The name Tom Paterson is synonymous with British humour comics, his madcap style appearing in an eclectic array of titles such as Beano, Shiver and Shake, Buster and many more. The most famous characters he has drawn include the fondly remembered Sweeney Toddler, Calamity James, Bananaman and Buster himself. There’s one other that will most likely have been forgotten by many though, namely The Wet Blanket.
By the time I started collecting OiNK I’d missed this strip but I’d already been introduced to Tom’s work. While I’d found my brother’s Beano wasn’t really to my taste at the time (I was the perfect target audience for OiNK), there was one strip which most definitely was. I remember pouring over all of the funny background details in Calamity James, the incidental randomness in the visual gags often being funnier than the story itself. This was the genius of Tom’s style and now here’s The Tom Paterson Collection, a hardback collection full of his work available from Rebellion and their Treasury of British Comics range.
This is just one of several chapter title pages showing which comics the following strips were pulled from and as you can see our favourite comic is represented here too. In fact, upon its release this book was the first time OiNK reprints had been made available for purchase ever since its final special in 1990. Included here are two double-page spreads from early issues, Testing Time and The Wet Blanket himself, who even makes an appearance on that fantastic cover drawn by Tom.
A kind of super villain, Wet Blanket was a “miserable so-and-so” whose sole job was to ruin everyone else’s fun. He would’ve made for a brilliant regular character but alas that wasn’t to be and this was his sole appearance. This makes it all the more surprising that he’d appear on the front cover but I think he deserves a place there, the strip is that good! Clearly Tom still has a soft spot for him after all these years.
OiNK co-creator Patrick Gallagher told me they would’ve loved to have had Tom on board as a regular but his work load was just too large to accommodate them. With spreads such as Testing Time above, taken from #1 of OiNK it’s such a shame he couldn’t have let his imagination run wild on a regular basis for Uncle Pigg. So the question is, with only four pages from OiNK in here, will this 200-page book appeal to pig pals? The answer is a resounding yes!
On one of the opening pages is the list of writers including Tom, Mark Bennington whose Buster strips I’ve covered before on the blog and most excitedly regular OiNK contributor Graham Exton and OiNK co-creator/co-editor Mark Rodgers. With these names you know you’re in for a treat. The comics featured alongside OiNK are Buster, School Fun, Nipper, Jackpot, Shiver & Shake, Whizzer and Chips, Whoopee, Wow! and Cor!, as well as some of Tom’s own personal strips and unpublished works.
Also included are little pieces by professional fans of Tom’s including Lew Stringer and Graham and friend of the blog Jamie Smart (Bunny Vs Monkey, Looshkin, Wubble) who has always said OiNK was a big inspiration to him, as was Tom.
Picking out highlights for this review was never going to be easy!
A strip riffing on James Bond and featuring a comical shark was always going to be put to the top of the list for me, as was this Captain Crucial strip, a character I’d never heard of before. That “The Craziest Characters Are Always in Buster Comic” banner along the top is proving true here and it’s used several times for different strips, namely Lucy Lastic, Sportsfright, Thingummy-blob, Coronation Stream, Monty’s Mutant Mutt, Teenage Mutant Turnips and more.
My favourite Buster strips in this book are dated around 1989 onwards and they’re enough to make me regret not placing a regular order when OiNK merged into the comic. If only I’d stuck with it after that first and only issue I bought back in 1988 I’d have been treated to a bloody funny comic if these strips by Tom are anything to go by. Oh well, that just makes this book all the better as I’m getting a snapshot of the very best from that comic in one volume.
Just one look at the contents page will back that up. As well as those already mentioned there’s Crowjack, Felix the Pussycat, Grimly Fiendish, School Belle, Watford Gapp who is another new one to me as well as being a brilliantly funny rapping strip, and many more including a favourite of mine from the days of the Big Comic Books, Strange Hill. I found the Ghost Train here particularly funny and there’s that old staple which I think Tom and Lew drew better than anyone: the slap-up feed! Classic.
It wouldn’t be a Tom Paterson book without a certain little baby boy causing all manner of hell for his poor parents, so I’m very happy to say there’s a sizeable chunk of Sweeny Toddler here. Including content from both Whoopee and Whizzer & Chips, a total of 30 pages are given over to the miniature terror and every single one of them is a classic. Of course, if you know me you’ll know I’m a sucker for a Christmas comic so naturally I was overjoyed to see this full-page panel when I turned a page.
I also laughed out loud (genuinely) when I saw a certain trademark of Tom’s used as a substitute for a Christmas stocking. In fact, I wonder just how many smelly socks there are in this book? These 30 pages of Sweeny Toddler are worth the price of admission alone. Reading them now I’m beginning to think the same could’ve been said of those other 80s comics too. Even though OiNK was the only one that seemed to speak to my sense of humour, these strips by Tom were all hidden gems to me, and I’d happily have spent more of my pocket money on some of those comics at the time if I’d known just how good his contributions were.
Of course Rebellion would include this classic spoof Judge Dredd cover and strip and that wasn’t the only time Sweeny took on a different persona for a good ol’ parody. However, changing the entire cover Whoopee logo included for that 2000AD riff was inspired! I said it was difficult to pick highlights but that’s definitely one of them and there are 200 pages of that sort of thing in total. UPDATE: Check out the comment OiNK writer Graham Exton left on this post for a little more info on this piece of comics history!
The book is £14.99 and worth every single penny. In fact, it feels like a bargain to me at that price. There’s also an exclusive cover based on that Whoppee one when purchased through the Treasury of British Comics online shop. Not since The OiNK! Book 1988 have I enjoyed, and laughed as hard with, a humour comics book this much and since that OiNK tome remains my very favourite to this day, I hope that shows how much high regard I have for The Tom Paterson Collection.
Available pretty much everywhere, this would make a fantastic Christmas present for any humour comics fan, pig pals included.
To see one more mini-strip by Tom from that aforementioned OiNK! Book 1988 you can check out its review.
The second of our monthly OiNKs brings a surprise cover star in the shape of Police Vet, a character who had appeared before in The OiNK! Book 1988 in a funny take on 70s police dramas, with a pre-Ace Ventura slant of an officer who only investigates missing pets etc. While it’s easy for us to look back on the 80s and have a well meaning giggle, here we have the 80s and its excesses taking the hand out of the decade that preceded them. So it’s a retro look at a different retro time and I think it’s great fun.
On the inside cover is the most blatant example of how OiNK had been rebooted for an older teen audience. Mark Rodgers’ script for the latest Rotten Rhymes completely baffled me at the time. I was only ten-years-old and firmly inside the original target bracket for the comic. Reading this now, as funny as it is it would suit another publication more, inside OiNK it just feels out of place. I know that’s the way the comic was heading but it’s jarring after 63 issues of hilarious children’s comics. They had been suitable for all but now this was aimed way over the heads of the loyal fans who’d been pig pals since the start, for the first time excluding a part of the audience.
It reads like a cross between Austin Powers and Ace Ventura which is quite the feat when neither existed yet, with a liberal sprinkling of Starsky and Hutch thrown in for good measure
The rest off the issue is more like the OiNK we knew and loved. The main event is the six-page Police Vet story written by Mark and drawn by cover artist Eric ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson. Beginning with its own version of a Shaft-like theme tune we soon shift to some pretty awful (read: funny) puns as our hero gets his assignment. This reads like a complete strip and not a serial originally meant for several weeklies pasted together. The monthlies will have a mixture of these kinds of larger strips (edited serials and tailor-made). This could also have been made for a future special or annual and brought forward for the new format. As such it changes the pacing of this particular story and is all the better for it.
It reads like a cross between Austin Powers and the aforementioned Jim Carrey movies which is quite the feat when neither existed yet, with a liberal sprinkling of Starsky and Hutch thrown in for good measure, particularly in Police Vet’s nonchalance of being in an exciting car chase. The best bit for me is how he deduces Foxy isn’t a real woman because she was too much of a bad stereotype, only for the culprit to be the most stereotypical French person imaginable. Brilliance.
We even have an example of the 70s laughing at the fashion of the 80s! It’s a shame we never got to see the character return, as after this he’d hang up his platforms for good. Maybe it was for the best before the joke wore thin. To perk me up from knowing that was the end of Police Vet is Misplaced in Space on the very next page with a very surprising special guest artist, following the likes of Dave Gibbons in #49 and Kevin O’Neill in the firstspecial and book. Pencilling Davy Francis’ script here is none other than John McCrea (Hitman, The Boys: Herogasm, 2000AD).
Another local (to me) talent like Davy and OiNK’s Ian Knox, John was born in Belfast and good pals with Davy, who approached him about contributing to the comic. Renowned for his 2000AD strips in particular his body of work is quite staggering and in 1988 he added a page of OiNK to that list. Written and then inked by Davy, John brings a unique look to the strip. Especially unique because he didn’t normally do humour comics work. What a treat to see these two completely different talents combine their styles inside my favourite comic. OiNK really was one of a kind.
I have a vague recollection of news bulletins in the 80s being filled with something every night that seemed to unite mainland Britain in anger, and which Spitting Image took great delight in poking fun at. It didn’t affect the populace of Northern Ireland but that didn’t stop me from knowing just enough to enjoy this next piece written by Howard Osborn. I am of course talking about the Poll Tax. OiNK taking its role as a children’s comic very seriously for a moment here to educate us on the latest piece of legislation.
As I mentioned in the preview for this issue there’s a page in here that would end up being read out in the House of Commons. No piggy prizes for guessing correctly this was it. OiNK would actually tell its readers about this in a future issue so we’ll check back in on what happened when we get there. I wonder what Howard thought of that! It feels very current too, especially the digs it takes with points five, six, seven and the final sentence. Unfortunately some things just don’t change, eh?
A couple of quick Lew Stringer highlights next. A quite monumental moment was approaching for Tom Thug, something that had never happened before in children’s funny comics. Reminding me somewhat of how The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile saw his mum go through an actual pregnancy before his new baby sister appeared in the story, Tom would actually leave school and go out into the adult world. But he still has to finish his final year of course. Then in Pete and his Pimple, with the Zitbusters from #41 back a lucky reader got to see themselves as the person who saves the day! Sort of. Well, basically how Lew imagined they might look anyway.
Tom Thug and Pete and his Pimple by Lew Stringer
This issue leans more towards the text-heavy pages than normal and there are more examples of the partnership that seems to have blossomed between young writer Charlie Brooker and the unique art of Steve Gibson on these pages, specifically Doctor Jonathan Swiller’s Home Health Check-Up. The character is a parody of Dr Jonathan Miller, a physician who also happened to be a director, author and actor, and was well known in the 1980s.
The following self-diagnosis test asks the readers to answer honestly so they can get a free and easy assessment of their overall health. With only eight questions in total, to get the thorough diagnosis we’re expecting surely these questions will really probe deep, right? Not quite, no. Starting with the insanely easy and making its way to the ludicrous in no time at all, this is genuinely very funny and, even though I never knew the person this was based on, I remember finding it just as funny as a child. Sometimes the silliest ideas just work.
Charlie’s work as both cartoonist and writer in OiNK is a highlight of the whole run for me. He contributed a lot for still being at school, appearing on no less than five pages out of the 42 pages of new content here (#6’s Watery Down and two of the OiNK Superstar Posters are reprinted). Speaking previously with co-editors Patrick Gallagher and Tony Husband on separate occasions both praised Charlie’s work, remembering how the amount of his contributions kept rising, so impressed were they with what he was producing.
Before I show you a handful of the issue’s great mini-strips we’re off to the sunny climes of the Bahamas once more after we visited there in #61 for the GBH Desert Island Survival Kit. Clearly co-editor Mark Rodgers, his partner Helen Jones and writer Graham Exton felt the gorgeous setting and opportunities it provided were ripe for more than one OiNK moment. This issue we find ourselves on a golden beach (albeit in black and white) as bored Robina finally finds what’s been missing in her life in Castaway, a “Heart-Wrenching Photo-Story”.
I think this is all the funnier knowing now that’s real-life partners Helen and Mark. Playing on the expectations of those typical love photo-stories found in women’s weekly magazines (which have been a target since the very beginning of OiNK) I love how Helen’s acting is deemed to need a large arrow telling the reader what she’s portraying, plus her goofy look in the panel below. This must’ve been so much fun to produce.
The characters of When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth sign off with one of their best entries
While the issue has its fair share of text-heavy pages and the like it’s also got a particularly good selection of mini-strips sprinkled throughout. Below are the best of the crop. A recent addition to the regular OiNK team that’s becoming just as prolific as Charlie is Kev F Sutherland whose Rotten Rhymes version of Polly Put the Kettle On is classic OiNK. Marc Riley’s Harry the Head is still in mini-strip form from the weeklies and appears to be staying that way with this acknowledgement of the new look.
Davy Francis’ Doctor Mad-Starkraving (a spin-off from Davy’s Greedy Gorb) tells a great gag that in hindsight is actually the most obvious time travel joke! It’s just that no one had thought it up yet. An instant classic gag from Davy then. Finally, Marc’s zany characters in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth make their final appearance in a new strip (they’d return next issue but as a reprint before disappearing) and they sign off with one of their best entries.
There’s one more page I’ll show in a special post next week. It’s a competition to win a couple of books of particular interest to pig pals and I’ve been able to procure them in time to have a closer look at, so watch out for that post.
While OiNK would take another issue or two to truly settle into its new guise this issue has still been a belter. As more and more gets created with the new look in mind we’d see bigger and better strips from all of our favourites and some truly memorable moments that are among the very best OiNK produced. The Next Issue promo in this issue elicited real excitement too when it signalled the return of The Street-Hogs at last in ‘Malice in Underland!’ You’ll see that promo in the preview post on Thursday 13th July 2023, swiftly followed by the review of #65 itself on Sunday 16th.
Another Burp cover only two issues after his previous one? Indeed, and who’s complaining? Not I. This one relates to a special two-page story inside but it’s also notable for another reason. This is both Burp’s and cartoonist Jeremy Banx’s final OiNK cover. Okay, so there are only seven issues left but because it goes monthly we’ve still got OiNKs all the way to October and Jeremy makes his final regular strip contribution next week! So let’s enjoy this one while we can.
If it had stayed as that 32-page fortnightly children’s comic I think it could’ve lasted longer
At the bottom you can see OiNK is officially now a teen comic and I don’t know how I feel about that. As a kid I remember the monthlies felt different, more subversive (not that I knew that word back then) and as an adult I feel a little sad about the fact it was no longer being aimed at those kids still inside the original target range in 1988 (as I was). Maybe a bit of that original OiNK uniqueness and innocence had been lost because of this decision. We’ll see as the remaining issues play out.
Of course, the change in the general age of the audience happened naturally. The team aimed their comic at the eight-to-thirteen-year-old children who weren’t satisfied with other humour comics and it just happened to attract a wider range of people. But personally I think it should’ve stayed as it was, it was already being enjoyed by older readers anyway, it didn’t need to make changes to try to appeal to them. If it had stayed as that 32-page fortnightly children’s comic I think it could’ve lasted longer. Let’s enjoy what we have though, beginning with a Pete and his Pimple strip I promised to include.
A couple of issues ago I mentioned a particularly icky plop-based pimple solution proposed by a reader. As a child they were always funny little things to have around the comic, however as an adult I can’t help but focus on what they actually are(!), especially when they’re sweating all over Pete’s pimple. I remember this one the most for the plops’ social club and how all of the little piles of poo on our streets (no one lifted them back then) were just friends hanging out. Strangely, the plops seemed to be one aspect of OiNK the comic’s overactive critics never mentioned.
Anyway, from one memorable strip to a very memorable Madvertisement from GBH and possibly Simon Thorp’s best spoof movie poster, although it’s a close call between this and his Butcher Busters from #40. Back in 1988 only the first ’18’-certificate RoboCop movie had been released in the franchise so the young readers technically couldn’t have seen it (we had) but that didn’t stop Simon from creating RoboChop. Not only is it a brilliant depiction but I’ve never seen so many imaginative piggy puns on one page.
Years back a pig pal showed everyone on the OiNK Comic Facebook group a photo of this framed and up on the wall in their home. Apparently their dad had known it was their favourite and tracked down a copy of the issue in order to surprise them with it framed as a gift. Unfortunately it appears that person has left the social media platform because the image is no longer there. But the story shows how highly regarded Simon’s work for OiNK was, and still is.
OiNK’s multinational corporation also takes over the middle pages with The GBH Desert Island Survival Kit and they’ve gone on location to the Bahamas to shoot it, so Uncle Pigg must be doing very well indeed. In reality writer Graham Exton lived there (still does), sending scripts by fax I would assume and co-editor Mark Rodgers and his partner Helen Jones were out visiting him when they decided Helen would take a bunch of silly photographs. The end result is hilarious.
Watch where you’re going on that GBH Emergency Portable Bulldozer, Mark! That poor dog! Over on the other page you’ll see Ron “Machete” McHetty. A few years back I asked Graham who that was because I didn’t yet know what he looked like and wanted to be sure. He told me they were very lucky to have got the dashingly handsome good looks of Michael Fassbender to pose for that photo. I think it’s safe to say we now know what the “dashingly handsome” Graham Exton looks like.
Imagine having this amount of fun in the Bahamas as your job!
Imagine having this amount of fun as your job. Actually, I’ll reword that. Imagine having this amount of fun in the Bahamas as your job! This translates into a Madvertisement that’s a lot of fun to read, my favourite bits being the non-camouflage gear and the ‘10% discount’ banner which reminds me of many offers we can come across online these days. Always read the small print. This is by far my favourite part of this issue but there are a lot of other highlights backing it up.
Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins’ spoof football drama ends on a romantic cliffhanger and Rotten Rhymes’ take on Goosey Goose Gander has the character of the title meeting a different kind of old man than the original, with a somewhat different ending to boot. There’s only one Sekret Diary of Hadrian Vile strip in the monthlies (probably made for the weeklies but left out due to space) then one more in The OiNK! Book 1989 which would’ve been finished months before publication. As such, this issue’s final instalment of Vidiots – or Hadrian Vile’s Interleckshual guide to Tellyvision was actually the last page of Hadrian’s to be created.
Horace Watkins by Tony Husband Rotten Rhymes by Kev F Sutherland Hadrian Vile drawn by Ian Jackson
As you can see he can’t even face looking at us for fear of shedding a tear.
With next week’s OiNK being Jeremy Banx’s last regular issue I will of course be showing you the Burp strip so I hadn’t intended to do so this week. That is, until I read it. It was so good there was no way I could leave it out. As you can gather from the cover Burp travels back to the 1950s à la Marty McFly because in his research into pleasing us humans he’s discovered many in the 80s would like to go back to that time. There’s a strong hint about what’s to come when he names his time travelling device ‘The Fools’-Paradise-O-Tron’.
Cue the usual classic cars on the roads and the classic films showing in the cinemas, the kind of representation we were used to in movies such as Back to the Future. But then things take a turn. Yes, it’s a silly strip in a children’s comic but it actually makes a great point about nostalgia and people’s rose-tinted glasses colouring their memories of “the good old days”. This reads particularly well (and is particularly funny) today when it seems more folks than ever are impetuously clamouring for some mythical time gone by.
You know you’re in for a special treat when you see Burp taking up two pages, so imagine my glee when I opened the second OiNK annual on Christmas Day 1988 and found an eight-page Burp inside. Yes, eight pages! If you’re reading this at the time of writing you’ve got eight months to wait to see it, but then again so do I. I have complete faith it’ll be worth the wait. For now we’ve only the one Jeremy Banx strip to fill that gap and that’ll be in seven days. So we’d better make sure we don’t miss the next issue, hadn’t we?
Indeed. In steps co-editor Patrick Gallagher with his final newsagent reservation coupon. I remember the next issue would finish with a back page promotion for the first monthly in much the same way as #44 did when OiNK went weekly. So The Absent-Minded Pistol Packer is the last of these. Who’d have thought a book of Victorian illustrations and the necessity to have a reservation coupon in your comic could’ve come together to produce such a fun series? Only in OiNK.
I usually end on these coupons but this week I’m doing something different. First though, as we prepare to wrap things up for another seven days (the last time I’ll be able to say that for OiNK) just a quick reminder that you can pop back here on Friday 5th May 2023 for #62, the end of another era in OiNK’s lifetime. As always I haven’t read it yet but I do know we’ll be saying goodbye to Burp and Jeremy and I’m sure they’ll do it in style. There’s also a Horace Watkins cover and of course news of the final evolution of OiNK. I’ll see you then.
Just to finish on a bit of silliness, The Amazing Eric Plinge was a one-off mini-strip by Ed McHenry way back in #9. Eric was a young kid whose neck took over when his bat and ball stopped working. Later in #27Davy Francis, a good friend of Ed’s, brought us Derek Blinge – The boy with no brain, clearly a play on Ed’s character. (Check out that issue for the full story behind the two men and their strips.) Now the ball is back in Ed’s court (no pun intended). Below is his original strip from #9 then the full colour page from this issue takes it to another level. See you in seven.
How many of you can remember coming downstairs on Christmas morning and seeing this cheery face staring back at you? I’d been giddy at getting my hands on this ever since I saw it in my local newsagents a few months previous. It really stood out with its glossy soft cover in the sea of cardboard hardbacks. Inside, all 80 interior pages are made of a thick, high quality stock, giving the book a heavy, expensive feel. Co-editor Patrick Gallagher tells me, “The higher-quality paper stock of the book was the idea of Bob Paynter at Fleetway. Bob was completely on our wavelength and knew it would appeal. The floppy glossy cover and back also seemed to really suit the enlarged shots of the plasticine pig face and bottom models Ian Jackson made by capturing the detail so well.”
UPDATE: I’ve since spoken with Ian (some three years later) and the cover wasn’t made by him! You can read more about this and see the original rear cover in a special post of when I chatted to photographer Ian Tilton.
Before this I’d read some of my brother’s Beano annuals but to my young mind they felt just like regular stories but with bigger panels to fill more pages. But The OiNK! Book 1988 was, as ever, different. This first book packed in as much as it possibly could to every single page. As a result, it may have had roughly 30 pages less than its contemporaries but it had so much more in there to read and enjoy. It all began with that famous cover, especially when you flipped it over but we’ll get to that later. While it didn’t really sink in as a kid, that claim on the bottom right is bold and of course completely correct. Inside, a special bookend of Uncle Pigg and Mary Lighthouse introduced that team to readers.
This was innovative for a time when signatures in humour comics were rare, but OiNK’s young readers knew the names of their favourite cartoonists thanks to its creators Patrick Gallagher, Mark Rodgers and Tony Husband and their wish to shakes things up. As an adult I can’t help but look at this page in wonderment at the list of talent involved. It really was a selection of Britain’s best and it was all for us kids. We were spoiled. I also love how the chiselled words work their way around the characters and speech balloons, which makes zero sense to the chiseler!
It’s a wonderfully varied read, containing strips from our favourite regulars, some returning stars of early issues, spoofs of those other annuals I mentioned, puzzles (not filler here but typical OiNK-style funnies) and even letters and drawings from readers, something annuals just never included. So how on Earth am I going to choose a few highlights? There’s just too much brilliance on offer. It’s been painstaking but I hope I can do it justice with this selection.
This is one of my most memorable pages, with Marc Riley as the not-at-all inconspicuous burglar, Snatcher Sam in GBH’s Book Club, a take on those book and video clubs that were so popular in the 80s and 90s. Magazines and comics were filled with them, promising cheap titles to begin with as you sign yourself up to buying a certain amount at full price over a year. I was a member of the Britannia Video Club, remember them? That’s why I loved this so much, along with the usual over-the-top nature of the GBH madverts and just look at all those book covers they’ve created for the photograph. Now, 35 years later it’s the effort put into these daft pages that I really appreciate.
Released for Christmas 1987, this was the year I would turn ten-years-old in the festive season and I was hearing a lot of rumours in the playground about Santa Claus. Thankfully I soon found out they were just rumours when he left my book under my parents’ wardrobe before Christmas because demand for it was so high and he didn’t want to disappoint me. The rumours of his existence were conclusively put to bed with a script by Lew Stringer that’s spectacularly brought to the page by 2000AD stalwart Kevin O’Neill, who we sadly said goodbye to earlier this year. There’s more to The Truth About Santa than we probably wanted to know as ten-year-olds.
There’s an image that’ll stay with you. Or haunt you. I remember this being the strip any friends who read this book at the time seemed to laugh at the most. I may have been the only one of my closest friends who collected OiNK but they all enjoyed reading my issues and in particular this book. In fact, in the year 2000 when I decided to return to college at the age of 23 the book ended up shared around that class too. I can’t remember how it came up in conversation originally, but I dug it out from my cupboard and it made its way around most of my fellow media students, each one of which found it just as hilarious as I had.
To this day it’s still one of my favourite books (of any type) of all time and definitely my favourite from childhood. In fact this is my original copy from back then, only one of three OiNKs that survived various clear-outs (by my dad) and moving out years later. Its timeless comedy is a testament to the talent it boasted about on the cover. Just like the regular comic it sets itself apart from other annuals. While they’d have had huge multi-page versions of their regular strips, here for the most part OiNK kept them to the size they’d normally be, meaning there was a hell of a lot more of them packed in.
Annuals are created far in advance of their release dates so when this one was being put together the ever fantastic Tom Paterson was still a contributor to the comic. Written by the pun-tastic Graham Exton, Eric Knicker the Whacky Vicar may only have been a tiny quarter-page strip but it left a lasting impression on little me during Christmas 1987 as I tittered and giggled and shared the joke with friends and family. A lot better than any cracker joke.
So yes, the annual kept to the format of the comic, only more so. It’s a delight to see the creative team took the opportunity to simply cram much more in of what made OiNK so great in the first place. For a child of ten there was just so much to enjoy. We even got a short Ham Dare strip. His two-page story is a hoot and is followed by this even funnier, wonderful cutaway of his and Pigby’s ship.
Written by Lew Stringer and drawn by the incredible talent that was J.T. Dogg (Malcolm Douglas) it’s chock full of little details that my young eyes really enjoyed pouring over. My favourite parts are the comfy chair and its very dangerous sidestool, and the middle of the spacecraft showing the difference between our heroes, with Ham’s gym next door to Pigby’s very full pantry.
A quick note about the title box at the top of the spread. It makes a great point! My Transformers and Real Ghostbusters annuals would have had “pin-ups” and “mini posters” and I always wondered if anyone actually cut up their fantastic annuals, losing whatever was on the backs of those pages to the walls of their room. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one at the time who thought this was a ridiculous idea.
Hadrian Vile’s usual diary entries take a back seat to a selection of pages chronicling his Interleckshual guide toe Nacheral Histry
A quick glance over some other highlights now. Ron Dibney’s Dumb Ol’ Duck reveals another side to himself, Police Vet makes his debut (he’d return in the monthlies the following year) many years before Jim Carrey took on a similar role and Star Truck makes a very welcome return. Just as in #3 the crew make their presence felt throughout the book in between chapters of their own strip. Here, Mark Rodgers literally pops up as Captain Slog in one of Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins‘ pages.
Dumb Ol’ Duck written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Swoffs Police Vet written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Wilkie Horace Watkins by Tony Husband
Pigswilla only appeared in seven issues of OiNK altogether but he was still a firm fan favourite, so naturally he had to appear in the annual, with Specky Hector Comics Collector (with added surname) making a funny cameo I’d forgotten all about. Early in the book Frank Sidebottom found out Little Frank had used up all his felt tips and gave him until page 69 to fix the situation, which he does, sort of. It appears young me at least started to lend them both a hand.
Pigswilla by Lew Stringer Frank Sidebottom by Chris Sievey Hadrian Vile written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Ian Jackson
Hadrian Vile’s usual diary entries take a back seat to a selection of pages chronicling his Interleckshual guide toe Nacheral Histry, although he does take some short cuts to get from the evolution of life to the 1980s. His usual know-it-all persona is, as always, hilariously wrong in almost every way. In his fortnightly diary he was the most intelligent person in any room. Well, in his own mind anyway and here his guide to everything from dinosaurs (the hilarious looking Tyrannosaurus rex above is a highlight) to Ford Sierras.
In fact, after spending the first two parts of his guide covering prehistoric Earth he only has one page left to finish up and so this third page makes the leap from the ice age to the aforementioned car in the blink of an eye, clearly skipping millions of years as completely uninteresting. It’s all as hilarious as you’d expect from Mark Rodgers, made all the more special with full colour Ian Jackson art. In fact, so good is it that when the weekly comic itself gets going the diary will eventually be replaced with a series of similar guides.
1987 also saw the 50th anniversary of The Dandy (with Beano’s to come in 1988) hence why OiNK took aim at DC Thomson’s comics with regular digs about how old the characters would really be, such as #38’s Deano. In fact, I received the commemorative 50th anniversary book alongside my OiNK! Book (and The Big Comic Book 1988), although in hindsight I think it was originally for my brother but he stopped reading comics not long before Christmas. Oh well, his loss was my gain.
Returning to that spoof comic name, here the OiNK team take it to even greater heights (although this was probably created first) with a mini-comic inside the annual featuring such characters as Dennis the Pensioner and his dog Flasher, Desperate Old Man and the The Lash St. Old People. All are very funny and then we get a double-page spread of no less than five spoof strips which as a kid were funny, but as an adult are hugely surprising because four are drawn by none other than John Geering!
John was a regular artist for DC Thomson, in fact that’s the publisher he’s most closely associated with, most famously for Bananaman and Puss’n’Boots. To see him take on some of DCT’s characters in OiNK just makes these even funnier than they already were in my opinion. I do remember showing these to my friends who were huge fans of The Beano at the time. Can you blame me?
Unfortunately, I simply don’t know who ‘Philip’ is at the time of writing. His work only appeared in two OiNKs (this and #9), here with Boffo the Bore and two other like-minded strips called Georgie & Zip’s Party and Postman Fat and his Slightly Flat Cat. He’s not mentioned on the intro page either, but needless to say I’m always on the hunt for more information on OiNK’s creation so when I find out I’ll let you know. After The Deano and a ‘Fun-Hour’ pre-school comic we get another special section for adventure fans.
Eagle-eyed blog readers may recognise the brilliant caricature of Roger Moore on the first page from a previous issue (although I didn’t spot this first time around). If you go and take a look at the TV listings page in OiNK #17 you’ll see a tiny part of this image was used the previous Christmas. In it you can even see the OiNK logo behind Roger’s face so it just goes to show how far in advance this was created. This is something that continues to this day. If you follow the likes of Lew Stringer on social media or his own blog he’ll often show us snippets of annuals he’s working on over a year before their release, for example.
I’ve been a huge James Bond fan since all the Goldeneye hype hooked me in the mid-90s and I started renting out whatever films I could from the local video shop. It was discovering Timothy Dalton as Bond that sold me on the whole franchise, whose first film had only just been released the same year as this book, so the previous 007 (and his films) was still the target of this fun, frantic strip written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Tim Thackery.
This was Tim’s sole contribution to OiNK. An illustrator and graphic designer he actually went on to work on CBBC animated series Minuscule Milton with Ian Jackson. Tim told me how he sees this James Bong strip now looking back: “A long time ago, but yes, that was me. Not my best work, but I was a bit pushed for time on it and had to knock it out at a fairly rough level.” Personally I love the art style here as it matches the nature of the strip and brings a real sense of pacing and chaos to the proceedings. You can check out Tim’s official website here.
“She eats pickled herrings in bed and I saw her kissing the window cleaner!”
Keith Disease
The Adventure Section also contains that Police Vet strip I mentioned above, a GBH madvertisement for their ‘Personal Hand-Glider’ capable of speeds of up to 100mph (downwards) and another strip, Ena Blighty’s Five Go Adventuring Yet Again. An annual will never have a theme in the same way as the regular comic did at the time, although the festive season does come up a lot for obvious reasons. These dedicated sections feel like mini themes, three for the price of one in fact, and are some of the best pages in the whole book.
One character (or rather two) I always found incredibly funny were Hector Vector and his Talking T-shirt. Unfortunately, Jeremy Banx’s strip made its last appearance in #35, disappearing when the comic changed publishers and gave itself a bit of a face lift. With new characters and cartoonists and the very best issues the team ever produced, I hadn’t even noticed these two weren’t in amongst the madness until they popped up here in this brilliant, larger strip.
As pig pals knew, this wasn’t a strip where the brat got his comeuppance at the end of each story; we never knew who’d come out on top between the pair. For their very final appearance I have to admit I was happy to see it was Keith Disease (the t-shirt) who had the last laugh as those stories were the best examples of Jeremy’s creation. There were plenty of laughs to be had in this particular strip but it was always that very final panel that had me in creases. It still does.
It’s with a heavy heart but a smile on my face that we come to the end (almost) of the review of the very best edition of OiNK the team created. This has been both the most fun and yet hardest thing to write so far on this whole blog. It’s been great fun to finally get the chance to reread this book and to tell you all about it, but incredibly difficult to pluck out just a few highlights to try and sum it up. I hope I’ve been able to do that. Two more chuckles to go though. First up, the opposite page to that great opener drawn by Ian Jackson.
A couple of puns, funny art and a grinning Uncle Pigg reminding us (and telling those who were introduced to OiNK with the book) of his fortnightly comic, even if it wouldn’t be fortnightly for much longer. It’s a perfect end to a perfect book. It’s such a treasured item for me these days that it came with me to a comic con where Lew Stringer and Davy Francis signed it for me, and when Patrick Gallagher visited me at my home a few years back he added his. I intend to get the inside covers covered with as many squiggles as possible.
With that, I’m going to close the back page over now and here’s why ten-year-old me pestered my parents, my siblings and any visitors to our house over the holidays that year to have a look at my new book.
The plasticine cover was a step up from Ian’s already brilliant one for the first OiNK! Holiday Special and is probably the most iconic OiNK cover of all, with a story to match. “When we sent in the transparencies of the pig face and bottom with the artwork for the printer to process, Bob Paynter at IPC didn’t spot that the pig’s star-shaped bum was partly exposed and not completely hidden by the pig’s curly tail,” explains Patrick. “It was only when the proofs came back from the printer that Bob spotted it and deemed it too rude to be published. So we had to get photographer Ian Tilton to retake the shot with the pig’s tail completely obscuring the star-shaped bottom.” (You can read all about that and actually see those original transparencies in my chat with Ian.)
It’s still a cheeky cover and perfectly encapsulates OiNK’s unique, naughty yet innocent sense of humour.
From showing off its covers and hearing the raucous laughter of anyone I could grab over that festive season, to rereading it in my 20s, 30s and now 40s, and lending it to friends many years after OiNK was a distant memory… this book will never, ever get old. It’s OiNK in its purest, most concentrated form. Every page feels fresh and new, like it was written this year, not 35 of them ago. Receiving my favourite issue of the regular comic, the Christmassy #43 and this back-to-back made my Christmas in 1987, and reliving them has done it again in 2022. If you’re reading this post on the day of publication I hope you have a wonderful day and a very Merry Christmas!
There are a lot of exciting and funny things on this cover, beginning with the main event of Superham as drawn by Ron Tiner. Look closer at the accompanying details for more laughs, such as the “Trouser Press” approval spoof of the Comics Code Authority, and OiNK‘s own version of DC Comics‘ logo from the time tucked away in the top corner. We’ll get to the Ham of Steel in a little bit, but there’s an announcement on the cover for the latest free gifts too.
The last gift given away by OiNK was the gigantic three-part poster calendar at the end of the previous year (check out #17 for the full product) and again we have three issues in a row with something extra tucked away inside. Unlike the cut-out postcards in #7 these are actual cards which can be easily removed and sent by readers. Each pair would be drawn by a different artist, beginning with Jeremy Banx.
I can remember taking a couple of these on holiday with me back in 1987, definitely the Burp one. I can’t remember using them though, whether through forgetfulness or changing my mind and not wanting to send them away. Are postcards even a thing anymore when people can just check in on social media or send photos instantaneously back home? I’m not sure, but in the 80s these freebies were a great idea and each one is a brilliant little gift in its own right. The next two issues will contain postcards by Lew Stringer and Ian Jackson, so make sure you check them out.
Back in the Valentine’s issue the Peanuts gang, namely Charlie Brown, Snoopy etc. got renamed the Peabrains in a one-off (I assumed) strip complete with some spoof merchandise advertising. As I said at the time I was never a fan of the cartoon or newspaper strips but I still enjoyed OiNK’s version which was created by Patrick Gallagher. Surprisingly, the strip returns but this time ‘Snooby‘ is drawn by David Leach, best known for Psycho Gran. Here, the little dog is daydreaming, something he was known for in the cartoon and which we’d see brought to life by his imagination. Sitting on top of his kennel he imagines being a heroic fighter pilot. But this is a strip by David so expect the unexpected.
Well I did say that’s who David was known for, didn’t I? I’d forgotten all about this ending, although as soon as Snooby metaphorically took to the air it all came back to me. I’d like to think as a child I didn’t spot Psycho in the final panel until I’d read the full strip because the reveal of the jet itself is so brilliantly drawn and her grin at the end just hilarious. As a side note, David was inspired by Roy Lichtenstein’s famous Whaam! art for this.
Alongside the captions the images tell a different, highly exaggerated version of the same events
In 1987 Superman IV: The Quest For Peace had just been released in cinemas and, while not the most successful of the franchise, its marketing was surely everywhere, making him a big, timely target for OiNK. Mark Rodgers took on writing duties for Superham and cover artist Ron Tiner returns for the three-page strip. It all kicks off on familiar territory, the narrative captions keeping surprisingly true to the tale of the lone refugee from an alien world movie goers were all too familiar with.
However, alongside those captions the images tell a different, highly exaggerated version of the same events and this is where the laughs come from. The story continues with highlights of Superham’s fight against evil, including a brilliant panel depicting him flying faster than the speed of light. So fast in fact he breaks through time itself and comes upon a spectacular sight. I won’t ruin the surprise because it’s on that third page we get the big punchline.
This is classic Mark, with a very funny twist in the tale with the ever-perpetuating series of events brought on by the “stupid rhinoceros” of a superhero. I’ll admit the recent movies did little to endear me to the inspiration behind this spoof, but with a much more entertaining version of the character taking pride of place on BBC One’s Saturday teatime schedule this feels like another timely read for this funny take on the original superhero. Great stuff.
I say well done to the OiNK team for printing this page and standing up to the bullies
The next page is as unique as you’ll find in any of our childhood comics. Back in #7 a strip called Janice and John and the Parachute Jump appeared which has (incorrectly) gone down in history as making a bigger furore than it did; it’s even been written that it was the reason behind OiNK’s cancellation 61 issues later, which is just ridiculous. Yes, an official complaint was made with The Press Council who looked into the story in question, but the complaint was dismissed in the end. However, OiNK wasn’t about to just let this moment pass, as you can see with the following page.
I can’t remember reading this as a child so I haven’t a clue what I made of it, but nowadays it reminds me of working in BBC Complaints many years back and the amount of people who’d want an entire series cancelled because they personally didn’t want their licence fee paying for it (never mind the millions who watched it and were also paying their licence fee), or the myriad of Daily Mail comments Dave Gorman would use to great effect in his Modern Life is Goodish TV show. Even today in the UK and America we have books and comics being banned all in the name of “freedom” without a hint of irony.
So I say well done to the OiNK team for printing this page and standing up to the bullies! It’s refreshing and damned funny in its own right, especially how it can’t help but stir things up a little more with that final gag at the bottom referencing a non-existent next chapter. Janice and John would return in a story about a thermonuclear reactor though, as promised at the end of #7’s story. That wouldn’t be seen until #41, possibly held back until the outcome of the complaint was known and the whole thing was in the past.
I don’t think any other comic would’ve been this brave and I commend the editors for doing this. Recently, Mark Rodgers’ partner Helen Jones very kindly sent me a wonderful package containing the original complaints and responses including those from The Press Council and IPC’s John Sanders. They’re a fascinating read and will be on the blog at some point. A famous moment from OiNK’s history but one which very few seem to accurately write about. I hope I can help set the record straight.
Moving on for now and another superstar of the comics world joins the sty as Mike Higgs draws Infamous Failures of Aviation, written by Lew Stringer.
It’s a cracker script by Lew (or ‘Biggles’) and Mike’s work really stands out, his style easily identifiable to anyone familiar with his strips elsewhere. Mike was best known for creating The Cloak in 1967 for Pow!, as well as bringing his unique artwork to Space School and Thundercap for Whizzer and Chips and Buster respectively. He (and The Cloak in particular) was a big influence on Lew when he was creating his Combat Colin character for Action Force comic.
Lew worked as Mike’s assistant in the early 80s for a range of children’s books and they became good friends. When OiNK came along Lew suggested bringing Mike back to comics for the first time in years to co-editor Mark Rodgers. This was his first appearance in the comic and he’d be back another eight times. Even though he’s better known for appearing in more traditional titles, there was never anything traditional about his work. As such, I think he’s a perfect addition to Uncle Pigg’s team and I look forward to seeing what else he brings to future issues.
Writer Graham Exton (whose name I haven’t seen mentioned in the fortnightly in several months) and artist Davey Jones produced another funny little OiNK mini-strip but this one is a little special because Davey has previously shared an original rough sketch by Mark Rodgers as well as his own thoughts on his finished product. I’ve saved this away for future reference and I will share this little insight into its creation, so watch out for it in the Creating OiNK section of the blog.
Mike Higgs’ son also makes an appearance this issue, sort of, in a scrawled shout out on an office desk in Lew’s Pete and his Pimple as the young Mr Throb dreams of being the high-flying Captain Pimply superhero. Smelly alien Burp isn’t being anywhere near as daring at the beginning of his strip though. More classic highlights of long-running OiNK favourites.
Pete and his Pimple by Lew Stringer Burp by Jeremy Banx
Our heroic Wonder Pig is back again with another name change, another ill-fated attempt at heroism and it all kicks off when his owner falls down another pit. Lashie the Wonder Pig is written by Tony Husband and drawn by Chas Sinclair and it’s this repetition of events which makes it so very funny indeed. In fact, this issue’s strip will be all the funnier if you’ve read the one I included in the highlights to #18. So go read that first and then come back here to read this next strip. Go on then!
This is a great way of parodying the TV series and movies of a certain Border Collie and their own repetitive nature. Lassie‘s fans didn’t mind and our own Lashie’s fans craved the same things happening again and again. The more strips that appeared the funnier these got. They wouldn’t appear too regularly, if they had maybe we would’ve grown tired of the formula but as such their semi-regular surprise appearances were always a hit.
Our flying special comes to an end with news the next issue is a ‘Mirthful Musical Issue’. Regular readers may be thinking this is a repeat of the subject from #16 but that one was all about the world of pop music, our next one takes in the whole of the musical world and nothing is off limits. Think of the difference between #6‘s ‘Animal Crackers Issue’ and #27‘s ‘Big, Soft Pets Issue’. There’s even going to be a very special appearance from a famous post-punk band in a photo story, so it’s definitely not to be missed.
So save your bookmarks, follow on socials or sub to the blog so you’ll get notified on Monday 30th May 2022 of the latest OiNK review!
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