #9 in which he ends up wheezing and exhausted trying to look after a baby because of the pipe he’s forever smoking. The second is a Pigg Tale from #15 called Up In Smoke, written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Dave Follows.

It begins with young Pete learning what a conscience is, imagining it as a little elf character who lives inside his head telling him what the right things to do in life are, and which things are wrong that he should never do. As he grows up the elf becomes more to him though, developing into an imaginary friend who’d continue to represent his inner thought processes, whether he liked it or not. The stage is now set and we see Peter as a teenager and under a bit of peer pressure.

Yep, like all good lengthy OiNK one-offs it was a set up for perfectly atrocious pun. I have to say when I was a teenager I didn’t see any of this sort of peer pressure. None of my closest friends smoked and I must’ve lived in some form of personal bubble because only when meeting up years later with many of those friends did I find out it was more common than I’d thought. Even though this was a reprint it could just as easily have been created for this schools special.

Towards the back of the comic is a madvertisement for a spoof cigarette brand with a skeleton as their mascot and in Addict!! a young woman tells us all the reasons why she smokes, showing us how contradictory her reasons are; smoking to relax but also when she’s stressed, when she was happy and yet when she became ill she smoked more because she was worried. She ends up at the pearly gates begging St. Peter for a fag. Just before this is a quick Health Warning drawn by Les Barton (Lezz).

There’s a little copyright notice on page two which states this issue of OiNK was published by Project Smoke Free at the North Western Regional Health Authority. In fact it was printed by the OiNK editors themselves and thousands were handed out to schools free of charge. Patrick told me it was such a success that the school boards wanted it to go national and requested up to one million copies for distribution! There was no way the OiNK guys could handle that amount so they approached OiNK’s publisher, Fleetway.

The press were on hand that day and even Junior Health Minister Edwina Currie showed up

Fleetway told them to leave it with them and then nothing happened. The reasons are unclear. But what a wasted opportunity! Imagine the publicity a million free copies throughout schools in England would’ve brought to the regular comic. Imagine the sales spike. But nope, the success of the Smokebuster Special ended there. If it had gone nationwide imagine the shock of those in the press and those pressure groups who criticised OiNK for being a bad influence on children.

A funny story is linked to this issue. In #46 of OiNK we saw Frank Sidebottom with a bunch of pig pals promoting their anti-smoking message. The press were on hand that day and even Junior Health Minister Edwina Currie showed up, as shown in #47. However, once the kids were on their trains home the OiNK team all lit up! The press was still there to catch the moment too. I don’t think Uncle Pigg would’ve been too happy with that funny moment, do you?

This Ian Jackson image makes up the back cover and rounds things off nicely with a nice, subtle message from our real editor. It’s been great to finally get my hands on this 35 years after the fact and to have some new OiNK material to read. I didn’t expect that in 2023! Check out #46 and #47 for more on this and if you’d like to see another special free issue of the comic there’s also the Crash magazine edition from 1987 to check out.

iSSUE 46 < > iSSUE 47

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