Fancy 32 very high quality pages containing 28 equally high quality and hilarious Lew Stringer comics? Surely for every reader of this blog the answer to that is a no-brainer. After a lengthy delay, Lew’s fifth collection of Combat Colin strips from Marvel UK’s Transformers comic arrives and it’s a belter. Lew’s humour strip just got better and better during the last couple of years of that comic’s life and now we’re deep into that part of the run.
Covering over half a year’s worth of misadventures from 1990 and 1991, Colin had been upgraded to a full page for a while and Lew really took advantage of the extra space. He included so many gags and background jokes per page his work was often a highlight for many readers of the Robots in Disguise. He also wrote more multi-issue stories which were among the best he produced.
Combat Colin with Semi-Automatic Steve in The Secret of the Combat Trousers is the first such tale in this collection and features baddies in disguise, multi-dimensional travel and even the honest-to-gosh “true origin of Combat Colin”. It’s a brilliant three-part tale that I remember well, not just from my recent real time read through of Transformers, but from the actual time of its first printing.
However, the yampiest tale here has got to be Battlefield Wallytown which originally ran for a whopping six weeks. Returning villains, returning heroes, warping of realities, time travel… anything Lew could come up with seems to have been squeezed into this one and it all works. It’s been combined into one story like in previous collections, although the other multipart series here appear in their original forms.
Lew’s art is just as funny as his scriptwriting, such as Colin’s enigmatic face or that brilliant panel where he conveys the bright light of a hero’s downfall on a black and white page. Story wise, there’s also the return of a robotic foe that’s much more cumbersome than the original (perfectly spoofing RoboCop 2 in my eyes) in a strip with an ending that has us re-reading the previous chapters to see the clue we all overlooked. Then there’s the perfect example of how a common everyday phrase can take on a whole new meaning here.
Every page includes details of the issue of Transformers they originally appeared in and its cover date (instead of release date, but this makes it easier to find the issue if you wanted to) and one of my very favourite Combat Colin pages finally makes its appearance. To see a preview of it just go and have a look at a special Christmas post from last year.
In Lew’s editorial he explains how some of the strips are printed in greyscale because they’ve been taken from the pages of the published comic after Marvel UK lost his original artwork and he hopes this doesn’t spoil our enjoyment too much. On the contrary, I think the greyscale pages are some of the best looking here, with a lovely retro feel like reading a classic Dandy or Beano annual, and the printing finish is smoother.
With an appearance by a certain Autobot, Lew’s token funny reference to The Prisoner and even a classic Airplane/Leslie Nielsen quote (you know which one) there’s so much to enjoy in here that I don’t have the room to include them all, nor would I want to! You should be surprised by them and enjoy them for yourself and you can do so by buying the comic directly from Lew.
Even the advert for Lew’s personal blog is funny with the cosiest looking Daleks you ever did see!
So how do you get a hold of #5 of Combat Colin for yourself? Just head to Lew’s eBay shopwhere you can buy this hilarious comic, printed on extremely high quality paper with a card cover no less, for just £5.00 (plus £3.50 p+p). A bargain if ever there was one! There’s just the one volume still to be published, which promises to include not only the remainder of the Transformers strips but also material I’ve never read before. Let’s hope we haven’t got as long to wait this time!
Created by master of mirth Lew Stringer, Barmy Comix was released for free online in 2020 in response to a delay in the publication of his next Combat Colin comic due to Covid. Bringing some much needed cheer to a locked down world when access to new comics was impossible, it has 32 pages (or screens) of strips taken from various publications in the Lewniverse, including a nine-page preview of the next issue of Combat Colin.
That’s not all from the moronic militia man though. There’s a classic from the Transformers days, when Lew’s strips were at their height later in the run with Day of the Gunge, a strip I fondly remember reading first time around when I was a much smaller human. There’s also a full-colour adventure with Colin and Semi-Automatic Steve I hadn’t read before from the pages of Aces Weekly. This on its own is worth the price of entry. Not that there is any price, but you get my drift.
Loose Brayne, aka Brickman is in here too. It’s quite possibly the barmiest strip of the whole comic and that’s certainly saying something. The Brickman Meets The Mad Cobbler is classic Lew turned up to ten. I love the character of Albert and on the next page we see that it’s actually the big fancy house, Brayne Manor, that sits in a cave while Brickman’s supposedly secret lair is above ground for all to see.
This should give you some idea of the chaos to expect if you’ve never read a Brickman strip before. Set in “Pre-Holocaust Thatcherite Britain” it’s an ingenious mix of slapstick, social commentary and daft gags. It’s probably my favourite out of the whole issue. Saying that, there’s also a second story of his, Brickman and Trowel Meet Professor Deranged! Nothing subtle about the villain names in this comic.
Derek the Troll’s strip takes the form of one of those Make-Your-Own-Adventure books we had as kids (OiNK had its own version back in #5). Derek was originally created for role-playing magazine Warlock and that’s where this strip comes from. Lew has also released a comic reprinting all of Derek’s misadventures which I’ve already reviewed on the blog and (spoiler) enjoyed immensely.
Derek the Troll’s ‘orrible Troll-Playing Game is almost impossible to win, throwing a spanner in the works every time you think you’ve made the right decision, its curveballs and surprises keeping you laughing all the way to the end. There are also two full-colour strips of Derek’s from the short-lived digital comic Goof and he’s the star of one of the mini-posters scattered throughout Barmy Comix, ready to be printed out and Blu-Tac’ed to your wall if you’re feeling particularly nostalgic.
One creation of Lew’s I’d never heard of before reading this comic during the pandemic was Pedantic Stan the Comics Fan. Co-created with former Marvel UK editor and the utter gentleman behind comics news site Down the TubesJohn Freeman, he was created for comic newspaper Speakeasy in the 1990s (an earlier edition of which has already appeared on the blog). Lew has also released the complete collection of Stan’s strips in a small, landscape format comic which was a hoot to read. It’s been a while since I’ve read it so it was fun to see his Full-Page Christmas Special again.
Also in here is a touching strip from the Undefeated Spirit of Hope book released in 2011 in the wake of the natural disasters in New Zealand and Japan of that year, finishing off the comic on the back page. Altogether this has reminded me of The Marvel Bumper Comic, which introduced me to comics and characters I hadn’t previously read among a mix of hugely enjoyable, hand-picked reprints of some of my favourites.
Barmy Comix was (and still is) free although Lew does ask fans if they could donate a small sum of £2.00 towards the creation of future comics in his range. This was particularly relevant during the pandemic but it’s such a small ask in return for the many laughs we get from each and every one of his publications. To download it just click on the link below to Lew’s own blog and please do remember to donate.
A few years back I wrote an article about OiNK for a fan-produced magazine called Comic Scene. It’s a magazine that has been cancelled, returned in a different format and cancelled again more times than Uncle Pigg has had hot swill. The article was for their ambitious but ultimately factual-error-filled (and also cancelled) partwork series History of Comics. To accompany it I also wrote about my top six issues of OiNK and was able to get some fantastic quotes from some of the comic’s team to use as a box out.
For whatever reason neither of these were used. I thought not including the quotes from these incredibly talented cartoonists (who had all happily got back to me with their thoughts) was particularly surprising. Well, to mark the 1986 release date of OiNK’s preview issue (and the first OiNK review on the blog) here are the quotes I was able to muster in time for the article’s original deadline but which never saw print for whatever reason. They’re a nice little insight into the making of OiNK and I’d like to thank everyone for contributing at the time.
STEVE McGARRY
“It was more than an honour to be asked to contribute to those first few issues of OiNK, it was a damned inconvenience.”
DAVID LEACH
“Working on OiNK was a fantastic experience, it featured my first professional cartoon character and it marked the start of my professional career as a freelance cartoonist.
“I got to meet life-long friends and it got my foot in the door. As such it holds a soft spot in my dangerously enlarged, erratically beating heart. OiNK was the start of my professional career as a cartoonist. I had seen a preview copy of the comic and just knew I had to be in it. I contacted Bob Paynter, Group Editor of Humour Comics at IPC at the time and he offered to send my work sample to OiNK if I did a job for Whizzer and Chips. I ended up drawing a four issue pull-out strip called Phil Fitt and Brad Habit, which got published and in return my sample strip for Psycho Gran got sent off to OiNK and that was that!”
JEREMY BANX
“Working on OiNK was hard work and great fun. I’d never expected to work in comics so it was a strange adventure for me. I learnt a huge amount and it certainly changed the general direction of my travel.”
LEW STRINGER
“OiNK came along at just the right time for those of us who were still new to the comics business. We were full of ideas and still young enough to be able to relate with what the readership wanted. It gave us the perfect opportunities to develop our craft and come up with strips that wouldn’t fit in with the more pedestrian formularised comics. It was such a fun time to work in comics. We all had a great time and I think that shows in how fondly OiNK is still remembered all these years later.”
DAVEY JONES
“Thinking of OiNK, I reckon the main thing I remember is how open they were to stuff which wasn’t necessarily in the traditional British comic format. They liked the more familiar style of Buster/Whizzer and Chips style strips as well of course, but were also happy to look at stuff that was a bit different. I really liked the things that Jeremy Banx was doing with Burp the alien, which were sometimes these short, funny science fiction stories, and I hadn’t really seen anything quite like it in comics. So you felt like you didn’t need to follow any particular formula when submitting scripts, just think of daft stuff that they might find funny.
“The other thing that occurs to me is how encouraging [co-editor] Mark Rodgers was. I’d send him the scripts first, and quite often he’d turn them down, but he went to some trouble to explain where I was going wrong (the stories were too complicated, or I was trying to fit too much in etc.) which I appreciated a lot, because he could have just stamped the word REJECTED on them.”
KEV F SUTHERLAND
“In 1986 I was desperately trying to break into comics so I was sending something, at least every week, to both 2000AD and OiNK. OiNK would reply saying my stuff was too superheroey or dramatic and that I ought to send it to 2000AD, and 2000AD would reply saying my stuff was too funny or cartoony and I should send it to OiNK. It took a year until, finally, it was OiNK that broke under the pressure and let me in with, I think, a Rotten Rhymes script which they let me draw.
“I then got increasing amounts into the comic, especially my Meanwhile… strips which ran to a page each, reaching a climax with #68, a third of which was written and drawn by me (including The Plop Factory, a parody of Stock Aitken & Waterman in the style of an EC Comics horror story). That was the final issue of OiNK, and I was back where I started, desperate to break into comics.”
GRAHAM EXTON
“By an eerie coincidence, all of us who contributed material for Rrrassp! comic (as OiNK was first called) wrote strips featuring pigs. So Bob Paynter suggested making pigs the main theme. I’m not sure if it was my idea, but Mark and I both liked the Tharg and Stan Lee characters who communicated on the 2000AD and Marvel letters pages, hence Uncle Pigg. I think the Plops were my idea, but given the theme of pigs they were pretty well inevitable. They were based on Leo Baxendale‘s squelchies who were Grimly Fiendish‘s minions years before Despicable Me.
“Mark and I met with Tony [Husband, co-editor] in his home and I was struck by his lovely paintings and impressive collection of Peter Hammill LPs. I have not met Patrick [Gallagher, co-editor] in person though we are Facebook buddies. I was impressed with his ability to mimic other artists’ styles. Mark and I did a few fumetti [photo stories] when he and wife Helen came to visit me in South Andros, Bahamas. We roped in our neighbours too.
“The funniest strips I was involved with were the two Herbert Bowes ones. He had a lot of things up his nose. Jeremy Banks’ art made them super funny. The third one involved the Starship Enterprise (up his nose), but I couldn’t make it work, so never finished it. My all-vegetable theatre strip (with fab Ian Knox art) festered in my brain for many years before emerging, butterfly-like, as Tatertown, a strip I give away on Facebook. I did it mostly to learn how to use Photoshop, but it now has a life of its own.”
DAVY FRANCIS
“I loved working for OiNK. As well as scripted stories, I was allowed to use my own jokes, so I would send off scripts – thumbnails, really – and if I got a yea, then I’d draw it and send it off. I was doing Ciderman at the same time, and working in the Housing Executive full time, so it was a very busy time. However, I loved it. One mystery remains: what happened to the German version of OiNK? It ran for 3 issues, but I’ve never seen a copy.”
PATRICK GALLAGHER
“From my earliest recollections of OiNK, going way back to its development stage when Tony, Mark and I had never produced a comic before, or suffered the logistical nightmare such a dream job brings, it all felt excitingly experimental and risqué. Those feelings became the form and the norm that remained right up until the final issue, which I think gave OiNK a certain sense of unpredictability and edge throughout its life, with room for error and genius in varying measures.
“Yes, some things worked better than others; OiNK was never perfect but what carried it through was its ‘voice’, which never faltered. That was the combined comedic soul of Tony, Mark and me. That is what I am most proud of and what our brilliant contributors latched onto to make OiNK something special.”
These were from a few years ago, before this version of the blog was even launched and since then more of OiNK’s creative team have reached out to me for the blog and other reasons, hence the non-appearance of some key names above. It actually gives me an idea for the future but I won’t say anything yet in case I jinx anything. Thanks again to everyone above and to everyone who has been such a great source of information, OiNK and otherwise!
This is #76 of Speakeasy, a sort of newspaper about the UK comics industry which began life as a fanzine in 1979 and would go on to become a monthly resource for comics fans and the industry for over 120 issues, all the way through to 1991. Above is the front cover as it would’ve been seen on the shelves, fitting in perfectly with all of the other similarly-sized UK comics. However, that wasn’t its true front page.
I think this was rather neat! It opens out to tabloid size and is printed on similar newspaper stock. With 20 of these huge pages there was certainly plenty to read in the days when we relied on print publications to deliver us our comics news. Bambos Georgiou, who drew Blimey! It’s Slimer in The Real Ghostbusters (after Lew Stringer’s early issues) was editor at one stage, although by now that job was Richard Ashford‘s.
Bambos is credited as the ‘UK Correspondent’ but in reality publishers Acme Press Ltd was the creation of his, Richard, Cefn Ridout and Dick Hansom, who readers of the blog may know better as the editor of Dark Horse International’s Jurassic Park and Aliens comics. The connections with other blog comics continues as Death’s Head/Dragon’s Claws/The Sleeze Brothers editor (and friend of the blog) Richard Starkings designed the logo.
It’s a meaty read and there’s a lot packed onto each page but I did spot this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to Visionaries, although it’s short on details. This issue of Speakeasy went on sale on this date back in 1987 and the American Visionaries comic would launch as a bi-monthly in November, not coming over to this side of The Pond until Spring 1988. Also, the less said about that He-Man movie the better, yes? I still shudder with the memory of the one night I watched it back then!
So anyway, why am I showing you this issue of Speakeasy? Simple, it’s because OiNK gets a mention. This shouldn’t really be surprising news when you spot a page summing up a lot of that month’s releases, however there’s more to it than that as far as OiNK is concerned. It mentions the banning of the comic from the kids’ shelves in W.H. Smith (boo!) and the surprising revelation to me that John Menzies didn’t stock it at all!
I remember visiting a John Menzies in Oban in Scotland as a teen, when we spent summers in a small village in the highlands of Scotland, and I’d spend my hard-earned waiting staff wages on games for my Commodore 64 that was waiting for me back home in Northern Ireland. If I’d known, I’d have went elsewhere. However, as you can see the column here says they were only losing OiNK about 10,000 sales per issue. Yes, it’s not to be sniffed at when you’re the publisher, but when OiNK was selling 100,000 and more per issue I honestly thought the figure would’ve been higher.
I do like the fact Speakeasy calls for its readers to do the complaining now and gives us the address to write to one of the newsagents in question. “Bring Back the Bacon to Where It Belongs!!” Love it! You can check out the reviews for the two issues mentioned here, #34 and #35 on the blog. No mention though of how these two issues saw the transition between original publisher IPC Magazines and Fleetway Publications.
This full-page advertisement for that year’s UK Comic Art Convention stood out to me as well thanks to a couple of photographs I’d already seen that were taken at this very event. You’ll see Tom Thug and Pete and his Pimple cartoonist Lew Stringer’s name on the page as a confirmed guest, alongside OiNK contributors Kevin O’Neill and Dave Gibbons and several of the talented creative team from Marvel UK’s Transformers.
Not mentioned are more of Uncle Pigg’s finest workers who all appeared at an OiNK panel during the weekend. Below are two photographs kindly supplied by Lew showing the team taking questions from the audience with their 80s hair dos in all their glory (and Lew rocking the OiNK t-shirt).
In the first photo (from left to right) we have the panel’s moderator Theo Clark, then Lew himself, Ed McHenry (“swigging pop” according to Lew), David Leach, Davy Francis hidden behind him and Jeremy Banx! In the second photo you can see Ed more clearly and on the far left is Viz co-creator Chris Donald. OiNK was at the height of its popularity at this point, (despite the best efforts of the aforementioned newsagents) having just enjoyed its first anniversary, the release of its first Holiday Special, the first annual was in the can and some of the comic’s best issues were about to hit the shelves.
Also of note to blog readers (and readers of its social media) is a little bit about Transformers and Action Force (G.I. Joe), namely Dave Gibbons drawing the cover to #133 of the former which is worthy of a mention in the news and there’s also a preview of his art. Action Force gets more space here with the announcement of a monthly comic to compliment the weekly, for sale both in the UK and as a way of repackaging British stories into a smaller comic to sell in the States.
The thing is, while it states here that this new comic would be released in a few months, Action Force Monthly wouldn’t appear until the following summer after the weekly had already been cancelled and merged with Transformers. It’s interesting to see it wasn’t originally planned as a replacement for the cancelled weekly but instead fans of Duke, Snake Eyes and Scarlett were meant to have both a weekly and a monthly to enjoy every month.
OiNK may have only got a small mention here but I’m always on the look out for my favourite comic of all time popping up in media of the day. It was nice to see it being taken seriously in the pages of Speakeasy and the call for support to get it back among the children’s comics. Speakeasy itself is a fascinating snapshot of the medium in the 80s and if you’re a fan of the decade’s comics you could do worse than picking up a few issues to see how your favourites were reported on.
Ham Dare, Pig of the Future makes the cover of OiNK for the first time and it’s only taken for the comic’s cancellation for it to happen! I’d always assumed he’d made the cover each time he returned to the pages of OiNK since his stories were such big events, so it was a surprise to find out this was the only time. The OiNK Holiday Special 1989 is the third spring/summer edition and was promised to us way back in October the previous year when Uncle Pigg made that fateful announcement in the final issue.
It’s been a long time coming but it’s finally here (in fact work began on it so far in advance of its publication, as per usual for special and annuals, we’re treated to the lovely original logo), although it’s a bit of a strange one and feels much more like the next monthly issue than a holiday special. Not only did the monthlies have the same amount of pages as the specials, this one is clearly made up of content that went unused after the comic was cancelled rather than brand new material. So there are no themed summer holiday stories and one Rotten Rhyme even mentions Christmas approaching. As an adult some other things stand out by their very absence.
“Slap my snout and call me Porky – there’s something dashed odd going on around here…”
Ham Dare (Lew Stringer)
With Tom Thug and Pete and his Pimple having made the leap over to Buster they’re nowhere to be seen here, although thankfully their creator Lew Stringer is still on hand to write the wonderful Ham Dare story. Although, OiNK favourites not contributiung this time out include Ian Jackson, Jeremy Banx and David Leach among others, so there’s no Burp, Hadrian Vile or Psycho Gran. But let’s not dwell, let’s concentrate on what is here and start off with that headline act.
Dynasty of the Dinosaurs was originally written by Lew and drawn by the incredibly talented J.T. Dogg for OiNK way back when it was a weekly, believe it or not. The monthlies may have been twice the size but there were three less issues in an average month so there must have been a lot of leftover material from the weekly comic. As such, Ham Dare is presented in its original five individual chapters, each with their own very unique cliffhanger.
The story follows on from the one in The OiNK! Book 1988 over a year ago and sees our hero and his (and I quote) “chubby sidekick” Pigby go through some sort of space disruption and apparently land on another planet, a planet inhabited by English-speaking dinosaurs in tight flight suits. It’s already way out there and has all those knowing nods this wonderful Dan Dare spoof revels in, but then we get to that final panel above and the plot of this serial reveals itself.
Ham sums up the mystery in one handy speech bubble, complete with a typical Pigby response and then hilariously gets away with one of his trademark silly ideas. Although, this time it actually makes some kind of sense. Or maybe I’ve just been reading OiNK for too long. The main dino dude is called Bad Rep and he explains that Earth is known throughout the universe as the most evil planet in existence.
Then this very funny spoof suddenly poses an ethical question
Of course the Meekon has to be behind everything and as he hovers in his frying pan he does what all good baddies (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) do in classic action strips and explains the whole plot to our heroes. I remember being absorbed by all of this as an 11-year-old, having learned about the extinction of the dinosaurs at school and seeing it all turned on its head in typical OiNK fashion. As an adult it’s just as entertaining.
In the penultimate chapter Pigby’s umbrella makes for a quick escape as well as a couple of puns and we get to see how Earthlings are seen across the galaxy. But it’s not just the T-rex causing problems, Ham and Rigby come up against Triceratops and others, who Ham thinks aren’t a threat because they were vegetarian dinosaurs… before he gets a clobberin’. Then this very funny spoof suddenly poses an ethical question.
This reminds me of the Fourth Doctor posing a similar one when he was given the chance to wipe out the Daleks before they were even created. It leads nicely on to the final double-page spread and a moment that struck me as a kid and which, as with the best moments of OiNK, has stayed with me in my head ever since. These are usually comedic moments but in this case it’s something more profound.
Beginning with a nice reference to Dan Dare’s creator and original artist in the title caption, we get more silliness and an overly-easy resolution by Ham as always (who remains cool as a cucumber throughout) before we see something he doesn’t; we see the results of him putting everything back the way it was. It’s this moment involving a dinosaur mother and her child that provided a surprisingly tender moment and pulled on the heartstrings of readers. Knowing it was coming this time around doesn’t make it any less so either.
In an interview with Dan Dare fan magazine Spaceship Away, Lew said about this scene, “Having mainly written and drawn basic slapstick comedy before I welcomed the opportunity to write something with a bit more depth. People have said to me they found the dinosaur extinction scene to be quite harrowing when they were kids. I remember the emotions I felt writing that part so I’m glad it came across in the story. Apologies for causing any kids distress when they read it though!”
I asked Lew myself about this moment and he explained it was actually very OiNK-like. “One of the qualities of OiNK was that it allowed us to do something like that at times,” he says. “I think it’s more effective for a humour comic to include an unexpected emotional moment (as Tony did sometimes with his Horace strip). We knew the readers were intelligent enough to appreciate it.” We certainly did, Lew. An example of Tony doing just that is coming up too.
“Wondering what your favourite OiNK chums have been doing since OiNK stopped appearing last November?”
Uncle Pigg
In the middle of the issue is a seven-page piece I assumed would’ve been created by co-editor Patrick Gallagher but he assures me it wasn’t. Unfortunately, he doesn’t recall who it was. Whoever it was takes the opportunity to bring us up-to-date on some of our favourite characters’ lives since OiNK was cancelled. Alongside the examples below the Torture Twins have also been employed in schools as a replacement for the cane, Mary Lighthouse is happy editing all of our kids’ TV shows until they’re unrecognisable and Cowpat County has been concreted over and turned into the ‘Patworld’ theme park!
As a child I loved seeing some old faves all together again but now it’s clear these are recycled panels from previous strips, even the picture of Uncle Pigg is from a newsagent reservation coupon. A strip by Patrick follows this in which our porcine editor makes an appeal to his readers for financial aid, telling us of all the woes that’s befallen him and his staff since OiNK ended, most horrifying of all being those that now had to work for Buster comic!
In the end it’s all a con and as the readers throw their money to help Uncle Pigg he summons his private helicopter to whisk him back off to those tropical islands he told us about when he signed off in #68. I have to say that while it’s funny (and as a kid I hoped the bit about having “an appeal every year” meant there’d be yearly specials forever) for young me it seemed out of character. While he loved his money Uncle Pigg always put his readers first and here he was grifting them instead. Nowadays though, it’s just silly fun and I suppose it’s in keeping with the likes of GBH. Speaking of which…
They may not have been a one-hit wonder but Bros did seem to be here one second and then gone the next. I remember some friends being obsessed and I even bought the (terrible) Marvel UK special! Here, GBH took advantage of the teen crazes of the time and then the comic tested fans to see if they were as obsessed as they’d made themselves out to be (with a brill Wilkie mini-strip underneath). I love the ‘Gros’ logo spoof of the real one and I wonder if, had OiNK continued, would the band have been a regular target. Looks that way.
Rick Astley is still going strong though, which I was pleasantly surprised to find out a couple of years back when he popped up on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. Can’t keep a good 80s icon down.
The next page is by an artist who makes his sole contribution in this issue and that’s a shame because if this is anything to go by I’d loved to have seen more from him. José Luis Prats Cruz is a cartoonist from Southern Spain and has continued to work in the industry ever since, although his work has eluded me until now. Signing as’Ozeluí‘, if you search online you’ll find most of his cartoons have no speech just like this instant OiNK classic. You can check out his most recent work on his Instagram account. What a shame he never got to create anything else for us pig pals.
In the final issue a strip called The Pigpen of Fear presents The Spine-Tingling Tale of The House at No.13 Veryscary Avenue was billed as the first in a new series by Davey Jones. It didn’t feel odd to have it billed as such, even when no more would be coming, because OiNK was always doing things like that. Well, as it turns out it was intended to be a series after all. Not only that, but the second strip is one of my very favourite OiNK strips of all time.
The Pop-Up Toaster of Doom sees Jim and Peggy Watkins meet their comeuppance when they cross the wrong shop keeper. Complete with the scary pig character as the narrator, it’s a perfect spoof of TV shows such as Tales From the Crypt. Right from the off it pokes fun at the conventions of such shows, like the name of the shopkeeper being so obvious, and of course since this is by Davey there are a ton of background jokes to spot too.
The main gag here is that there’s nothing sinister or evil happening at all but it’s still dressed up as a horror story. Everything is completely ordinary. Even the shop itself is a red herring and in the end the horrible outcome for the couple is that they’ll just take the toaster back to the shop. It’s ingenious ludicrousness by Davey as per usual and one that had me roaring as a kid. It’s one of those occasions when it makes me laugh even more so as an adult too.
It’s the funniest strip in the issue and one of the funniest OiNK produced. Unfortunately, just like the monthlies there are reprints here too, five pages in total. In fact, the final three pages of the comic are ones we’ve seen before, which ends things on a bit of a downer for regular readers. But just before those is a new four-page Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins strip which finally concludes his long-running story with the happy ending he always deserved. It’s his and Mandy‘s wedding day!
Horace may have evolved completely from those early joke strips to an ongoing serial about the difficulties he faced thanks to his looks, but co-editor Tony Husband never forgot it was meant to be daft too. Horace’s ongoing football soap opera was wonderfully random and he faced everything from a stalker to a radioactive monster (in fact, they were both the same person). However, his strips taught us much along the way about never judging others based on their looks and that we shouldn’t let others who judge us unfairly hold us back. Yes, OiNK was a daft comic but Horace’s strip sat comfortably alongside the non-smoking, anti-bullying and anti-bigotry messages to teach its young readers the right lessons in life, without us ever being aware that’s what they were doing.
Three months was a long time to wait for new OiNK material, however the next issue wouldn’t be released for another six! The Holiday Special 1989 may have been an additional monthly issue of OiNK rather than a summery feast, but it was no less fun to take another bite of that pork pie. I never saw any adverts for the OiNK Winter Special because I wasn’t collecting any of the comics it would’ve appeared in so it was a wonderful surprise when it popped up in November 1989. I can’t wait to read it for the first time since! That next crackling issue will be here on Saturday 2nd November 2024.
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