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Annuals, Christmas, OiNK Comic Reviews

THE OiNK! BOOK 1989: SHORT BUT OH SO SWEET

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Released towards the end of the summer in 1988 and advertised in the final two issues of OiNK, after the comic’s cancellation it felt like a long time coming for The OiNK! Book 1989 to finally fall into my trotters on Christmas Day that year. As I mentioned in the preview post, with a reduction in pages from the previous annual and a thinner paper stock it really does feel a lot smaller this time around. But it’s still 68 pages (including cover) of prime pork. That’s got to be reason enough to celebrate, surely?

The cover by acclaimed OiNK illustrator J.T. Dogg (real name Malcolm Douglas) is equal parts gorgeous and gruesome, with some little icky details for kids to pour over. It’s bold and brash and certainly stood out amongst the other children’s annuals, just like OiNK always had. In fact, it stood out even more than it had in the adverts because they decided to swap the colours of the logo around, possibly because it would work better against that dark brown background. I think it works much better this way (and we still get the pink regardless).

That background gives a hint as to what was on the back cover. I remember seeing it in the shop and half expecting it to be the rear of the butcher’s head, this cover clearly being a riff on the piggy face from The OiNK! Book 1988 and I laughed quite loud when I turned it over that first time. We’ll get to that at the end, we’ve the insides to cover first, beginning with the obligatory welcome page with something you’d only see in OiNK at the time: credits.

Genius scriptwriting from Lew after he was told by co-editor Mark Rodgers only the first two pages would be printed in colour

Uncle Pigg may be relying on more easily managed cards rather than an artist chiselling the names into stone like last year, but this bright and colourful welcome was just what the piggy ordered when I opened it on Christmas morning. Even today it feels like reuniting with old friends. Yes, the comic may have only ended two months ago but Ian Jackson’s contributions were becoming rarer so this is a wonderful return to form. It’s great to see certain names back too, especially Jeremy Banx who had left when the comic went monthly. 

Halfway through reading the book it was clear to me what I was going to highlight first and it’s more gorgeousness from J.T. Dogg, this time written by Lew Stringer. That combination can only mean one thing, it’s Ham Dare: Pig of the Future. Last seen in The OiNK! Book 1988 I’d always remembered Ham and Pigby in serialised stories, yet only their first one was published that way. Here they get a three-page tale with a genius piece of scriptwriting from Lew after he was told by co-editor Mark Rodgers that only the first two would be printed in colour.

Normally a comic would just carry on regardless on to the black and white page but if something is “normally” done then we should really know by now that’s not what OiNK would do. Actually having it referred to is genuinely funny and Malcolm’s work is no less lovely. The third and fourth panels of that page in particular had me roaring, between the name of the weapon beam (and the reason for it) and the name of The Weakun’s henchman!

Ham Dare would return in the OiNK! Holiday Special 1989 the following year and make the cover for the only time, with a story originally written as his second serial and I for one can’t wait. There’s another serial of sorts in here, a set of four mini-posters based on Jeremy Banx’s original Butcherwatch idea, however this time each one is drawn by a different artist. Eric ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson, Mike Higgs, Les ‘Lezz’ Barton and Banx himself. What a team! Of course, Jeremy has to have the last word, right at the very end of the book.

We just never knew when Jimmy ‘The Cleaver’ Smith would pop up, did we? While there are still three special editions of OiNK to come between now and April 2025 this book feels like an end to the regular comic. Yes, this was already in the shops and Santa already had it saved for me, but with Jimmy bursting through to threaten pig pals at the end it felt like the perfect way to wrap things up. It was like he was telling us he was always going to be about, even if the comic wasn’t.

Obviously what he says about OiNK was no longer going to be the case, but that’s because this page was created a long time before the book was published, long before the comic even went monthly, back when Jeremy was still contributing. Someone else from back in those mists of time who makes a rather brief return here (courtesy of Ian Jackson again, written by Mark Rodgers) was Hadrian Vile and his diary. It may only be half a page, and the captions aren’t typed out, but boy was I happy to see him again no matter how briefly.

Way back in the preview issue’s review I mentioned how Burp’s story in OiNK would culminate in an epic tale that taught a very young me about puberty. You may have thought I was joking. Well, maybe it was a slight exaggeration. Raging Puberty is a huge eight-page Burp strip from Banx, set in the far future and recounting an ancient rite of passage amongst the alien species, using our pal (their “lost son”) as an example.

I read and enjoyed this strip during Christmas 1988, particularly the daft fight that takes place, the imaginative weaponry and the funny designs. However, skip forward a few years and a young teenage me decided to reread the book for the first time since. I saw this next strip in a completely different light. I thought, “How did they get away with this?” on more than one occasion while outrageously laughing (before taking it to school to show to all my friends, obviously).

Straight away the descriptive captions are classic Banx, reminiscent of some absolutely brilliant Burp strips in the later fortnightlies when he was often given a double-page spread to fill with his unique style of storytelling. Even though this is a comic strip the words alone paint such a picture that the images are barely needed. But what on Earth (or elsewhere) has this got to do with the title and the reason I found it so funny a few years later? The answer is found on the next page.

Not exactly subtle and that’s why I couldn’t believe OiNK, a children’s comic, got away with this. But even beyond The Round Furry Things there’s so much to laugh along with here, such as the grizzled old warrior who was tired of being a boy and Burp’s innocence at what he thought being a grown up was all about. Then there’s the dramatic change in angle with the lone caption, “and Burp had a very sweet tooth.” It reminds me of that famous, “and the dolphin’s name was Keith” moment from Jeremy’s Mr Big Nose in #22.

I’ve really missed his work in the comic.

I’m not sure if it’s just a good gag or if Jeremy was making a bit of a point with the first panel on the fifth page, but I think it’s both funny and poignant that battle cries and fear sound exactly the same. Then the story takes a brief break to detail Gunk’s weapon of choice, the Mauser! Only Jeremy could come up with a gun that feeds electricity to a small rodent’s fear receptors to provoke it to do a literal death stare. The silencer is just the icing on the cake.

Arguably the next page is even funnier. The fight escalates, Burp using his unique bodily functions we’ve all come to know and love and be grossed out by, then as it’s all building to a climax the story casually breaks again to have a closer look at another animal-based weapon. Burp is usually a pacifist but it suits him, doesn’t it? We even get a bit of Marlon Brando from On the Waterfront, although that would definitely have gone over my head in 1988.

It all has to end in an even sillier manner and it does so with aplomb. As a fan it’s fun to see the insides of Burp’s body again and how the little fellas do all their hard work for nothing. On the final page is a message that as a kid I took to mean we should never want to grow up, that adults are just silly, so why would we want to be them? As an adult now and looking around at the world today, I think that message is pretty much on point.

Jeremy Banx was both shocked and dismayed, joking about how concerned he was for my wellbeing

So anyway, a few years later I hit that time when things start to change and life can feel very confusing. It wasn’t something we talked with our friends about, we didn’t realise what was going on after all, but then I happened to read this again. I’m not going to say things suddenly made sense! (Did you read it?!) But it was enough for me to realise I wasn’t alone and it could be something to look back on and have a giggle about, so it couldn’t be all that bad.

I once mentioned to Jeremy how a young and impressionable me viewed this strip in my early teenage years and he was both shock and dismayed, joking about how concerned he was for my wellbeing. Typical Jeremy response. So, having been mentioned in the very first OiNK review on the blog we’ve now finally covered it and finished our regular read through, coming full circle. I’ve loved seeing this again after all these years.

Moving on and yes, the dreaded reprints we saw a handful of in the monthlies have even made their way into the annual, introduced by Uncle Pigg, promoted as a way for readers to check out what they may have missed out on. Even though I’d only started reading OiNK at #14 as a child there were still a few strips here I’d read before. But, even though I hadn’t read the majority I still felt these dampened the book as a whole, especially considering there’d already been a page cut.

As it turns out there are ten pages of reprints, meaning there are actually only 54 interior pages of new content. That’s only six more than the recent monthly issues or a Holiday Special. Even as a child I was very aware of this. These reprint pages are really the only place you’ll find mini-strips too. The rest is made up of much larger fare. There’s even a three-page Psycho Gran and a five-page Spectacles of Doom (which you can see some of in artist Andy Roper’s obituary).

The new content here is superb, second-to-none and some of the very best OiNK ever produced

This means the book is a rather quick read, especially if you skip the reprints. According to co-editor Patrick Gallagher cost cutting is partly to blame after Fleetway Publications took over from IPC Magazines (who had published the first half of OiNK’s run including the first book) and OiNK had survived the first round of cancellations. There’s a chance all the larger material here was already complete when Fleetway started to see the comic’s fortunes in a more negative light during the latter weeklies/early monthlies, and maybe the plugged was simply pulled on the rest of the book.

When OiNK’s stablemate titles such as Buster and Whizzer and Chips had 112 pages in their annuals for the same price (albeit cut down from 128) you couldn’t help but feel short changed as a pig pal. The new content here is superb, second-to-none and some of the very best OiNK ever produced! But I can’t help but wonder how amazing this book could’ve been! It could even have topped the previous one. With silly pages like this next one, it’s easy to see how.

Only in an OiNK Book could such a simple, cheeky gag like this take up a full page and be illustrated and coloured so gorgeously. However, even with all of these brilliant highlights I think I may have saved the fan favourite for last, at least as far as my memories are concerned. That’s because in 1988 it was so exciting and so funny to see two of Lew Stringer’s creations in the same strip, especially when they’re Pete and his Pimple and…. Pigswilla!

Actually, we even get Tom Thug popping up too (alongside his own snowy, Christmassy strip elsewhere), so that’s two-thirds of the Buster mergers included and it’s nice to see Pete reading OiNK again instead of that other comic. Ignore the heartbreaking caption about OiNK still being a periodical and watch as Pete’s pimple becomes the latest giant monster that only an equally giant robotic pig can save the world from.

I just love that panel showing us the pimple “terrorising the cities”. It may only be a small cameo for Pigswilla’s final appearance but we did get a superb epic strip for him back in #66 so this is a nice little addendum to say goodbye. Not that it would’ve been written as one but it works nicely anyway. When reading children’s stories to my friends’ kids I think I’ll stick to the moon being made of cheese, though. (Also, did you ‘spot’ the slightly obscured dig at W.H. Smith?)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at just some of the highlights from The OiNK! Book 1989. In more recent years I’ve seen some pig pals online somewhat dismiss it as nothing more than an inferior version of the first one. I hope I’ve been able to enlighten you a little on why some of the changes may have occurred and, most of all, shown you that the content in it is top notch OiNK all the way. Yes, it’s a little frustrating because this could’ve been a classic OiNK Book through and through, but the team still produced some of their very best work for it. If you see it on eBay you should definitely splash out the few quid it’ll cost you for some of the best laughs you’ll ever get from a comic book.

Just like last year the outro concludes what began earlier and, while it’s yet another example of the book publicising the ongoing comic after it was canned, it’s another great page by Ian Jackson. It’s always funny to see Mary Lighthouse get her comeuppance too, isn’t it? With superb script work throughout, plenty of laughs to be had, some stunning artwork and some gorgeous colours, The OiNK! Book 1989 may feel a little unfinished but as a way of ending the regular run of OiNK during the festive season it’s a pretty perfect piggy publication.

Just that back cover to go before I let you get back to that selection box you promised yourself you wouldn’t open again until Boxing Day. That hint on the front I alluded to earlier looked a bit like a wood effect finish behind the butcher’s head, don’t you agree? There’s a good reason for that.

BUSTER MERGE < > HOLiDAY SPECiAL 1989

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THE TOM PATERSON COLLECTiON: A BONKERS BOOK!

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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.

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OiNK! STARS iN BUSTER: A MiRTHFUL MERGE?

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The following post was originally written for Sunday 22nd but was held back after the sad news of Tony Husband’s passing

In the review of OiNK #68 I began by describing how I discovered it was coming to an end and merging into the pages of Buster. I was absolutely gutted, not to mention confused. While over the next few years it felt I had a knack for collecting comics that would end up cancelled quickly, OiNK had been a big part of my life for what felt like a long time at that age. But Buster was weekly and a lot cheaper, maybe this could be the next best thing? Especially with these three OiNK characters making the transition?

So, after asking for my reserved copy of OiNK I went back to the shelves and picked up this issue of Buster. However, something (I don’t know what) stopped me from placing a regular order right there and then for a weekly dose of Pete and his Pimple, Tom Thug and Weedy Willy, despite the former two being favourites of mine. When I got home I decided to read Buster first. I wanted to be excited about something new, a new comic with four times the amount of Lew Stringer’s strips every month.

Despite the fact OiNK was a breath of fresh air in comparison to others, its humour speaking to me like no other humour comic, I was desperate not to say goodbye completely. Perhaps I’d really like Buster, maybe its humour had moved on in the few years since OiNK’s creation, maybe I’d reserve it and have a brand new weekly to look forward to with some faves included.

The fun front cover with the legendary Tom Paterson drawing our OiNK characters was a very positive start although I was initially disappointed they weren’t part of the Buster story that continued on to the back cover. However, the story is really good, Tom’s artwork elevating Mark Bennington’s already funny script to lofty heights with his crazy style, gorgeous (or in this case grotesque) details and of course his trademark smelly sock.

I was also initially a little jealous of Buster readers, who still had the same format as OiNK did in its Golden Age during the final months of 1987. Having said that, after reading this it felt like it had nowhere near the amount of reading material as those issues of OiNK had, nor did it take anywhere near as long to read. Our piggy publication crammed so much more content into the same 32 pages, so even though it was 7p more expensive a whole year before this 28p comic, OiNK was a real bargain!

Towards the back Buster welcomes any new readers making the pilgrimage over from Uncle Pigg’s comic at the top of his letters page with hopes that he can keep them laughing. Let’s see if his wish would come true and begin with a look at the three highlights we’re all here for, and no doubt the first three pages any pig pal would’ve read after that cover strip. First up is Pete Throb.

Pete and his Pimple keeps its title banner so initially everything seems normal, or at least as normal as an OiNK strip ever was. However, once we get going there’s a key difference that may not have sat well with long-time fans. Of course it’s an introductory strip in many regards, which is completely understandable and that’s not the problem here. Have a read of Pete’s first Buster page and see if anything pops out. Or rather, doesn’t.

Right up to that penultimate panel everything is as chaotic and funny as we’ve come to expect from Lew’s Pete, but then he lands on the burglars and squishes them, his pimple flattening for one panel and that’s it. Where’s the almighty explosion? Where are the vats of pus that would’ve stuck the thieves to the ground until the police arrived? Something key to Pete’s success in OiNK was missing. Nothing had been enforced upon Lew, he simply knew he couldn’t show a pimple bursting and covering everyone with pus in this comic.

He wasn’t the only one of Lew’s characters to see a change either. In the monthly OiNKs Tom Thug had made humour comics history by actually leaving school, applying for jobs and even signing on for unemployment benefits. But for Buster time was reversed and Tom became that mainstay of children’s humour comics, the eternal schoolboy. Not that this is a complaint of course, not with quality like this.

I’m surprised Tom knows the phrase “attaché-case”! This felt much more like an OiNK strip than Pete’s, although there was already one little change in that Satan the Cat would go unnamed from now on, ‘Satan’ not deemed appropriate anymore. Also, Tom would only ever look queasy if he felt like being sick, unlike the results we could see in OiNK! There was a reason behind the changes. These popular OiNK stars simply weren’t in OiNK anymore and had to adapt to their new surroundings.

As such, Pete’s pimple would largely go un-popped, Tom would never leave school for a setting the younger audience would better appreciate and his cat’s name would remain a secret for pig pals to keep. Would these changes be acceptable in the eyes of their fans? Well, there’s one more character to check in on first before I share what my opinion was upon reading this comic back in 1988.

Weedy Willy, originally created by Graham Exton, usually written by Mark Rodgers (as he is here) and always drawn by Mike Green needed the least changes in making the transition, although apparently he’s single again after he eventually began dating Dishy Mandy in the second OiNK Holiday Special. With hindsight there’s a moment here where he’s accused of being a pervert though, but we’ll put that down to this being inadvertent and 35 years ago.

All three of these strips were clearly introductory ones and below we’ll look at their next three instalments to see how they settled in, but for ten-year-old me it simply wasn’t enough to justify that slot in my comics list. I was only allowed a certain amount on order at once and Wildcat’s preview issue given away with the last OiNK was very tempting. But ultimately it came down to how I felt at the time about Buster.

I immediately thought, “What?! My OiNK has to end but they’ll start THIS?!”

In the last issue of OiNK Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins described it as “a breath of fresh air in the clichéd world of children’s comics” and apart from a few exceptions (the brill Buster strip, as well as fun with Ricky Rainbow, Ivor Lott and Tony Broke and X-Ray Specs) little was convincing me Buster was any different. Yes, it was a bit more random by this point, after a lot of mergers there wasn’t enough room every week for all the characters so some would pop in and out, but the majority of the humour felt old-fashioned compared to what I was used to. Then I saw this!

As a child this advert really didn’t help. Please remember: I was ten. I saw this and immediately thought words to the effect of, “What? My OiNK has to end but they’ll start THIS?!” The cover even looks unfinished, like it’s lots of bits of paper glued together. Reading this issue now there are some more smiles and laughs to be had but things like Nipper and Dad Mum are atrocious and don’t hold up to the test of time at all. The latter’s whole ‘funny’ scenario appears to be the fact the character is a single mum who likes to do things that apparently are ‘funny’ for a mum to do, like work, go out with friends and have fun! Outdated humour even for the 80s, surely.

Getting only 12 pages of OiNK strips a month wasn’t worth the reservation slot and so I moved over to Wildcat which itself was heartbreakingly short-lived. Until doing this blog I never purchased any more issues of Buster so I’m quite excited to have a look at some new Pete, Tom and Willy strips from the next three issues. OiNK’s title would only appear on these four issues in total and it was never called ‘Buster and OiNK’ like other mergers.

Most likely with WHSmith’s stupid attitude towards OiNK and placing it on the top shelves Fleetway didn’t want to risk that happening to their top title. Despite OiNK’s humour simply being cheeky (more in-line with the kids of the 80s) and the good moral messages it contained, to some groups this didn’t matter so perhaps the publisher wanted to play it safe. The Tom and Willy covers were drawn by Tom Paterson again, and Buster didn’t appear on the cover of the last one but there’s a funny story to tell about that inside, which we’ll get to below.

So let’s take a quick look at the remaining OiNK strips and first up are Pete’s. The first one reuses a joke from one panel of a sports issues of OiNK as a basis for the whole strip and as you can see in the next two we actually have pimples popping! Although, it bursts with much less of the sticky mess we found so funny and the result is shown only in silhouette, and his dog’s explodes more like a balloon filled with air than a pimple filled with pus.

Don’t get me wrong these are still fun but it does feel like the main selling point has been watered down somewhat. This isn’t a fault on the part of Lew, Pete was one of OiNK’s most popular characters so was an obvious choice for the merge in that regard. But the strips from OiNK just wouldn’t have been allowed in Buster, so maybe a different character should’ve been chosen in the end? (Although I’m not sure who would’ve been more suitable.)

I can see why Pete was brought over. However, with an even younger audience how many readers could identify with a spotty teenager? As such the strips feel sanitised and that’s completely the wrong feeling for Pete and his Pimple. Tom fares much better. Yes, the writing on the back of the t-shirt at the end of the first strip below seems tame by OiNK standards but by all counts these are classic Tom through and through.

That slip in the middle strip caught me completely off guard and I’ll admit I snorted with laughter at that one! Also nice to see the little extras we sometimes got at the bottom of Tom’s strips have made the pilgrimage to Buster with his woodworking masterpieces. Taking Tom back to school was an obvious choice. Unfortunately many children come across a bully or two in their lives, but Tom could prepare them by showing the true identity of all bullies. As such, he feels just as much at home here as he did with Uncle Pigg and the rest.

As for Willy, you can see below he’s back to asking Dishy Mandy out but at least it has a happy ending for once. (Actually, given how they just suddenly appeared as a couple in OiNK I’m going to say this is how they actually got together.) In OiNK Willy would sometimes use his weediness to his advantage but we haven’t seen that here yet. No pun is intended but these are some of his weakest entries I’ve seen to date, and I’m not sure if it’s because they’ve been simplified back to what they were at the very beginning or not.

So what happened next? Willy would disappear completely after a few months and even the mighty OiNK megastar Pete would follow suit about six months after the merge (although he did cross over into regular character Thunderclap’s strip). As I said I don’t know if many Buster readers would’ve appreciated him as much as pig pals did. Tom was another story altogether though. He became one of Buster’s most popular characters and would remain in the comic all the way until its ultimate cancellation in 2000.

Lew created brand new weekly instalments for Tom all the way until 1996, over 400 strips in total for the brainless bully over ten years. He even made the cover on occasion, taking the place of title character Buster himself, proving Tom’s popularity with readers of both the 80s and the 90s. Even to this day, anyone who has dealt with online trolls will still get a kick out of the Tom Thug strips.

“We’ll try and make things easy for your first week, Mike!”

Buster to artist Mike Lacey

I’ll finish things off with a Buster strip from the issue with X-Ray Specs on the cover. Tom Paterson took a break for a couple of weeks (given the amount he squeezed into his pages it’s understandable!) and instead Mike Lacey drew the character. Brilliantly, this is also the basis for the plot. I love it when a comics character acknowledges they’re inside a comic and here Buster and Delbert decide to help Mike by having everyone on their best (and easiest to draw) behaviour.

This reads like a practical joke from writer Mark Bennington to Mike so I asked Mark about it. However, he wrote literally hundreds of scripts so it’s only understandable that he can’t recall a specific one, but he did tell me, “It seems to follow my slow build up to a twisted chaotic end style which I liked to do. Sometimes the editor Allen Cummings gave me a couple of sentences on subject matter to follow for the coming issue and I put up a script idea based on that.” Like all of Mark’s work for Buster it’s a brilliant piece of writing and there’s a ton of his work in the Tom Paterson book which will be getting reviewed here soon.

There we go, that’s our look at the beginning of the Buster/OiNK merge complete. The amount of brand new (to me) Tom strips still out there to read makes an attempt to collect them all very tempting. Expensive, but tempting. And that’s not including the fact Specky Hector would return with a multi-part guide to comics after his very funny one in OiNK, and Lew would also draw Vampire Brats, scripted by OiNK co-editor Mark Rodgers. There are some key moments from those years I’ll definitely be covering on the blog though so keep your eyes peeled for those further down the line. Beyond that, you never know…

Don’t forget Pete, Tom and Willy star in the second OiNK! Book and you’ll see if they’re included in the highlights on Christmas Day 2023.

iSSUE 68 < > OiNK! BOOK 1989

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COMiNG UP: BUSTER

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This was the day back in 1988 when the 68th edition of OiNK was due on the shelves, but it didn’t appear. It would be a full week late for me, finally appearing the following Saturday, 22nd October. This was potentially deliberate according to co-editor Patrick Gallagher and I’ll talk about that in the issue’s review. However a week before it arrived, behind this innocuous Tom Paterson cover of Buster, was some terrible news for any pig pals who happened to read OiNK’s sister comic.

Images taken from previous OiNK strips
drawn by Lew Stringer and Mike Green

Describing Pete Throb, Weedy Willy and especially Tom Thug as “funsters” doesn’t give me much confidence that the editor of Buster understood these characters or the sense of humour OiNK readers had. Indeed, Lew Stringer has told me about how he changed some popular aspects of his strips for the merge. Will they still be recognisable as the characters we’ve grown to love for two-and-a-half years? Will they still be just as funny when translated to the pages of a more traditional comic, the likes of which OiNK was created to counter and would often ridicule?

You’ll find out in one week. On the same day as the review of OiNK #68 I’ll be taking a look at the first four issues of Buster to contain these favourites. They were the only issues to feature the name of the comic they came from on the cover and at the time I only ever bought the first of them. Why? You’ll find out in seven days on Sunday 22nd October 2023.

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OiNK! #67: FiSHY RUBBiSH

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This is a really stinky, smelly, rubbish issue of OiNK. However, as pig pals will attest that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Instead, it’s rubbish with a capital ‘R’ because David Haldane’s Rubbish Man is back after a long hiatus. Originally appearing in every comic, special and book, Rubbish Man disappeared when OiNK when weekly with #45, however David continued to contribute to every issue with his uniquely bizarre sense of humour.

Not intending to do things by halves, Jimmy Bung (our hero’s alter ego) takes up a whopping ten pages of this issue, his adventure split up into five double-page spreads and as you can see by the cover it has a rather famous guest star in the shape of then American President, Ronald Reagan. And a slime monster. Naturally. I love the ‘Reagan In Arms Trouble’ headline, mimicking the newspapers of the day. Interestingly (or coincidentally) the three characters who’d be making the transition to Buster comic in a month are all mentioned on the cover, and watch out for a special blog post next week about that top corner announcement!

We kick things off right at the top of page two with Kev F Sutherland’s Here Comes Rhymin’ Simon, a one-off character whose name suggests the joke will be based solely on how he speaks. However, we should know by now never to predict a strip by Kev. My point is proven when the story actually takes a dig at the push for ‘Made in Britain’ in the press at the time, something Spitting Image also masterfully took the hand out of. Even at my young age (back then, not now) I can remember my friends and I making jokes about those little stickers.

A strong satirical start that this kid definitely appreciated at the time and a few pages later Marc Riley’s Harry the Head returns to top form too. Harry’s strips were always at their best when they were full pages and individual stories. The lengthy adventure serial he had for a few months in the fortnightlies didn’t really work for me and, while his mini-strips in recent issues have been funny, reading this next page reminded me of how strong his entries were right back at the beginning of OiNK.

While having Harry stitched up inside Barney could have made for some (possibly rather disturbing) fun, the end made me chortle. As if Harry being a disembodied head wasn’t a dead giveaway, slapping on a joke shop disguise is just so ridiculous with an already ridiculous character I couldn’t help but laugh. It’s nice to see Marc back to writing for Harry too.

After what felt like a Lew Stringer special last month, the prolific cartoonist returns to a more regular workload. There’s a one-page Tom Thug which rings true, in which we see Tom taking on the true persona of all bullies including the online troll variety. Then Pete and his Pimple’s three-page strip starts off with this imaginative photo collage as he travels into the far-flung future to seek out a pimple cure after a suggestion from reader Matthew Browning of Kent.

A nice little 2000AD reference there too.

The story is a good ‘un if you can track down the issue, with Pete arrested in a world where anyone with spots is jailed for everything that’s wrong with the world, after the government has run out of other minorities to blame. Just to nail the point home, when a robotic claw grabs him it’s named ‘Claws 28’ after Margaret Thatcher’s draconian anti-LGBTQ+ Clause 28 from the late 80s. It’s yet another example of Lew’s social commentary that’s both very funny and unfortunately still very relevant.

Time to see what that front cover was all about and in a distant galaxy we meet the crazy baddie (aren’t they all?) Dr. Blip, the last of his race, and his two henchmen The Glove Puppets From Hell. In order to hold all of planet Earth to ransom for fifty squillion, zillion pounds and a copy of Dire Straits’ latest album he’s kidnapped Reagan and sent the largest monster Rubbish Man has ever faced. How large? Well…

Jings, Rubbish Man! I do believe you’re right! That would’ve been one helluva cliffhanger had the original idea for this strip as a weekly serial been realised. Hinted at back in #52, the plan was for this to be a five-part story but it’s clear David ended up creating it for the monthly format; there are no titles at the beginning of each part (unlike The Street-Hogs in #65 which had been partially drawn before the shift to monthlies) and it all feels very spaced out, like it was created for a larger format.

Below is the page where Reagan is kidnapped by one of Dr. Blip’s hideous monsters just as he’s on the telephone to our smelly hero. The panels are huge and every double-page spread feels like one page of David’s usually packed pages stretched out. The art is gorgeously coloured (a rare thing for Haldane in OiNK) and the grotesque creature is suitably (comically) horrific and very random as per David’s humour, but there’s just not as much to read as we’ve come to expect.

There’s something else missing too. Where’s the mouldy custard squirting out of Rubbish Man’s nostrils? Or the mushy peas spraying out from his fingertips? Or his super garlic breath? While it’s a funny and imaginative strip, apart from one solitary smelly foot none of his powers are present. They were the whole point of the character and why he was so beloved by the children reading the comic.

Instead, all of the gross out humour is reserved for the stomach of the planet devouring beast and hordes of undigested carrots. Or rather, a “hungry horde of psychopathic, semi-digested, blood-crazed diced carrots”. It may not feel like a classic Rubbish Man story but I can’t fault the imagination on show and where else would you find a superhero not only swimming through a swamp of ear wax, but also commenting on how this isn’t his first time.

The story comes to its conclusion when Reagan utters some magical Presidential words told to him by his wife Nancy earlier that day (“Jumpin’ Jellybeans!”) and turns into President of the United States Man. Yes, really. With a simple, single superhero punch Dr. Blip (himself modelled on a certain 80s English politician) is defeated and Rubbish Man takes care of the Glove Puppets from Hell he’d been forced to wear in equally easy fashion. Of course there’s just one more issue to mop up.

Or not, as it turns out.

With the new target audience of teens and students it’s strange to see the absence of the smelly and unhygienic nature of the character. (Surely they’re an even more perfect group of readers for him!) As it stands it’s a fun strip which I think needed about half the space it took up here and I can only imagine the extra laughs it could’ve contained had it been written as five individual strips in the weekly OiNK. As an epic adventure for this particular character it could’ve been so much more.

This was his penultimate strip, with a similarly lengthy story to come in the OiNK Winter Special next year, then there’s a reprint in the OiNK Summer Collection the year after. He doesn’t even pop up in the forthcoming OiNK! Book 1989 (see further below). It’s such a shame because he was a real highlight of those early issues, my favourites to this day still being the colourful Kentucky Fried adventure from the very first issue and the multiple laughs to be had in #9’s bonkers entry. Farewell for now Jimmy, it’s been a whiffy blast. Meanwhile…

This Meanwhile… from Kev F reminds me of a smaller strip by Vaughan Brunt and Mike Green from #31 and just like Vaughan’s debut this was also repeated umpteen times in the school playground to anyone who’d listen. Nice little cameo by one of Kev’s Three Scientists from last month’s highlights, too. From a spoof of one classic comics superhero to a spoof of another classic comic’s adventure strip, this time of the British variety.

Danny and Penny Cretin were overjoyed when their uncle built them an amazing mechanical fish

The Iron Salmon, Lew Stringer

Back in the 60s Beano would have a couple of adventure strips in amongst the silliness and OiNK cartoonist Lew Stringer’s favourite was The Iron Fish, a tale of two young children who owned a fantastic metal submersible in the shape of a giant, dynamic-looking fish in which they’d have various adventures. A couple of decades later and Lew teamed up with artist Andy Roper to bring life to The Iron Salmon, a rather more cumbersome and sorrowful-looking vehicle.

The two children may have the same forenames as their Beano originals but their surname was changed to one Lew felt better suited the rather wet personalities of Beano’s pair. While the adventure strip had them poke their noses into things to save the day, here their nosey nature causes disaster after disaster, neither of them having the intelligence or self-awareness to know they’re the ones causing all of the problems to begin with. This is great fun.

Andy’s art is perfect for spoofing classic comics. He did so with OiNK’S take on Rover‘s and Victor’s Tough of the Track and of course let’s not forget his main contribution to our comic, the phenomenal Spectacles of Doom. The fact the original Iron Fish’s headlights looked like ferocious eyes is brilliantly transformed into big cute ones instead, with a further set of headlights making it look even more gormless. Sadly no longer with us, you can see more highlights from Andy’s time on OiNK including his Scruff of the Track, in his obituary.

You can also check out Lew’s posts about The Iron Fish on his old Blimey! blog, including some of the earliest ones he read as a child, its reinvention for Buddy comic and even a real-life version, The Seabreacher!

As a kid this was the first monthly I spotted strips (as opposed to the posters, which I’d missed the first time) I’d originally read a year or two earlier. This disappointed me but was by no means a deal breaker. Including those posters there are eight pages of reprint material here, more than the previous issues but on the back page came news of something glossy and new! The OiNK! Book 1988 had been so incredible the previous Christmas I’d eagerly awaited its sequel. Now, word finally reached pig pals of the 1989 volume.

It was great to see the old logo again. As a kid I hadn’t realised I’d actually missed it until I saw this superb J.T. Dogg cover. His illustration made up for the disappointing news it contained 16 less pages than the previous book, especially disappointing given the regular comic now had 48! As a result, the book having only 16 more pages than the comic it was advertised in felt rather stingy when I originally saw this advert. I could only hope it wouldn’t disappoint on Christmas Morning. We’ll find out in a few short months.

We’ve missed you Mary, and we’ll miss everyone very soon

There’s a surprise return to strip form for one more character before I sign off this review. I’ll end on that but first the Next Issue page (which you’ll see in its own post on Friday 20th October 2023) contains a gorgeous Frank Sidebottom cover which sadly adorns what would be the last issue of OiNK. I can’t believe we’ve come this far already. Don’t worry though, there’s a ton of OiNK content still to come, both in the immediate future and for years yet on the blog.

For example coming next week is that post promised above, on Sunday 15th October you’ll see how Buster comic announced the merge to come the following week, then on Sunday 22nd October you’ll have two reviews to read, one for OiNK #68 and another for the first four Busters starring three of our favourite characters. Then it’ll feel like no time at all until The OiNK! Book 1989 is reviewed on Christmas Day. For now, as we approach the end it feels fitting to have Mary Lighthouse (critic) back in the pages again, here written by F. Jayne Rodgers (co-editor Mark’s sister), her sole contribution and drawn as ever by the irreplaceable Ian Jackson. We’ve missed you Mary, and we’ll miss everyone very soon.

iSSUE 66 < > iSSUE 68

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FANZiNE FUNNiES: GOiNG ROGUE

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It’s been a while since fan favourite OiNK cartoonist Lew Stringer released one of his excellent collections. At the time of writing the only one reviewed so far on the OiNK Blog since I relaunched this site in 2021 is Derek the Troll (definitely check that out). Beginning next year in a new series of posts I’ll be getting caught up with a myriad of releases from Lew and many other OiNK contributors, something I’m particularly looking forward to.

For now, back to Lew’s Fanzine Funnies. Between 1991 and 2006 Lew created a series of daft comic strips for Camera Obscura, a fanzine for a small branch of Two and Six, a fan society for the classic 60s TV show The Prisoner. Originally based around the eponymous white sphere from the series and later focussing on a fictional obsessed fan, in the opening editorial Lew hopes readers will still find them amusing even if they’re not familiar with the subject matter. Having finished this collection I can assure you this is most definitely the case.

The Prisoner may have only had 17 episodes but a devoted fanbase grew up around it and Patrick McGoohan’s Number Six character. It may also have been broadcast ten years before I was born but its signature phrase, “I am not a number! I am a free man!” was still being used in everything from comedy sketches to television commercials, as was Rover the huge white ball-like creature (apologies if that’s an erroneous description, I’ve never seen it and am writing from memory) who is first up in these strips.

Taking one of these ‘Rover’ sentries and redefining him as an out-of-work actor after the series ended is a genius idea and opened up a myriad of possibilities. These include ludicrous auditions for new roles, a rabid fan following for what is essentially a giant balloon, time travelling to 1992 to escape these people only to appear at a reunion for the fan society and getting his own Saturday morning cartoon show, Hanna-Barbera style.

Lew even ties The Prisoner in with his own ‘Lewniverse’ of characters in a way. Rover has an agent, and that agent’s name is Roy L.T. Check, who may be familiar to fans of Combat Colin from the pages of Transformers. Alongside all of this daftness are a range of special additions like a Prisoner clothing line, a Doctor Who page and even that old Lew staple, a board game.

“Coathangers are featured for precisely 8.57 seconds in the opening minutes. That’s almost 9 seconds… 6 upside down!”

Alistair Sadgitt

The fans in the society even have a bit of fun poked at them. For example, in the future they hold their meetings on the moon (because Portmeirion in Wales where the show was filmed has been moved there to protect it from pollution) and Rover is bluntly honest when he tells them what he really thought about the show. It’s all in good jest and shows the fans could have a giggle at themselves and not take things too seriously.

However, I’m sure we all know from our own personal acquaintances over the years or from social media those fans that do take things far too seriously; the intense fanboys that like to try and lord it over the rest of us and who are simply best ignored. The second half of this collection focuses on Lew’s version of one of these people and he’d give any of them a run for their money. Meet Alistair Sadgitt (sad git).

While there are plenty of Alistair strips I think this page perfectly sums up the character. The show ended with so many open-ended questions that fan theories and discussions have continued ever since, often picking out supposed clues and running themes from the episodes to try and explain the unsolved mysteries. However, as you can see Alistair takes this to the nth degree.

Complete with his Number Six-like jacket (not actually tailored, it has masking tape for its trimmings) his overly-obsessive ways are the funniest aspect of this collection. I may not be familiar with The Prisoner but I certainly am with the type of person Lew is taking the hand out of here. On a related note, it’s mentioned that he’s 42-years-old. I’m 45 at the time of writing! Either Alistair’s ways have aged him or I’m a lot older than I feel!

Towards the rear of the comic are a selection of strips and images taken from other publications or created for fan events, my favourite being one in which the main character of the show is retooled as a traditional humour comics character, called Number Six and his Unmutual Tricks! As a fan of OiNK, which turned traditional comics on their heads, this reads like as much of a spoof of those comics as it does The Prisoner.

Any fan of Lew’s (or indeed funny comics in general) should find plenty to enjoy here, and plenty to laugh along with. However, for fans of The Prisoner it’s an essential purchase. Presented in landscape format with 32 pages in total, all printed on top quality paper stock and a card cover it’s a high quality piece of self-publishing, just like all of Lew’s other collections. All of this for only £5 plus postage? Bargain.

To order your own copy just head on over to Lew’s eBay seller’s shop where you can also sometimes find original art and more for sale. Lew accepts all forms of payment and not just PayPal either. At the time of writing, Fanzine Funnies had only been released a couple of weeks ago and is already on its second printing. You could definitely do worse than bookmarking Lew’s eBay page and keeping a regular eye on it to see what else pops up, he sometimes reprints some of his sold out comics further down the line, and don’t forget his personal blog where new comics are obviously announced first.

“He’s not a number, he’s a free weather balloon.”

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OiNK! #66: PRODiGiOUS PORK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horace Watkins by Tony Husband
GBHDP by Simon Thorp

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

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

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

Tom Thug

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

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

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

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

Lew originally drew Pete urinating on the robot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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COMiNG UP: OiNK! #66

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

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

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KNOW YOUR OiNK!: CARTOONiSTS’ PROFiLES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UNCLE PiGG’S CRACKLiNG TALES: VOLUMES OF FUN

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In the issue of OiNK on sale now (at the time of writing) back in 1988 a special competition was published in which pig pals could win a set of two new books called From the Pages of OiNK!: Uncle Pigg’s Crackling Tales, new entries in publisher Knockabout’s Jester range. These were novel-sized collections of strips from the first couple of dozen issues of our favourite comic. The competition in #64 also acted as the only advert they’d ever receive. They passed me by as a kid and I only found out about them again a handful of years ago.

I’ve read online from certain quarters that apparently they were of very low quality, that all the reprints were very badly reproduced and that they felt like cheap cash-ins, but nothing could be farther from the truth! So today, at the point in OiNK’s real time read through when they were first announced to the readers I’ve decided to take a closer look at both books, while showing you just how good they actually are.

Given the rough matt quality of paper used for novels these feel like OiNK has been given the Big Comic Book treatment. Novel-sized and with 100 pages each, volume one contains a whopping 53 strips and the second has even more, with 63 classic funnies. They both come with new introductions, the first from Uncle Pigg and both books finish with a little promotion to buy OiNK every week using the design from the OiNK 45 record (the comic was still weekly when these were put together but monthly by the time they were released).

Uncle Pigg’s introduction is full of his usual boasts and I like what the initials after his name really stand for. Rhyming off the achievements of the comic up to this stage makes it all the more saddening to know that at the time of their release we were only a handful of issues away from the end! Also, while he tells the reader to watch out for her, unfortunately Mary Lighthouse (and Uncle Pigg himself) is nowhere to be seen in strip form.

But it’s the person who wrote the introduction to the second book that’s a real surprise. It’s none other than Alan Moore himself (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke). Yes, that Alan Moore has written his own personal introduction for this OiNK collection. While it’s great to find out such a legendary comics writer was a fan, initially I thought it was a shame he seemed to get some facts wrong and didn’t seem to have gotten the point about a character. Thankfully Lew Stringer has clarified the latter.

It did read like Alan had missed the point about Tom Thug somewhat in his comparison to Dennis the Menace, which would be completely wrong; Tom was just a bully and always the loser and butt of the jokes. “Alan Moore’s comment about Tom Thug is tonue in cheek of course,” Lew has says in his comment below this post. “He certainly gets what Tom’s about as he compares him to a fascist movement.”

Mad Magazine’s satire and the wish to make something relevant to kids of the 80s inspired OiNK

While some did liken OiNK to Viz after it was released, its three creators certainly did not take their lead from Viz, a myth that particularly irks me as it takes away from its (and their) originality. Viz had no influence on the team’s creation whatsoever. Mad Magazine’s satire and the wish to make something relevant to kids of the 80s inspired creators Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers. That last important point Alan correctly points out.

I asked Patrick about the books and Alan’s inclusion. “From what I remember, when we were working on the Crackling Tales books, we were also really busy dealing with the early stages of the TV side of things, which, initially, was to produce OiNK! for TV,” he told me. “I think we allowed [publishers] Knockabout to produce the Crackling Tales covers to our specifications but we provided everything else. I also think that Knockabout was the contact for Alan Moore.”

These are excellent additions to anyone’s OiNK collection

So what makes up both books? There’s a star strip in each, with 12 Burp strips by Jeremy Banx in the first volume and a ten-part Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins story by Tony Husband in the other. Things kick off with the very first Burp strip in fact and after reading his misadventures all the way through to the final weekly by now, these early editions feel so different. That’s not to say they’re any less funny than they were originally of course. Both characters are perfect ways to highlight OiNK’s uniqueness.

As you can see the strips are printed sideways which makes more sense when you think about how much smaller these pages are than the comic’s; if they’d been printed normally they’d be far too small to enjoy properly. With 100 pages the books aren’t thick enough for this to get in the way of the strips and their middle panels are still easily read, even spaced out a little more when the art allows. This makes for a decidedly different reading experience, which let’s face it suits the OiNK perfectly.

Alongside Burp and Horace you’ll find a selection of other regulars such as Tom Thug, Weedy Willy, Cowpat County, Zootown, Hugo the Hungry Hippo, even the likes of Lashy the Wonder Pig and a Butcher Watch are included. Also here are some others who never made it past the first year of the comic, like Maggie Pie, Pete’s Pup and Kid Gangster. There are also a selection of one-offs like Jeremy’s excellent Curse of the Mummy and Mrs Warsaw-Pact which I found so funny back in #13 and #10 respectively. Absolute classics!

As you can see from these photos of one-off Scruff of the Track and a Cowpat County the reproduction is superb even on this very different paper, all of the intricate details of Andy Roper’s and Davy Francis’ artwork still as crisp as they were on OiNK’s much larger glossy pages. It’s great to see things like Scruff here too, especially for readers who had come to OiNK much later and could use these books to catch up on some of what they missed. I expected these to be made up solely of the regulars still in the comic at the time of publication, so I’m glad to see I was wrong.

Below you can see the smaller strips look just as good with anything between two and four of them fitting in when spread across this format. Some of my favourites from the whole run are here too such as Henry the Wonder Dog by Davey Jones and Ian Knox’s Roger Rental He’s Completely Mental, who I’ve been really missing from the comic for a while now. The regulars also have a chance to share this space, their half-page entries sitting alongside their larger strips elsewhere, as you can see in two from Lew Stringer here.

When OiNK was printed on gloss paper (up to #35) greyscale colouring was something unique for us to enjoy, with other humour comics printed on newsprint of much lesser quality they were unable to produce the same result. Even when it changed to matt paper initially it was of a good enough stock for artists such as Lew to continue with this style (although it did stop when the comic went weekly for a while due to the paper). Pete and his Pimple above may not look quite as good as they did originally but I don’t think it looks bad at all for this paper.

So where did all those criticisms of the reproductions come from? There are some examples of strips losing detail in the transition to these books, although across the combined total of 116 only three strips suffer from this. One is below and unfortunately it’s a really rather good Burp strip. I’m not sure how this was okay for the publishers, maybe it just slipped through by accident, but to write off these books because of three such instances is just silly.

It’s great to see Willy here too in some of his earliest adventures back when he was guaranteed to pop up in every issue. His earliest pages were definitely among his strongest (not an adjective Willy was used to) and it’s been great to see him back on form these past few months in the read through ever since the second Holiday Special. Reading those and his starring role in these books, it’s clear he was a good choice to make the transfer to Buster later in the year.

Some other pages I was very happy to see reprinted were an early Tom Paterson contribution when it was still a possibility he could’ve been a regular cartoonist for Uncle Pigg, there are a few Christmassy strips which made me very happy indeed including a classic entry from The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile, it was great to see Pete’s Pup again from the late Jim Needle, a character who really should’ve stayed around, and the first appearance of Tom’s Toe poking fun at conventional comics still grabs your attention thanks to his cartoonist being none other than John Geering!

Meet Mister Cheese by Tom Paterson
Hadrian Vile written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Ian Jackson
Pete’s Pup by Jim Needle
Tom’s Toe written by Tony Husband, drawn by John Geering

These books appear on eBay quite regularly for a few quid each and for anyone who wants to relive some of their favourite childhood comics but doesn’t know which issues to choose from, or who likes the fact they can do so while storing them easily on a book shelf, these are a must. Unfortunately, there would be no more volumes in the series. “I don’t think we had any concrete plans to produce any more Crackling Tales books,” Patrick says. “That would have been dependent on how the first couple sold. But by the time that information might have come through, OiNK was probably history!”

Sadly that was most likely the case. I doubt these got much of a promotional push by Fleetway by this late stage in OiNK’s lifetime, especially seeing as how it had basically been rebooted as a monthly ‘magazine’ for teenagers by now. As it stands though, these are excellent additions to anyone’s OiNK collection, or even for your book collection as a great round up of OiNK’s crackling sense of humour.

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