Tag Archives: John Geering

CHRiSTMAS COVERS: FESTiVE FUN

1 December 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Lew Stringer’s Combat Colin
from Transformers #302

When I was a kid most of my comics were fortnightly so their Christmas editions arrived very close to the Big Day itself, complete with snowy logos and cheery happenings on the cover. It always felt like extra effort went into the creation of these special editions, and reading them just days before the annuals arrived from Santa was guaranteed to raise already high levels of excitement even further.

The classic Christmas comics covered so far had that same effect on me even as an adult. So I decided I wanted to do something a bit special this year with all of the seasonal covers in my collection, and to do it right at the beginning of December to kick off the excitement on the blog this year. Below you’ll find a smorgasbord of festive fun from four comics titles I’ve already featured, one I’ve been reading for the blog’s Instagram for seven years(!), another I’m reading annually, a popular title I’m still in the collecting stage of and, for the first time, I’ll reveal one of the new real time read throughs beginning in 2024 by showing you its two Christmas covers!

That’s 21 covers altogether. “Holidays Are Coming!”

Of course we have to kick things off with the blog’s namesake, don’t we? My very favourite comic had two special issues for my very favourite time of the year. A great spoof of our family’s traditional Christmas TV magazine (which I still buy in December) or a hilarious Ian Jackson cover, which is the best? The second of these issues is my favourite regular issue of OiNK out of its whole 68-issue run, so that particular cover always makes me smile the most.

With the New Year holiday named HOGmanay in Scotland it’d be rude not to do a themed issue in a comic called OiNK for that part of the season. Both of these celebratory issues are also some of the best the team ever produced, with covers by the legendary John Geering and Les ‘Lezz’ Barton respectively. In fact, #43 and #44 form the final two issues of what I personally saw as OiNK’s Golden Age, a run of pretty perfect comics which also included The OiNK! Book 1988.

Super Naturals’ Christmas issue is one of my favourites from this whole blog experience

There’s nothing quite like a good Christmas ghost story. So, when I began collecting Fleetway’s Super Naturals comic for the blog (after only having owned the first and last issues as a kid) I was thrilled to not only see #5 was a special Christmas issue but that it also had a simply joyous, painted Ian Kennedy cover. Inside, the team really went for the spirit of the season, with even the ongoing serials containing themes and plots centred around Christmas. My favourite issue of the run and one of my favourite issues from this whole blog experience.

By coincidence, a year later it was also #5 of editor Barrie Tomlinson’s Wildcat that fell at the right time, with a somewhat memorable front page! With its ongoing serials set upon the surface of a distant world as we searched for a new home planet it was left up to the complete anthology story to tell a tale on board the Wildcat spacecraft itself which, yes, did include that image from the cover. Even more surprisingly it actually explained it!

At the time of writing this post those are all of the Christmas comics I’ve covered as part of real time read throughs on the blog so far. However, over on the Instagram account for over seven years I’ve been patiently reading Marvel UK’s superlative Transformers comic. I’m actually reaching its conclusion very soon, in January 2024. In its last December the issue on sale over Christmas was the penultimate edition so it didn’t take a break from the ongoing story for a Christmas special, meaning I’ve read all of its seasonal issues.

It’s Christmas!
“So what?”
Starscream

In fact, it was a particularly Christmassy Winter Special that began my lifelong love of the Cybertronians. By 1988 I’d enjoyed many episodes of the cartoon and owned a few of the videos so when I fell ill my mum bought me a comic to cheer me up. That comic was Transformers Collected Comics 11. It contained three reprinted Christmas stories and I loved every page! It was a revelation compared to the cartoon. Within a few days I had a regular order at the newsagent and 35 years later I’m first in line at the cinema every few years and have been enjoying Image Comic’s brand new series (which began just a few months ago).

Cover taken from
The Last Stand: Part One,
pencils by Frank Springer,
inks by Ian Akin
and Brian Garvey

That earliest issue from the comic’s first year may only pay lip service to the festivities on the cover but as you can see from then on they celebrated with some of the most fun issues they ever produced. There’s snow or holly on a couple of the logos and even Optimus Prime dressed as Santa which, much like Wildcat, is actually explained in the story and isn’t just a cover image. Although they play up to that with the next year’s Christmas card image of Galvatron, who wasn’t inside.

The issue with all the snow was one of my first issues originally back at the time. It was doubly exciting for me because it was a special issue for Christmas and had one of the toys I received that year on the cover (Slapdash, the one on the left). The celebratory 250th issue fell on just the right date and as the comic surpassed an incredible 300 editions former letter answerer Dreadwind hilariously had to answer to the ghosts of the past, present and future Transformers to hold that post.

Thirty-five years ago I very gratefully received The Book Comic Book 1988 for Christmas (reviewed just three days ago) and was thrilled to suddenly see a new fortnightly baring the same ‘Big Comic’ brand during the following summer. I just had to track down this fondly remembered issue for this post. Of course, the cover was a reprint too, reworked from #35 of Jackpot. Big Comic never felt like a random selection of reprints but rather a properly curated collection that made each issue unique. It even had a special Leo Baxendale issue. Its Christmas specials were similarly packed with related material.

Next to it is the second Christmas edition of Marvel UK’s Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, one of two issues I’ve kept all these years and for a very personal reason. Namely, it was the first time young me saw his name in print when my drawing of Thomas, Gordon and Percy with Santa hats was published inside. I can still remember that moment of excitement upon turning the page that year. If you want to see it, you can check out the Thomas retrospective (marking an incredible 800 issues), the link to it and all of the issues featured here can be found at the bottom of this post.

I’ve also written a five-part series about my top Christmas comics for former Marvel UK editor John Freeman’s Down the Tubes website

Moving on to a comic I wrote about for the 33rd anniversary of its first issue. I enjoyed that so much I committed to covering the comic on the blog in some fashion in the future. However, with over 190 issues to collect first it’s going to take a while. (Remember, these cost money!) What I can show you now are the first three years of festive fun. Taking advantage of its weekly schedule, The Real Ghostbusters had two celebratory issues every year, one for Christmas and one for the New Year, as you can see below.

With at least three stories (two strip and one prose) every issue we were treated to a couple of themed stories and of course Slimer’s humour strip would also join in. One of the New Year issues also contained the results of a reader survey told in comic strip form, complete with the winners at Marvel UK meeting the characters on stage!

I promised at the top of this post I’d be introducing for the first time one of 2024’s brand new real time read throughs with a preview of its two Christmas covers. It’s time to reveal the title which will finally be keeping Jurassic Park company in the Dark Horse International drop-down menu. It’s not one you’d expect to have a nice, cheerful Christmassy cover… and you’d be right. They’re not exactly the usual fluffy fare.

With the strips all being imports from the US, split into ongoing serials, I doubt there are any stories inside to match the covers but this is one of those rare occasions when that doesn’t annoy me. The fact Aliens of all things marked the season at all (and with funny headlines to boot) is brilliant as far as I’m concerned. All of the Aliens issues I’m covering are here and I’m eager to start reading them next year. Listen out for the motion tracker bleeps in May 2024.

There we go, my look at all of the Christmas covers currently residing in my classic comics collection. Writing this has me wanting to read them all over again. Well, the ones I’ve already featured anyway, the last two titles will have to wait until it’s their time, that’s the rule of the blog after all.

I’ve also written a five-part series about my top Christmas comics for former Marvel UK editor John Freeman’s Down the Tubes for this festive season. Below you can see the banner John created for the series (Smudge the cat is becoming very famous these days) and links to the five individual posts from fifth place to my top Christmas comic.

No.5 – No.4 – No.3 – No.2 – No.1

If you’d like to share any of your own favourite Christmas comic memories I’ll eagerly await your stories on Instagram, Threads and Facebook, or there’s always the comments section below too.

THE COMICS

ON THE BLOG:

OiNK 17

OiNK 18

OiNK 43

OiNK 44

SUPER NATURALS 5

WiLDCAT 5

ALiENS 7 (coming Christmas Eve 2024)

ALiENS 18 (coming 18th November 2025)

BiG COMiC BOOKS

THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS RETROSPECTiVE

THOMAS THE TANK ENGiNE & FRiENDS
RETROSPECTiVE

ON INSTAGRAM:

TRANSFORMERS 7

TRANSFORMERS 41

TRANSFORMERS 93

TRANSFORMERS 145

TRANSFORMERS COLLECTED COMiCS 11

TRANSFORMERS 198

TRANSFORMERS 250

TRANSFORMERS 302

RETROSPECTiVES

CHRiSTMAS 2023

Annuals, Big Comic Book, Christmas

BiG COMiC BOOK 1988: TOME FOR CHRiSTMAS

28 November 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

I may have covered the first in this series of giant tomes last Christmas but as a kid this volume was the first time I discovered Big Comic. This book would also lead to the release of Big Comic Fortnightly in June 1988 which I also collected for a couple of years. Christmas 1987 was the first year I received my own comic annuals and I’ll admit it was a while before I read this that festive season because I’d also received The OiNK! Book 1988! Eventually I sat down with what felt like a humongous read at that age and got stuck in.

Once again it sticks to IPC Magazine‘s (taken over by Fleetway Publications) Buster, Whizzer and Chips and Whoopee comics but it was all brand new to me. I’d been collecting OiNK for over a year by this point, a title that often took the hand out of these older comics. However, Big Comic Book 1988 contained a feast of goodies and plenty were still hitting the mark, producing enough smiles for me to see it all the way to the end over the New Year. There’s definitely a marked improvement over the choice of strips compared to last year’s book. With the hindsight of reading this in 2023 more of it holds up to the passage of time too.

I’d say let’s dive right in but that might be too on the nose given my first highlight. Yes, it’s the same as last year and probably will be again next year. Gums was always a favourite in these books and the fortnightly comic, so chances were John Geering‘s strip from Monster Fun and Buster was always going to get included here. Like last year (and as with other characters) he’s in the book several times but this one stood out for me. As obsessed with sharks as I am I’m used to documentaries, books or even Instagram accounts detailing how preparations are made behind the camera when filming these wonderful creatures, but we humans aren’t the only ones who have preparations to make.

What a fun start! Another character I always enjoyed was Toy Boy from the late, great Terry Bave. Appearing originally in Whoopee then Buster from 1985 onwards, it surprises me to find out we never knew his name. Obsessed with playthings of any kind whatsoever he’d often frustrate his well-meaning parents when toys got in the way of their day-to-day lives, or his playing about stopped him from doing something important. Sometimes the toys would help though, so we never knew how the strip was going to go.

OiNK writer Graham Exton wasn’t exactly a big fan of “that bloody snake”

Such is the case with this next highlight. Terry’s art style is just lovely and instantly recognisable from the round faces of all his characters. It’s sad to think he’s no longer with us. He was also one of the few whose signature appeared in these comics at a time when this was frowned upon by the publishers.

OiNK writer Graham Exton wasn’t exactly a big fan of writing for this next character (“That bloody snake”). According to Graham and others I’ve spoken to, Sid’s Snake was often used by the Whizzer & Chips editors as a testing ground for new writers. It was assigned to them to prove their capabilities and hone their skills before moving on to other characters or comics. Drawn by the renowned Mike Lacey, whose work I particularly loved from the covers of each issue of Funny Fortnightly (reprints of his Krazy covers), Sid’s Snake could be very hit and miss.

This could be because the writer kept changing, or maybe it’s simply a difficult idea to get a consistent gag out of. What it always was though, was simple, inoffensive fun and at least in this instance very definitely smile-worthy. I can remember very little from the character in the pages of Big Comic Fortnightly, so this one stood out as something a bit more memorable and funnier than usual.

Another Mike Lacey highlight is up next in the form of Shiner, also from the pages of Whizzer & Chips, first appearing way back in the second issue. However, even being the leader of the Chip-ites (the characters from the inner ‘Chips’ part of the comic) wasn’t enough to see him move to the pages of Buster when his comic folded in 1990. Shiner was an amateur boxer whose mother disapproved of his interest and she was constantly trying to stop her son from getting injured.

That doesn’t sound like a bad thing and it’s why I particularly liked this entry in the series. In this story he would’ve gotten away with it but ends up in a rather worse state than he was in the first place, and all thanks to his mum! Elsewhere on the blog make sure you check out a clever and very funny Buster strip written by Mark Bennington and drawn by Mike in one of the first issues after OiNK merged with it.

X-Ray Specs used to be a favourite of mine in the regular reprint comic. He stood out for a couple of reasons. The first was the most obvious: those glasses. These were the unique selling point for the character; a pair of super-powered glasses which could see through anything, although somehow used to various levels of strength. For example, sometimes he used them to see through whole walls, sometimes just the contents of a person’s pockets.

These were paired up with a character who could use them for feel good endings like catching burglars and cheats etc. but also for his own selfish reasons, which was always funny. In the hands of a lesser creative team it could easily have become a very predictable strip but Ray could often surprise us. Below is a good example of what drew me to his pages before many others in these books. Once more we’ve got some Mike Lacey art to enjoy too.

My next choice is a character who appeared in the very first edition of Cheeky Weekly, later making the move to Whoopee! She was drawn by a favourite OiNK contributor, fellow Northern Ireland native Ian Knox (Roger Rental, He’s Completely Mental). Robot Granny was a state-of-the-art mechanical person originally crafted in top secret by a mysterious team of inventors. However, people were quite scared of how it looked, so in order to keep it secret and fit in with humans it was disguised as a little old lady. The strip started life as ‘Six Million Dollar Gran‘ so no prizes for guessing the influence here.

It was later renamed again as Gran’s Gang, but here the reprints are from the middle years of the strip and tell the tales of how this seemingly innocent and quiet retiree is just trying to fit in with her much younger friends. I’ve yet to read any of her stories that don’t raise a big smile. That might be because she somehow reminds me of my own late nanny, who always seemed to have so much more energy than all of us kids when we were younger. The strip may be far-fetched but it rekindled some lovely personal memories and that’s another reason I’m including her here.

Granny’s stablemate from Cheeky Weekly and Whoopee! comics, Mustapha Mi££ion also has a handful of strips in this book. He made a further transition to Whizzer & Chips too when Whoopee! folded, such was his popularity. Having discovered oil, making him and his father extremely wealthy, his dad sent him to the UK for his education and supplied him with a mansion, land and staff to keep him occupied. Originally drawn by the legendary Reg Partlett, the early stories had him desperately trying to fit in and often misinterpreting the needs of others, going far beyond what was actually needed because he had the wealth to do so.

Joe McCaffrey soon took over and it’s his strips reprinted here. In these stories Mustapha was the opposite of all the filthy rich kids we’d normally find in our comics; he was kind hearted, playful and would do anything for his friends. I do mean anything. Nothing was too much for this young boy as far as treating his friends was concerned. Most importantly, it never felt like they were taking advantage of him; they were always shown enjoying his company whether he was being extravagant or not. But of course the strip had to have the indulgence, that was the whole point and in the McCaffrey years it was all about Mustapha simply having fun.

After he moved to Whizzer & Chips, Frank McDiarmid took over and apparently (I’ve never read them) there wasn’t always a happy ending. From what I’ve found out, sometimes Mustapha would do things with his wealth that would annoy his friends at the end of the stories, but for me the boy in the strip above is the one I know and love to this day.

The final selection from the 1988 book I have for you took two strips with two named characters each and merged them together into the mouthful of (deep breath) Ivor Lott and Tony Broke with Milly O’Naire and Penny Less. The two male characters started off in the pages of Cor! comic, eventually making the shift into Buster (everyone seemed to at some stage), while the two young ladies ended up in the same comic after making the transition from Jackpot in 1982. The girls may have left again in 1987 but Ivor and Tony stayed put and would cling on all the way through to the final Buster in the year 2000. Despite the final years being all reprint material, that’s still an incredible 30 year lifespan for their strip.

It looks the part on any book shelf rather than a pile of comics in a cupboard somewhere

Originally brought to the page by Reg Partlett, it was Sid Burgon who nurtured them throughout the years and it’s his work you can see below. When reading up on these characters I was surprised to find out they started off very differently. Originally Tony Broke was a very bitter young boy and Ivor Lott would get away with all manner of mischief simply thanks to having lots of money. That doesn’t feel right to me so I’m happy they changed into the characters we have here, where Ivor would come a cropper from showing off his spoilt lifestyle, while upbeat and lovable Tony would always show us that money can’t buy happiness.

This particular strip of theirs stood out for inclusion on this blog. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out why.

I know there are an awful lot of characters I haven’t featured but there’s simply not enough space to show them all. I was able to pick up this huge book on eBay for about a fiver and that can only be described as a bargain. The 1988 book seems to pop up the most so you shouldn’t really have any difficulties in tracking it down. While last year’s book was really enjoyable I’d opt for this one over it. It feels like a more considered selection, the strips complimenting each other that little bit better. Or it could be because I’ve a personal fondness for this volume.

Whatever the reason for my recommendation it’s a great book and reads well even today. For a ‘Best Of’ collection of some classic comics you can’t do better than this one. 256 pages with an impressive hardback cover, it also looks the part on any book shelf rather than a pile of comics in a cupboard somewhere. Whether it’s for yourself or as a perfect surprise gift for a comics fan in your life, you really should check out The Big Comic Book 1988.

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CHRiSTMAS 2023

Annuals, Christmas, OiNK Comic Reviews

THE OiNK! BOOK 1988: PiGGiN’ PERFECTiON!

25 December 2022 Phil Boyce 2 Comments

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.”

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
by Mark Rodgers
and Swoffs

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.

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 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.”

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!