OiNK Blog

OiNK! #57: ROLL ON EASTER

31 March 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

This issue’s cover is one of my favourites from all of OiNK’s issues for two reasons. It’s a Jeremy Banx cover featuring Jimmy ’The Cleaver’ Smith, the comic’s villainous butcher baddie in a pool of glistening blood on a splattered background. You wouldn’t have got this in other humour comics, that’s for sure. The second reason is the audacity that the issue’s cover, its selling point on the shelves, states clearly it has absolutely nothing to do with the contents inside.

This is actually a bit of a sticking point with me as far as some modern American comics go. They can have lovely elaborate covers, yes, but they don’t always relate to the story inside. If this issue of OiNK was released today I’d swear they were taking a shot at those. Inside, it’s also the Easter issue, with Uncle Pigg chowing down on a mountain of chocolate eggs while he cracks (sorry) puns, but apart from Lew Stringer’s two strips no others shell out (sorry again) on eggy scripts. Tom Thug’s title panel also seems to follow the theme from the cover.

The fact the egg (or rather Tom) appears to be asking for “Ralph” or “Hughie” is a great gag; we know exactly what’s happening to the dim-witted one inside and the panel showing us the results is convincingly disgusting! Having once stupidly gone on an amusement ride after eating ice cream and the result of that I almost feel sorry for the dolt. Almost. The limited colours given to the page really help highlight the main plot device (the egg) and the one splash of green makes for a funny moment in itself.

Did you also spot the ‘School Rules’ on the wall? At the time of the comic’s release I could definitely empathise with the kids at Tom’s school with that, finding it very funny in the process. This and Pete’s strip (a highlight is further below) being Easter themed makes the whole issue feel extra special in 2023 too, what with the Easter holidays happening almost at the same time as in 1988. With this quality no wonder Tom carried on for so many years in Buster comic.

This particular issue contains something of Kev F Sutherland’s that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time

Kev F Sutherland first contributed to an issue of OiNK in #38. Having proven himself with that mini-strip his work has finally become a regular fixture and this particular issue contains something of his that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time in this read through, March of the Killer Breakfasts! As a kid I loved my various cereals and their advertisements on TV promising toys and surprises. I can understand why things have changed (for the better) today, but this next strip takes me back to that time and laughing at all of the references to those adverts, never mind the onslaught of over-the-top puns.

There’s something quite genius right there on page one, when Kev perfectly lays down two future jokes when he names his protagonist. To the reader it’s initially just a funny name tied in with the cereal theme, but later two perfectly timed puns in the same caption tell us why ‘Dr Brek Sugar’ was really given that name. This is one of Kev’s best and one of the funniest strips in OiNK. Out of all of his contributions I think it’s tied for first place with his time travelling professors we’ll meet in a monthly later in the year. It’s comedic genius and it’s inside a children’s comic.

Right from the start OiNK wanted to give a chance to young, new talent in the world of children’s comics and hired accordingly. This commitment rubbed some long-time professionals up the wrong way but the comic stuck to its guns. Now, with Kev centre stage in each issue and the likes of young Charlie Brooker producing so much material, OiNK had evolved a lot since its early days and it makes me wonder what other new talent it could’ve discovered if it had continued for longer than the two-and-a-half years it ran for.

**Pete and his Pimple** by *Lew Stringer*
**Laffie** written by *Tony Husband*, drawn by *Chas Sinclair*
**Burp** by *Jeremy Banx*

There’s the Pete and his Pimple strip I mentioned earlier, when Pete eats too many Easter Eggs and discovers his pimple’s pus takes like delicious milk chocolate. Of course it runs out just as he tries to impress Lovely Lucy. The Wonder Pig (this time called Laffie) is back in the first of a series of weekly adventures with the usual predicament, and then on Mercury a rather familiar looking royal family have summoned Burp to help with the sweltering heat on the first planet next to the sun. This leads nicely on to one of two GBH Madvertisements in this issue.

Are you sick and tired of your job? Don’t you just wish you had the ability to leave it, perhaps by winning the lottery and not needing the money anymore? Well GBH has just the thing for you. Their special offer of two free (not free) books will teach you everything you need to know to do just that. In fact, all you need is a lot of privilege and being born into the right family. Surely this isn’t something you can teach, right? Well that kind of detail never stopped these gangsters from trying to hock their latest scam.

While OiNK’s humour for the most part has not aged, when it spoofs celebrities of the 80s it’s inevitable that kids reading it today (as some blog readers have told me their own kids do) may not appreciate those particular strips as much as us who grew up with them. This particular Madvertisement has aged but for a whole other reason, however let’s not shut down the whole country again and just move on, shall we? I do like Steve Gibson’s very Spitting Image-esque drawings too.

A couple of mini-strips before we round off this week’s review and Ed McHenry’s Wally of the West continues to entertain. This week it’s not Wally himself that’s acting on the silly side, he’s actually the innocent victim of someone else’s ridiculousness. Then Marc Riley’s Doctor Mooney He’s Completely Looney has two scriptwriters this week, Marc himself and Michael Peek. It’s silly, gross-out humour and one which made me chuckle because I’m still a big child.

That’s us at the rear end of another issue. Just time to ensure the young readers reserved their copies at their local newsagent’s with co-editor Patrick Gallagher’s usual weekly nonsense in the Great Moments in History coupon. To paraphrase it, I’m hoping the blog is still to all of your tastes and in case you missed it (somehow) make sure you check out the extra review we had this past week for the OiNK! Holiday Special #2! When you’re all caught up make sure you’re back here next week on Friday 7th April 2023 for #58 and have a Happy Easter (even though the next issue will be out by then).

HOLiDAY SPECiAL 2 < > iSSUE 58

OiNK! #49: A SUPER COMiC

4 February 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

iSSUE 48 < > iSSUE 50

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

21 January 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if being eaten alive wasn’t bad enough…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SMOKEBUSTER SPECiAL < > iSSUE 48

OiNK! #45: SLiMLiNE SOWS

7 January 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

The best time of the year may have ended, the decorations may be back underneath the stairs and it may feel like there’s nothing but cold, dark winter ahead, however in 1988 (and in 2023) there was some light in the form of the now-weekly OiNK. I’ve previously covered how this came about, so now it’s time to concentrate on the comics themselves and it wasn’t clear to ten-year-old me that changes had already been made to the winning formula. We’ll get to them in a bit.

It was so exciting to think I’d be getting a brand new OiNK every single Saturday and I’m sure I wasn’t the only pig pal who was feeling that level of anticipation, so with this being an important issue who else could draw the cover but Ian Jackson and alongside the green logo its eye-catching and memorable. Just to note, it may say ‘Every Friday’ on the cover but Fleetway’s comics would be released the working day before (the date being the Saturday after the day on the cover, I know it’s confusing!) so OiNK Weekly was actually published every Thursday, young me just didn’t realise and continued to collect his comics on Saturdays (my Marvel UK comics were published Saturdays).

There were so many characters I couldn’t wait to see twice as much of and The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile – Aged 8 5/8 (yearƨ), written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Ian was high on my list. A highlight of every single issue there was so much to enjoy, from Hadrian himself and the way he told his story to the atrocious spelling and the jaggedy art. Given the format of a kid’s diary if anything it suits the weekly schedule even more than before.

A little mini-series here, plenty of one-offs there, the fun, random nature was one of those things that set OiNK apart

Readers across the land had just gone back to school after the excitement of the Christmas break and Hadrian was no exception, but at least his antics while trying to solve a homework question would soften the blow somewhat. Indeed it did, although I’m not too sure there was any softening of that landing for Tuby Watson. This fan favourite would also be subject to changes very soon but for now it was great to have a diary entry every week.

Disney cartoon characters had been the subject of OiNK’s spoofing before, most recently in The OiNK! Book 1988 which we’d just got our trotters on Christmas Day. Over the first few weeklies it seemed this was going to become a regular occurrence. Unfortunately it only lasted a few issues but that’s the nature of OiNK, right? A little mini-series here, plenty of one-offs there, the fun, random nature was one of those things that set it apart. That, and how it would treat such beloved, cuddly and wholesome characters as Winnie the Pooh.

Written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Chas Sinclair, Windie the Poo was the best of this short series (the others would be called The Jungle Chapter and Sow White and the Seven Plops) and it was given the banner title of ‘OiNK! Piggy Parodies Present’, possibly to explain its place in the comic for those new readers they hoped would be jumping on here. Much like #15 and #36 this issues feels like it’s designed to welcome in new pig pals.

Sherlock Hams and the Hog of the Baskervilles is one of two new multi-part serials beginning this issue, Uncle Pigg introduces us to OiNK on page two with Grunts acting as a contents page for one issue rather than containing letters and some regular characters such as Pete and his Pimple definitely feel like they’re introducing themselves. Lew Stringer also took this chance to set in motion a very fondly remembered ongoing contest.

**Sherlock Hams** written by *Lew Stringer*, drawn by *Ron Tiner*
**Pete and his Pimple** by *Lew Stringer*
**The Slugs** written by *Tony Husband*, drawn by *Lezz*
**Ponsonby Claret** written by *Griffiths+Kane*, drawn by *Steve Gibson*

Readers were asked to send in their ideas to cure Pete’s giant unsightly pimple once and for all and, while some would do so with ideas taken from the real world, as the weeks went on they’d get more and more crazy, really showcasing the imaginations of the fans. The Slugs, the first strip of the issue, also ended with a competition although it was in place of an actual punchline unlike Pete’s, and Frank Sidebottom made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo in Ponsonby Claret the Know-It-All Parrot’s second and sadly final appearance.

Last time we mourned the end of Mr Big Nose’s time in OiNK but Jeremy Banx’s Burp is still going strong and now he also brought us Doctor Hieronymous Van Hellsong, a new six-part mini-series based around the same dark, twisted humour we loved so much in his Butcher Watch updates. Indeed, the last one now feels like a precursor to this new strip. Even the black framing helps give it a creepy feel to begin with, then you continue reading and the ridiculous ways Hellsong dispatches his foes will have you laughing.

It’s classic Banx. Taking his surreal sense of humour, adding tons of atmosphere and then almost spoofing that very same atmosphere with the antics of our new hero as he solemnly describes his job is brilliant stuff. My ten-year-old self found this captivating and of course very, very funny. If you’re new to OiNK try to imagine reading this at that age. You can see why I’m insistent that OiNK helped form the sense of humour of many when you have such strong content as this.

For a new weekly schedule some changes had to be made to the make up of the comic

It all ends with that ominous shadow and the set up is complete, ready for the showdown to come. One of the best strips from OiNK’s whole run and a highlight of the weeklies, Jeremy would bring the character back for a second mini-series after a great reception from readers. In a later review I’ll take a closer look at the more serialised format of the weeklies and this will form a big part of that.

For a new weekly schedule some changes had to be made to the make up of the comic. I wouldn’t notice the biggest one until I finished reading this issue, another wouldn’t be obvious until next week, but I was very aware that it felt more ‘organised’ for want of a better word. So much planning went into making previous OiNKs feel randomly put together and, while we do have plenty of little one-offs here most strips are full pages, while half-pages are all kept together in groups and the mini-strips all placed onto one page.

It’s nice to see Harry the Head back to being a simple gag strip again instead of trying to have serialised cliffhangers every issue and the others are all on top of their game too. Always interesting to see how the writing duties would often change for each strip, such as Mark Rodgers writing Marc Riley’s Harry and Davy Francis writing Marc’s Doctor Mooney while his own creation Greedy Gorb is written by Griffiths+Kane. Keeps things fresh. Zootown is by David Haldane as always.

Nowadays this makes it feel more like a modern traditional comic, although to be fair when compared to the traditional comics of the time (with their almost exclusively full-page or double-page strips made up of regular characters only) it still stood out as very different. But even back then it just felt a little less ‘OiNK’-like. As the weeklies went on this would change back to more of what we’d been used to, so the team could’ve just been keeping it a bit simpler for now to get ahead of the new weekly schedule. That other change was more of a shock though.

Would potential new readers fork out more for fewer pages if they weren’t aware of how much OiNK crammed in?

Back in 1988 I was surprised I finished the issue so quickly and originally put it down to just enjoying it so much that it flew by. But something made me count the amount of pages when I noticed there were no page numbers anymore. To my dismay OiNK was now 24 pages instead of 32! It’s only from reading the Crash magazine interview with co-editor Tony Husband last year that I realised this had been the original plan for OiNK before it was agreed to do a larger fortnightly.

The price reduction didn’t mean much to us kids but it did appease my parents somewhat and in the end we were getting 48 pages every fortnight. As I’ve discussed previously the idea was to increase sales (we’d be buying twice as many) but OiNK was still more expensive than its stablemates and now had less pages. Originally it had the same amount but was printed on larger, glossy paper when the others were smaller newsprint. Even when the paper changed with #36 it still felt worth the extra cash. OiNK was created independently so was always going to be a few pence more, but would readers fork out more for fewer pages, especially if they weren’t aware of how much OiNK crammed in?

This change had worked before to phenomenal results when Marvel UK’s Transformers comic changed from a 32-page fortnightly to a 24-page weekly at the end of its first year and sales skyrocketed. Although, by the end of its fortnightlies there was so much awful filler material it was a blessing to have a more streamlined comic. Weekly OiNK would also get to that stage of feeling like a more streamlined experience packed with excellent content, rather than a thinner comic. But would it be too late by then for long-term readers? Stick around to find out.

The issue wraps up with the first of six calendars for 1988 by co-editor Patrick Gallagher, one of which would prove a bit controversial. For now, we’ve reached the beginning of what is essentially the third of four very different phases of OiNK’s run and I’m looking forward to seeing what positive changes the weekly format brings as it settles in. Join me just seven days from now on Saturday 14th January 2023 (Thursday back in 1988) for the next real time review.

iSSUE 44 < > iSSUE 46