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THE OiNK! 45: THE ViNYL FRONTiER

6 December 2022 Phil Boyce 3 Comments

Back in 1987 a unique piece of merchandise for a comic was announced in the pages of OiNK. In issue #37 we were treated to this full page advertisement featuring Marc Riley as petty thief Snatcher Sam and Chris Sievey in his role as celebrity superstar Frank Sidebottom. They’d come together to record The OiNK 45, a single-sized vinyl record available only through mail order in the comic.

Back in the premiere issue OiNK had launched itself onto the unsuspecting public with a free flexidisc, a floppy piece of pink see-through plastic containing two songs, namely the imaginatively titled The OiNK Song and The OiNK Rap. Marc produced and performed both and they proved a hit with the kids and an annoyance to the parents of said kids, which I’m pretty sure was the idea. Now they’d been rerecorded at Drone Studios by Marc and Frank with engineer Paul Roberts, alongside a brand new song.

When I saw the advert for the first time I immediately begged my parents to write a cheque for the record. I remember the agonisingly long wait for it to arrive and then my mum and dad wished it hadn’t. I played it almost non-stop for a few days, being told several times to turn it down. Let’s just say it wasn’t to everyone’s taste. As I said, annoying readers’ parents may have been the idea behind the songs in the first place.

I’d missed out on the original flexidisc first time around so had no idea two of these were new versions of previous songs. I remember loving The OiNK Psycho Rap (as it was now called) as a kid on The OiNK 45, written by Tony Husband and Marc, and when I finally got my hands on #1 decades later for the blog with a mint condition flexidisc I’ll admit I was confused as to why I’d liked it so much! The answer is that the newer version here is completely different and a whole lotta fun. The words are almost the same but it’s more professionally put together. While I’m still not going to blast it at get togethers with friends, it may find its way on to my HomePod.

Fortunately for my parents, but heartbreakingly for me, just a few weeks after it arrived back in 1987 I ended up playing it for the very last time. I’d taken the record out of the hifi in my room and placed it on my bed without its sleeve while I listened to something else. It ended up being a sunny day so off I went outside to play with friends for the afternoon. When I came back I found out to my horror what happens when a vinyl record sits under a skylight on a day like that.

It was badly warped, looking like a disused napkin someone had tossed aside. I was crushed. My parents refused to buy me another, telling me it was a lesson to learn (in reality it had brought peace to the house once more) and, having not yet made a cassette recording so I could take the songs outside with me, that was the last I listened to it. Only now have I been able to hear these versions (and the third song) for the first time since then, 35 years later.

This past summer I was finally able to track down a copy of the record and I’ve waited until now to listen to it as a special festive treat for pig pals. This should be interesting with my now-adult ears! First up, the cover art was compiled by Marc Riley and the photographs on the back and on the adverts were taken by OiNK’s resident photographer John Barry under co-creator/co-editor of the comic and co-designer for the project (alongside Marc) Patrick Gallagher’s direction.

There’s a reference to Mike Gallagher brewing the tea too. This was Patrick’s brother who played sax at the studio sessions (he was also in Frank’s Oh Blimey Big Band) as well as making the refreshments, clearly. Patrick tells me altogether they recorded roughly 50 takes of all three tracks but ended up using the first of each! All that remains now is to place the vinyl carefully into my record player and crank the volume up. We’ll start with the new versions of The OiNK Psycho Rap and The OiNK Song (written by Mark Rodgers and Marc). You’ll be glad to hear the latter is still sung by high-pitched pigs.

The OiNK! Psycho Rap written by Tony Husband and Marc Riley

The OiNK! Song written by Mark Rodgers and Marc Riley

Lyrics page from #1 by Patrick Gallagher

Unfortunately there were no lyrics sheets with the record so young me had a hell of a time understanding those piggies, however the lyrics were printed in the first issue. Only a few words have been changed here and there for the rap, so feel free to use that photo above to follow along.

Apologies that I have no fancy equipment to record the songs in lossless quality (or whatever it’s called), you’ll have to make do with my video recording it with an ever-tiring outstretched arm.

“What the heck you think you’re doing, you?”
Frank Sidebottom, The OiNK Get-Together Song

On the B-side is the brand new song, The OiNK Get-Together Song. Chris sings along with Marc in the previous songs and Frank even makes a small guest appearance in The OiNK Song when he realises he’s on the wrong track and asks the listener to turn the record over. This next song is twice as long and sees him in his usual place as lead singer, with Little Frank constantly asking when he’ll get to contribute. It’s billed as a song starring characters from the comic, however the reality is much different (and funnier) than you might expect.

The OiNK! Get-Together Song written by Frank Sidebottom (Chris Sievey)

In my head this song had included various impressions of characters but instead we’re introduced to them playing instruments or making lots of loud background noise. Of course it would be this! Highlights include it descending into chaos on more than one occasion, especially when Billy Bang and the Street-Hogs get involved, Frank and Little Frank’s arguments getting more and more aggressive and there are cameos from some long forgotten characters such as Billy’s Brain and ‘Ed Banger.

My own personal favourite moment is when Frank messes up and just readily admits it right there in the song!

It’s a genuinely funny record and I’d heartily recommend splashing out the few quid it costs on eBay when it pops up, but let’s just say I think I can understand where my parents were coming from when they refused to buy a replacement once they’d escaped it. Brilliant stuff and very typically ‘OiNK’. No other comic could’ve done this. If you do decide to buy it for yourself just be warned, the sax in The OiNK Get Together Song will be stuck in your head from now until the end of time, whether you want it in there or not.

Above you’ll see Mike Gallagher as part of Frank’s band in a photo Patrick sent me, alongside an image of the original test pressing of the vinyl shared by Tony Husband on the OiNK Facebook Group. The final photo features the children of the studio owner and a very tanned/rosy/burnt Marc Riley and Patrick Gallagher, who may have just come back from holiday according to Patrick himself.

The OiNK 45 and the mug were the only pieces of merchandise I had as a kid so it’s great to own them both again. This has genuinely been a whole lot of fun to revisit. It was another contributing factor to what I refer to as the Golden Age of my very favourite comic of all time.

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CHRiSTMAS 2022

OiNK! #39: GAME FOR A LAUGH

17 October 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

We’re in the midst of OiNK’s Golden Age now and the Great Games and Puzzles Issue is another corker, kicking off with Ian Jackson’s cover and his take on some favourite characters by other cartoonists, namely Jeremy Banx’s Burp, David Leach’s Psycho Gran, Marc Riley’s Harry the Head and Chris Sievey’s Frank Sidebottom. The colourful banners seem to be doing the job of covering over the empty space normally reserved for the logo before the redesign in #36 and they work, hyping some of the contents inside.

A few years ago a pig pal by the name of Becky Armstrong shared a photograph of this cover on social media and it was only through this that David Leach saw it for the first time, not previously aware his creation had made the cover or indeed been drawn by the incredible Ian. Becky kindly sent David the issue as a result! The OiNK community really is the best three-and-a-half decades on. Let’s open this up, shall we?

Once again we get a Frank Sidebottom and Snatcher Sam (aka Marc Riley) photo story, albeit a much smaller one than last time. When it’s so brilliantly crafted and as funny as this it doesn’t need any more space. Every time these two get together in the comic their friendship really does shine and I think this sets them apart, they’re always so much fun.

More strips than ever kept to the themes, giving each issue a really unique identity

A few pages later Marc brings us a little puzzle corner for his character, although it appears it’s more of a suggestion box than a competition and his other creation Harry the Head also takes a starring role in this issue. He’s got an important part to play in the competition promoted on the cover and sliding on to page two he hasn’t had a chance to get there yet, so Uncle Pigg gives him a boot and we see him flying through the issue. We’ll get back to him further down the review.

During this period of OiNK more strips than ever kept to the themes, giving each issue a really unique identity to every other OiNK (never mind compared to more traditional comics on the shelves). You’re always aware of the subject running throughout, somehow making each issue feel even more jam-packed with content. One exception to the rule would be the ongoing serials such as sequel tale The Spectacles of Doom Vs The Monocle of Mayhem, part two of which is in here.

During part one it looked like our inept hero Endor, his singing sword and glasses were going to be vastly outnumbered by the evil Gash and his hordes, so this chapter is all about evening the odds in that traditional fantasy adventure movie fashion of meeting allies along the way with ever more ridiculous names, from ever more ridiculous places. More than ever this strip feels like the spoof of 80s magic and fantasy films The Spectacles of Doom was always meant to be, thanks to the fertile imagination of writer Tony Husband.

The quick succession of gags that really land is quite surprising. We shouldn’t really expect any less from Tony but even for him this is on another level. Known for his freeform art, Tony’s scripting shines through here, his character descriptions are original and hilarious and it must’ve been a hoot for Andy Roper when he got the script and got to bring them to life. The laughs come thick and fast and this is just two part of five. If we ever get a reprint book of OiNK the collected Monocle of Mayhem story would definitely be a highlight.

David Haldane’s Rubbish Man has been with us since the very beginning and he now seems to be accompanied by Boy Blunder every issue. From memory this wouldn’t last but for now it’s two-for-one as they battle their version of Batman’s eponymous Riddler, The Puzzler. I remember watching the 60s Batman show as a very young child and while my siblings and parents hated it for how silly it was, I was the target audience and I loved it.

There’s another myth surrounding OiNK that can be put to bed

In particular I remember the puzzles that had absolutely nothing to do with their apparent solutions and the completely unbelievable way Batman and Robin would solve them. David has obviously been inspired by these scenes and parodies them perfectly. So perfectly in fact, this one page is umpteen times better than the television series that inspired it.

There are lots of little gems throughout this issue and not just from our usual mini-strip cast, the random one-offs are all top notch too. Standing out from the crowd is Time for A Game of Scrabble by the comic’s resident youngster, Charlie Brooker. There’s another myth surrounding OiNK, this time about Charlie and how he’s embarrassed by his early cartooning but this is yet another tall tale that can be put to bed nowadays.

Some other highlights include perfect posh pronunciation in The Slugs, a puzzle section from Pete Throb that had all of us copying the side panel as kids (and adults) and there’s some genuine laugh out loud moments as we take a look at our Puzzling, Mysterious, Unexplained, Amazing World (including another comical shark which I had to include).

**The Slugs** written by *Tony Husband*, drawn by *Lezz*
**Pete and his Pimple** by *Lew Stringer*
**Haldane’s Puzzling, Mysterious, Unexplained, Amazing World**
by *David Haldane* (who else?)

Below, a close look at a panel from The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile – Aged 8 5/8 (yearƨ) may raise some eyebrows with pig pals. What’s that he’s eating? It can’t be! Not in OiNK! I’m not the only one to pick up on this as a future Grunts page will attest. Anneka Rice would later make a guest appearance on the letters page of an issue of Super Naturals and here she’s popped up in one of its sister comics, complete with a cheeky caption from Uncle Pigg.

**Hadrian Vile** written by *Mark Rodgers*, drawn by *Ian Jackson*
**Grunts** compiled by *Patrick Gallagher*
**GBH Games Catalogue** photographed by *John Barry*
*John Barry* (right) pictured with *Patrick Gallagher*

Finally, ace OiNK (and Frank Sidebottom’s official) photographer John Barry created a page of fully mocked up fake board games for a funny GBH Madvertisement. “Well beyond the call of duty!”, as Patrick Gallagher exclaimed to me recently. Take a closer look at that Plopopoly panel and you’ll see the board, cards and even the strange die (with an ‘8’ side) have all been crafted to great detail! All for just one small photo.

This issue contains the very welcome return of Frodo Johnson (previously in #22), otherwise known as the Dice Maniac, Lew Stringer’s parody of fantasy role players and 2000AD spin-off magazine, Dice Man. It’s somewhat bittersweet because this was his last of only two appearances but at least this time he’s in full colour. For the uninitiated, to Frodo life is the ultimate adventure and, no matter how mundane the task, how he goes about it is all up to the roll of his dice. Of course, these should not actually be trusted.

This is OiNK, so naturally with it being set in the countryside it had to have a cowpat and an accompanying pun at the end. What a shame the character would never return. He had the potential of being something of an OiNK spin on traditional strips but alas this would be all we’d ever see of any potential he had. With the Dice Man magazine only lasting five issues Lew tells me he didn’t think Maniac would be relevant anymore and thus he was created as a limited character.

Last but certainly not least you may have noticed Marc Riley’s Harry the Head flying past one of Rubbish Man’s panels above. You saw him on the cover then on page two our esteemed editor gave him a kick to get him to his own page near the back of the comic. It was a hell of a kick because he makes a cameo in (or beside) no less than four other strips and the Grunts page.

Harry appeared alongside Jeremy Banx’s Burp, his creator Marc Riley’s own Doctor Mooney He’s Completely Looney, Mark Rodgers’ and Mike Green’s Blank Sinatra and Davy Francis’ Cowpat Country which this time is just an excuse to have Harry land as he does. Uniquely, it was by Marc and Patrick Gallagher instead of Davy, Patrick credited as ‘Calorgas’. According to Patrick, “Marc was pretending to be really pissed and trying repeatedly to pronounce my surname, but all he could manage was ‘Calorgas’”.

The reason for Harry’s harrowing journey? A special competition with no less than 100 of Matchbox’s memorable Madballs to give away to lucky pig pals. I remember having one but I’ve no idea which one it was, although I don’t think it was any of these three below. I believe I also had a teeny tiny squishy one too, or maybe that’s just my mind playing tricks on me. Below you’ll also see OiNK co-creator/co-editor Mark Rodgers with one of the Madballs he took on a camping holiday at the time.

The photo of the rugby ball sitting on top of this issue is fellow pig pal Ross Murdoch‘s, one of the lucky 100 winners! I think most of my friends had at least one Madball and I even recall spotting a Marvel UK special in a newsagent at one stage too. They were really fun to kick and throw about since they’d bounce and roll in such unpredictable ways, but they were very well made and were more than up to the battering they took. Even though the competition ran in other Fleetway comics too they’re the perfect fit for an OiNK contest, aren’t they?

This is a brilliant issue! Again. OiNK was going from strength to strength but elsewhere in Fleetway’s range something had happened that would affect our treasured piggy publication. When they had taken over IPC’s comics, Fleetway grouped all the titles into various sales groups. Because there were so many of them and the market was shrinking, tracking individual sales was out. Instead, if any particular group’s combined sales weren’t up to par every comic in it would be cancelled.

The likes of Buster and Whizzer and Chips etc were selling over 200,000 a week and were placed in one group. OiNK was unfairly (in my eyes) placed into a different one alongside the likes of the just-cancelled Nipper (image taken from Comic Vine). OiNK was selling 100,000 a fortnight, far beyond the others in its group and in September with the last of its siblings canned OiNK was left on its own. By Fleetway’s rules OiNK should’ve been cancelled at this point but its own sales saved it. However, the publisher wanted more and so they forced a big change on the team which would take effect in the new year. We’ll come back to that then.

For now that’s us for another issue and I’m really excited for the next one to come. A glorious Ralph Shephard cover that takes full advantage of the extra space from the smaller logo is one of the very best in the run. This suits the issue perfectly because #40, the second Hallowe’en edition, is one of the very best issues too. I’ve got particular memories attached to it as well so I can’t wait to read it again. Fittingly enough its review will be here on Monday 31st October 2022.

iSSUE 38 < > iSSUE 40

OiNK! #38: A FEAST OF FUNNiES

3 October 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

A cover that would surely stand out on the shelves, a full-page photograph of Frank Sidebottom (aka Chris Sievey) and Marc Riley as his alter ego Snatcher Sam getting into what appears to be a food fight, with a promise of a full story inside. Frank never seemed to be off our television screens at the time so having him in OiNK was always a major coup for the comic, having him on the cover even more so. Well, it would be if his face wasn’t covered with those wonderful stickers, of course.

Our third and final set includes the same ‘Stick with OiNK’ on the back as previous issues and an array of stars with Burp, Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins, Harry the Head and Frank himself on the good quality, bright yellow stickers. The butcher one in particular I remember, I think it ended up on our fridge back in 1987 but not for very long. We wouldn’t get any more free gifts until the final issue, a gift that would lead me directly to my next comic obsession.

Where did that sticker go? Find out here.

The Story Behind the Cover strip was the first time we’d seen Frank and Sam in a photo story since #26 and here it’s split up into three small chunks, the conclusion on page 31. However, the first two parts are also split up over the opening pages, the bottom half on page two and continuing at the top of page three. Why? Comic timing (pun intended).

Have you ever turned over a page of a comic and something towards the end of the strip catches your eye? Or have you ever been reading a page and your eye happens to wonder just for a split second to something further down, revealing the big gag too early? (Just me?) I love how this stops the strip at the point where Frank’s turn of phrase suggests something very different to what actually happens, then the gag lands when we start on the next page.

That pie thrown in the final image would be seen throughout the comic thanks to co-creator/co-editor Patrick Gallagher as it wings its way to the inner back page. The pie isn’t the only addition to some pages, there are little plops here and there with suitable puns, much like we had in the very earliest issues, in particular the preview. These were added to the previous two OiNKs too, adding to that feeling of newness (reminding me of those first issues) I described during #36’s review.

We’ll get back to that at the end of the review, as intended. As I mentioned in the OiNK’s Golden Age post this was my very favourite time in OiNK’s run, mainly because all of my very favourite characters, writers and cartoonists were present in almost every issue. One character who I’d always thought was always present from the moment she first appeared was Psycho Gran by the insanely talented (and all round decent feller) David Leach.

Old Lady Psycho appeared seemingly randomly from #15 up to this point, partly because David didn’t know she was to be a regular character originally. Her Maniacal Majesty was at her most prolific in these latter fortnightlies, in fact apart from the next issue she’ll be in every one until OiNK turns weekly when she unfortunately disappears, only popping up in three of the regular issues after that. So she’s another reason to enjoy the rest of this year’s issues.

A loveable character who was often the subject of body shaming, his cheery demeanour would see him get one over on the bullies

Also introduced in #15 and advertised as a regular was Fatty Farmer, normally written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Mike Green. Farmer appeared in five issues, then this is only his third appearance since and he’d only have three more to go. He was a loveable character who was often the subject of body shaming, although he’d never let it get to him and his cheery demeanour would see him get one over on the bullies every time.

Here however, he’s eaten a load of cream cheese just before bedtime and, playing on the old tale of cheese giving you nightmares if you eat it late at night, he drifts into a disturbed sleep in Fatty Farmer’s Nightmare! A Blubbery Bonus. This time the script has been written by new OiNK scribe Vaughan Brunt, with Mike as ever providing the art. Written as a rhyme it starts off silly and just gets sillier.

I’m a sucker for a comical shark and Mike doesn’t disappoint here. For a start trying to strangle a shark is funny enough, never mind the giant, crazy eyes, lack of pectoral fins making it look like a long, silly sausage and the little “Dunslop” sign on the front of its rubber body! This was the only time Fatty Farmer got a full page to himself and I think it’s Mike’s art that really makes it. It could’ve been written for any character let’s face it but Mike makes it feel like the perfect fit.

Other highlights of this issue include Burp doing political satire three decades early, Death’s hilarious reaction to an unwelcome visitor, our dense-but-buffed Endor and his magical spectacles being woken from their apparently cuddly sleep when the Monocle of Mayhem is stolen by a ghost and Pete giving us a hint as to why he may have that pimple in the first place.

**Burp** by *Jeremy Banx*
**Adventures of Death** by *Charlie Brooker*
**Spectacles of Doom** written by *Tony Husband*,
drawn by *Andy Roper*
**Pete and his Pimple** by *Lew Stringer*
**Jimmy Flynn** by *David Haldane*

A quick note on those last two panels. This was the first appearance for new serial Jimmy Flynn, a boy who was “bathed in a weird light from a flying saucer” and ever since could make his skeleton jump out of his skin to go and investigate spooky goings-on. Each strip would hype a ‘Special Guest Star’ in the title too, only for that special guest to appear inconsequentially in one panel, as Larry Hogman (Larry Hagman, Dallas) does here.

This issue saw the very first contribution from none other than Kev F Sutherland. A prolific cartoonist in OiNK’s weekly and monthly issues (his work would make up nearly a sixth of the final issue!) this was the only time his art would be seen in the fortnightlies. It’s great to see him join the fray at last. A small, quarter-page three-panel Madvertisement riffing off the McDonald’s TV adverts of the day, not only is this Kev’s first OiNK strip, it’s his very first published work.

So a little bit of comics history right there. Kev went on to be a cartoonist in titles as diverse as Beano, Toxic, Doctor Who Adventures and Red Dwarf Magazine. Today he also visits schools to teach comics creation, performs with socks puppets as The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre and you can check out his 17-part podcast series Comic Cuts – The Panel Show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

When you’re a heavy, building-sized robotic pig there’s no way you can’t make an impact

I’ve been looking forward to Kev’s time in the comic and forgot all about this little strip. Having proven himself we had to wait until #49 to see him again but it’ll be worth the wait. Some of the very best strips to come are from Kev; The March of the Killer Breakfasts and a simply brilliant strip about three scientists discovering time travel are stand outs. Kev also had a series called simply Meanwhile… which would have a completely different scenario every time, all linked together by nothing more than his unique art style and even more unique sense of humour. You’ll see some of those next year.

One character didn’t appear too often, showing up for just five regular issues and both annuals, but made a huge impact with readers and remains a fan favourite to this day: Pigswilla. Then again, when you’re a heavy, building-sized robotic pig there’s no way you can’t make an impact. He returns this issue in Beware the Bread-Beast from Beyond. As you can see Lew Stringer’s gorgeous colour work has returned, as has his rhyming storytelling.

It’s all very funny, that exclamation by the Bread-Beast at the top of the second page along with his facial expression made me genuinely roar! You know you’re in for a treat when you turn a page and find Pigswilla is in the issue and we were never let down. The strip ends with cut-out finger puppets and by the initials it appears Mark Rodgers had a hand (boom! boom!) in those. Lew would do something similar to brilliant effect with his Combat Colin strip in Marvel UK’s Transformers a few years later.

The next strip takes up two pages, although it’s not a double-page spread, instead we turn over for the second half. This instance isn’t for comic timing, instead it’s so that it can be presented as the front and back covers of a spoof comic. I was surprised to see this because the first annual has a superb, multi-page spoof of Beano and The Dandy and it would’ve been on sale at this time (although most of us didn’t get it until Christmas, of course). Nevertheless, here’s the first time OiNK took a direct swipe at DC Thomson’s best-seller with The Deano.

This was all a well-meaning jest, a parody of the long established comics. As OiNK writer Graham Exton once told me parody is when you poke fun at something you admire, satire is something different, and these were always intended as parodies. For example, this was written by co-creator/co-editor Mark Rodgers who (according to Graham I should add) would always have a Beano Book next to the loo for guests in his house to read while they did their business.

“There’s a new butcher in town, gang! Let’s splat him!”
Scramble

Brought to life by Les ‘Lezz’ Barton, the volume and issue numbers emphasise the running gag that the comics were tired and had been going on too long with the same humour, and it all goes rather dark on the second page. I’m not referring to the lights being turned off either. Let’s be clear, Dennis has just minced and eaten his pet dog! Then again, we are reading a comic which advertised burgers made of butchers in its preview issue, so the precedent was set.

Percy Piglet turning the light out will actually get mentioned in our final highlight from this issue but before that here’s the winner of Granada TV’s Scramble competition as promised. I actually prefer runner up Ian Marshall’s Professor Foible but I wasn’t judging and when the winning strip features a gang of punk pigs it’s clear this was always going to be the winner. After all, co-editor Tony Husband was (and still is) a huge fan of punk music and always saw OiNK as the comic equivalent.

I’m sure Michael Spencer of Poynton was thrilled to see his work in the comic, introduced by Uncle Pigg and the plops on the previous page. You can’t fault the imagination on show and it reminds me of the comics my friend Roger and I made for each other in school, which were usually riffs on Marvel UK comics such as Transformers and The Real Ghostbusters. From memory, Roger created The Battleoids and School Busters, while mine were called War-Bots and The Real Smokebusters. (Hmm, definitely not as original as Michael’s strip.)

Time to round off this issue’s review with the conclusion of our photo story starring Marc Riley as Snatcher Sam and Chris Sievey as Frank Sidebottom. The custard pie has made its way through the comic to end up splattered all over Sam so the OiNK photographer finally gets their shot. In response the reluctant cover stars plot revenge and this is where the reference from earlier comes back to funny effect.

The lucky young star who got to meet some of the OiNK team was Scott Steward, neighbour of Patrick Gallagher‘s. Thanks again to Patrick for the info and as always he’s sent along a recent photograph to show us Scott as he is now. Hello Scott!

That’s our feast of an issue at an end and it’s been a belter from start to finish. It should come as no shock that I think the same of the next one, at least from memory anyway. After that will be the Hallowe’en issue which (along with the Christmas edition later on this year) I seem to recall was one of my very favourite OiNKs of them all. So good times ahead then. Before then, the review of the Games and Puzzles Issue will be here on Monday 17th October 2022.

iSSUE 37 < > iSSUE 39

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OiNK! #37: NEW ADDiTiONS

19 September 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Our second new look OiNK sees the logo enlarged a little, sitting proud in its new position and, as promised by co-creator/co-editor Patrick Gallagher it lets us see more of the superb cover image by Mike Higgs. There’s a confidence about this issue and it’s new format that takes me right back to those days of running to the newsagent for my latest issue every fortnight, knowing I was going to get another 32 pages of perfect pork.

Another set of free stickers are wrapped around the cover, that Tom Thug ‘Book of Grammar’ one being my particular favourite. I think I used the Hadrian Vile sticker on a school book of some description back in 1987 (I would’ve been in primary six at the time of this issue) and the missing one on the back was the same as the one in that position last issue, which ended up on my fridge. This issue’s has been added to the comics shelves in my new home office.

The ‘Hilarious Happy Families Issue’ lives up to its name from the very first page with that brilliant cover complete with a couple of strategically placed OiNKs, portraying an elderly relative dying from the shock of reading an issue. The Christmas Club, the note on the bottom of the casket and a couple of plops for good measure, I can remember visiting my mum’s friend’s house with this issue and sitting absorbed by it while they gossiped.

In fact, I remember they were talking about Santa Claus and wondering if I knew the truth (that he most definitely existed, obviously) and I caught part of the conversation between strips. I can recall May asking the question and my mum saying at my age my friends would’ve been talking about it, so she assumed I knew. I kept quiet, I still wanted all my toys (and my OiNK Book!). That’s something which always comes back to me whenever I see this cover. May (or Aunty May as we called her, even though she wasn’t related) is no longer with us so it’s a happy memory that I’ll never forget thanks to OiNK.

This is quite simply the perfect comic script

Inside, one of the first strips is an old favourite, Davy Francis’ Cowpat County. Davy has two trademarks when it comes to his funniest strips, background gags and brilliant puns. This next page is easily my favourite featuring Farmer Giles. It is quite simply the perfect comic script. It all leads up to the final joke, expertly laying in the little bits of information along the way that’ll make it work, the reader unaware this is happening until the end.

Davy is a real comedic genius and it ran in the family. His father Stanley Francis was a comedian, performing in the old club circuits in Northern Ireland with Frank “it’s a cracker” Carson. Stanley also played piano and once accompanied Little Richard at Belfast’s Boom Boom Rooms! He’d often tell jokes at home to try them out (which Davy now uses on his bus tours) and the joke at the centre of this Cowpat County was one of Stanley’s. Also, check out that middle panel and you’ll see Davy’s caricatures of fellow OiNK cartoonists Ed McHenry and Lew Stringer! (Thanks for pointing them out, Davy!)

“She’s luvly!!”
Hadrian Vile

Just one final note about this strip. I have the original artwork, one of a few pieces of Davy’s I own. I’m going to hold that back for a future post and show them all off at once. It also couldn’t have escaped your notice that something is going on with Snatcher Sam and Frank Sidebottom. Anyone who grew up on OiNK should instantly know what this refers to. Yes, it was finally available. Exciting! I’ll get back to that later in the review.

Next up is what I’d easily describe as the main event of this family themed issue. In fact it’s probably the main event in the whole life of Hadrian Vile thus far, something I’ve alluded to ever since the character first appeared on the blog back in #4’s review. To mark the occasion he gets three pages written by Mark Rodgers in glorious Ian Jackson full colour. This story more than any other plays to Ian’s strength of perfectly capturing a character’s thoughts in their face and body language. For example, his exasperated dad when they’re pulled over and in the next panel when he’s trying to explain things to the police officer.

We saw Hadrian’s age increase in the birthday issue and his reaction when his parents explained he was going to be a big brother. Now, after months of him torturing his poor pregnant mum the big moment has arrived and while the laughs are still plentiful, what we have here is a surprisingly sweet strip. After all those previous issues full of Hadrian getting into trouble thanks to his ridiculous schemes, he actually comes up with a helpful idea when the situation calls for it. It’s still daft and funny of course, especially his dad trying to run along holding that pillow.

After wearing down the carpet in the waiting room the family are called in to see their newest addition and even Bowser gets a mask so he can join them. We turn over to see the following full-page image with a simple, sweet (yet still incorrectly spelt) diary entry. This was certainly a memorable moment in humour comics. When did a character live their life in an almost real time manner like this? When was something like this properly built up to instead of just being a sudden change? OiNK was always unique and this is all the proof you need.

Don’t be thinking Hadrian is going to go all slushy on us though. Instead, he sees his new baby sister as a potential protégé, someone to teach the ways of the world to, someone to train to be just like him and we’d get to see these in various ways over the following months. She also makes an appearance in the card game in this very issue.

This takes up the middle pages and the back cover, with another half page for the instructions, which are the same for the regular Happy Families game.

So as per the typical rules each family is made up of four individuals, with Hadrian’s not including Bowser as would’ve been expected up to this point, instead his baby sister gets a little cameo of sorts. Altogether there are 36 cards for the reader to stick on to cardboard and cut out, split into nine families. Parents and siblings could also easily take part because each group has a simple numbering system so non-OiNK fans (yes, they exist!) wouldn’t get lost amongst the silly names.

I always liked seeing favourite characters drawn by different artists. Ed McHenry is the person responsible here and his depictions of Ian Jackson’s Hadrian and his family, David Haldane’s Rubbish Man, J.T. Dogg’s Street-Hogs heroes and villains, and Jeremy Banx’s alien innards are my particular favourites. Did any blog readers cut out and play this game when they were but a piglet? I never cut up any of my OiNKs back at the time. (I did begin to colour in something in the first annual but that was about it.) However, these days the angel on top of my Christmas tree is from a page of the comic and for the blog I’ve already constructed an old-fashioned Frank Sidebottom toy.

There’s a certain phrase I remember my dad using whenever my siblings or I did anything that our mum would’ve found particularly bad and one of the little quarter-page strips in this issue takes that exact phrase and ridicules it, albeit swapping the parents’ roles over in the process. From that moment on I could never take it seriously when it was used. I still can’t. Mad Dad is written by Vaughan Brunt and drawn by Ian Knox. This is followed up by Grate Expectations, a memorable little one-off from the insane mind of Simon Thorp who, I’m very happy to say, was turning up more regularly by this point.

There were so many highlights in this issue I really struggled deciding which ones to include. This could be a regular problem over these next few months, but it’s a nice problem to have, isn’t it? The Grunts page features press clippings about OiNK itself, although I’ll save them for their own post at a future date. Just mentioned recently on the blog’s socials by a fellow pig pal was Burp’s tractor beam and it pops up here, so I just had to include that in this little selection of panels.

There was also a unique competition in which readers could win a trip to Timperley, the home of megastar Frank Sidebottom and meet their hero, and to get readers excited to enter he tells us all about his post office having two letterboxes! Woo. I’ll keep an eye out for the results. There’s a full-page Uncle Pigg strip describing the special versions of OiNK he publishes around the world and it’s nice to see he and Santa have made up since #17.

**Frank Sidebottom** by *Chris Sievey*
**Uncle Pigg** written by *Mark Rodgers*, drawn by *Ian Jackson*
**Horace Watkins** by *Tony Husband*
**Rubbish Man** by *David Haldane*
**Burp** & **Butcher Watch** by *Jeremy Banx*

For the first time we see Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins playing football, something which would lead to a huge multi-issue story for the character in future issues, a little plop drawn by Patrick Gallagher invaded a handful of pages throughout the issue such as Rubbish Man’s, and in the latest Butcher Watch a pig by the name of Stig the Pig thinks he’s finally won the battle with Jimmy ‘The Cleaver’ Smith, with wonderfully Banx’y captions.

Of course, Jimmy has to live to see another day and terrorise the world in which the characters of OiNK reside. As it turns out that shadowy figure wasn’t Jimmy at all but rather a selection of pork sausages tied up and dressed to resemble him. We see this reveal just before Jimmy strangles Stig to death with another string of sausages. This might sound a bit brutal for a kid’s humour comic but it was so ludicrous and over-the-top we’d just laugh at the absurdity of the pretend horror.

So, Frank has just set a new competition and this issue announces the runner-up of one we hadn’t seen in the comic. In much the same way that OiNK ran a competition in conjunction with Radio Manchester (the results were in #26), they teamed up with Granada TV’s Scramble programme. Ian Marshall from Bramhall has not one, but two small strips in this issue starring his own creation, Professor Foible.

If this is the level of quality the runner-up produced I can honestly say I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what the young winner came up with! We’ll have to wait to find out though because that’s being held back until #38.

So for the uninitiated, what were Frank Sidebottom aka Chris Sievey and Snatcher Sam aka Marc Riley up to earlier in the issue? Why, they were recording a new song for the OiNK 45 of course! Way back in the mists of time the premiere issue of our favourite comic gave away a fun flexidisc record with two songs created specifically to annoy adults as much as for the kids to enjoy. The OiNK Song and The OiNK Rap are often quoted by fans to this day and on this new proper record they were getting another outing alongside a new song.

When the original songs were produced by Marc, Chris had yet to join the comic (#16) so the new track, called The OiNK Get Together Song was a chance for the pop music sensation to get in on the action and team up with the former member of The Fall. Along with the other two songs (the rap now renamed The OiNK Psycho Rap) this was a proper, solid record the size of a single, in its own sleeve for just £1.70 and I for one jumped at the chance to own it, especially since all three songs were new to me (having missed the flexidisc first time around). In fact, this and the mug were the only pieces of OiNK merchandise I originally owned.

I recall the song contained impressions of various characters and it irritated my family just as much as the other two. My record met with an early demise when it warped under the hot sun from a skylight window only a couple of weeks after it had arrived in the post. I hadn’t even had a chance to tape it yet for my Walkman. Now if only I could listen to it again after all these decades to see how my adult brain would react to those songs.

Well would you look at that. Yep, in a moment of perfect timing this appeared on eBay and the record is in mint condition. I could not be happier. But then again, I haven’t listened to it yet! Nope, I haven’t stuck it on the ol’ record player yet, I’ll do that when it comes to writing the accompanying blog post. So look out for that just after 17th October. Why am I making you wait so long? Well, we had to wait 28 days for delivery after all and this is all in real time.

That brings us to the end of another fantastic issue. As a child I’d loved the changes and was so happy they weren’t a one-off (the previous issue‘s theme seemingly explaining them away for that one edition), the book was in the shops and I was eagerly anticipating it for Christmas, plus I’d just ordered an exciting new piece of merchandise, my first piece of OiNK merchandise in fact. I’d been a fan of OiNK since I’d first discovered it, but by now I was completely obsessed. The next issue is the Food and Drink Special with yet another memorable cover, a full-page photograph of (who else) Frank and Sam. The next review will be here on Monday 3rd October 2022.

Is it really October already?! OiNK really had helped this year fly by,

iSSUE 36 < > iSSUE 38

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OiNK! #36: CHANGES ARE A-TROTTER!

5 September 2022 Phil Boyce 7 Comments

Percy Plop isn’t wrong, although while the comic would present the changes as a result of a temporarily crazed editor in reality they were permanent. With Fleetway Publications now having bought IPC Magazine’s comics they decided to publish all titles on the same paper stock, which meant a good upgrade for the others but a downgrade for OiNK. I didn’t complain though, which I’ll get to soon, and the theme for this issue was a stroke of genius.

A bit like when the skeleton staff made a hash of #8 this issue sees some strips printed upside down, others drawn by the wrong artist, some are coloured incorrectly and other such randomness occurs. Some strips, even if they don’t have something deliberately ‘wrong’ with them, seem more zany than usual, which is saying something for this comic. Jon Langford’s cover may not be the best the comic ever had but this is one of the very best issues as a whole.

So what did the team think of the physical changes and did Fleetway enforce any other alterations? “We were all disappointed initially with the changes but, fortunately, it didn’t dampen our spirit so it was ‘business as usual’ producing the best content within our means,” co-creator/co-editor Patrick Gallagher told me. “Though the publisher changed from IPC to Fleetway, Bob Paynter still held his position as Group Editor and it was him we were answerable to, with the same amount of creative freedom as before. It was still fun to produce.”

Maybe to soften the blow for fans of the glossy paper (now on thicker matt stock, slightly thinner in width) or maybe to publicise it for new readers as the publisher pushed their new purchases, this and the next two issues had these fun stickers which ended up all over my house as a kid (and on my fridge and home office door as a 40+ year-old). The logo shifted up into the corner in a colourful banner and this too would be kept, although initially shifted about and resized from issue-to-issue, emphasising the random nature of OiNK.

“The logo change,” continues Patrick. “We were running short of pink ink so we decided to reduce the size of the pink logo to economise.” Typical Patrick response, that. “Only joking. I think we just wanted to experiment and give more room to the cover illustration, knowing we could always change back to the bigger logo, which we ultimately did.” That would happen when OiNK went weekly in the new year. I really enjoyed the way it looked over these issues though and it did indeed give more space to some fantastic covers, as you’ll see soon.

So what was the comic’s reason behind the sudden changes we readers found in our hands?

Written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Ian Jackson Uncle Pigg introduces himself to new readers the way he did in the soft relaunch issue, #15 (which also gave away the first of three free gifts). This normally happened when a comic got a new look, something I enjoyed every time it happened with Transformers, for example. It’s understandable and didn’t detract from the strip for established pig pals. As Percy says in that final panel anything could happen, and everything did! On the very next page is an upside down strip, along with the image of Percy I showed at the top of this review, commentating on the new paper.

We’ll get to possibly the craziest strip OiNK had produced up to this stage in a minute but first comes something of a spiritual successor to last issue’s Arctic Adventure, although I’m sure it’s more of a coincidence. Either way, Tarzham the Apeman is a fantastic, funny strip I just had to include. Written by Tony Husband and drawn by Chas Sinclair, the same winning partnership behind semi-regular Lashy the Wonder Pig, it’s another tale taking shots (no pun intended) at cowardly animal hunters.

Tony is a huge supporter of animal rights and conservation, often sharing his opinions on hunters on social media in his inimitable style, using funny cartoons to make his point. I think the first speech balloon on the second page sums up those sorts of people, and the solution to the problem not only highlights the stupidity and greed of hunters but it genuinely made me laugh out loud. The ending is similar to Simon Thorp’s last time but both strips work so well I’m glad we got both.

Contributing to 40 issues of OiNK altogether, Ed McHenry would become best known for two particular things: his regular strip Wally of the West, a character I thought was in OiNK a lot more than he actually was (in reality only appearing in 12 and not until #53) and OiNK’s quiz pages, examples of which I’ve shown in the reviews for #6 and #12. However, we also enjoyed a selection of one-off characters from Ed, such as The Loon Ranger and his horse Radish.

Strips like these from Ed would become more regular during this period, yet another reason why this is my very favourite period in OiNK’s run. Below this is a quick three-panel Hadrian Vile which is a bit strange for one of the comic’s main characters. The excuse given is that the crazed Uncle Pigg ate Hadrian’s diary but in reality the next chapter in his story would perfectly fit the next issue’s theme instead, so for this issue a quick stop gap was needed so they could postpose his strip until his three pages next time. There’s also a tiny Frank Sidebottom strip about the end of the school term, apparently printed ten months too early according to the note underneath.

If all that sounds crazy you haven’t seen anything yet. Jeremy Banx’s strips are known for their surreal humour and random daftness. He’s always able to take a ludicrous idea that really shouldn’t work and turn it into pure comedy gold. Already peculiar on a regular basis, how could a Burp strip stand out in an issue themed around being peculiar? How about a story involving him wanting a Cary Grant tattoo on his meters-long tongue? This includes a panel that I never forgot after seeing it. I’m sure you’ll be able to tell which one.

Funniest moment? Oh that’s far too difficult to narrow down. How about a tattoo parlour having a free trial offer? Or the tattooist’s blank eyes and small balloon text as he reacts to what he’s just been told? The way he straddles Burp’s tongue, or even shouts after him for his tip? Already hilarious, already weird, already daft, somehow Jeremy is able to ramp it up even more in those final panels, cramming in so many insane moments you feel like you need to catch your breath while reading it.

I do like the seal of approval on Pete’s strip, a little dig at W.H. Smith

Both of Jeremy’s regular strips, this and Mr Big Nose had a knack of surprising us with endings that just came out of nowhere, and while completely random, out-of-nowhere end gags can sometimes fall flat in other comics this was never a problem for Jeremy. He nailed it every single time. This next handful of fortnightly OiNKs would see Burp’s strip regularly expand to two pages with some of the best strips the comic as a whole ever produced! I can’t wait to see them again.

A quick look at some other highlights before we move on. On the Grunts letters page there’s a quick glance at a new piece of merchandise coming very soon indeed and the results of #27’s Pop-Star Lookalike Contest with Frank Sidebottom had a particularly fantastic entry from reader Graham Fenton and blog reader Tim Fee. Elsewhere, both Rubbish Man and Pete and his Pimple are victims of the issue’s peculiarities, although I think Rubbish Man came off worse. I do like the seal of approval on Pete’s strip, a little dig at W.H.Smith moving OiNK to the top shelves due to just two complaints.

**Grunts** compiled by *Patrick Gallagher*
**Pop Star Lookalikes** compiled by *Chris Sievey*
**Rubbish Man** by *David Haldane*
**Pete and his Pimple** by *Lew Stringer*

Our smelly alien isn’t the only person to get two pages this issue. Lew Stringer’s Tom Thug gets to enjoy a bit more space to cause bovver in. I’ve mentioned before how OiNK’s high quality, glossy paper stock not only allowed gorgeous painted artwork, the black and white strips could also benefit from intricate shading, Lew in particular applying grey washes to his. While the paper from this issue onwards was a downgrade, it was still a cut above the newsprint OiNK’s contemporaries had been using up to this point.

“The quality of print on the matt stock paper was pretty good,” Patrick told me. “In my view it gave it more of a retro comic feel and warmth, which I liked.” I concur. While the gloss was lovely, and the plan was always to have the Holiday Specials use it, I really liked this paper but was struggling to articulate why until Patrick described it like that. This high grade matt was capable of the same techniques Lew had always been using, but you’ll notice its conspicuously absent from Tom’s strip.

“Yes, I think I expected it to be like newsprint so I avoided doing a grey wash on the strips until I saw that it was a better grade of paper than I thought it would be,” Lew explained too me. “I thought it was a shame the paper was downgraded from glossy but that wasn’t the first time budget cuts had affected a comic so it was inevitable I guess.” Lew would return to his usual style pretty quickly and we’d see OiNK’s most popular character shaded once more.

But what about the rest of that story? Well, Banx’s strips were great when he’d pull a conclusion seemingly out of nowhere but above it appears crazy Uncle Pigg giving the cartoonist a holiday, forcing him to rush the ending of Tom’s strip, has had the opposite effect. Our editor’s assistants The Plops have no choice but to allow Tom to finish his strip himself. Well that’s just inviting disaster, isn’t it?

My favourite bit is the fact the re-use of a panel from #17 (the previous Christmas issue no less) is an actual reprinting and not just Lew drawing it again. Go and check out that previous issue’s review to compare them if you don’t believe me. An ingenious strip and giving Tom two pages in an issue set up to attract new readers was a great idea, seeing as how popular he was (and would be in Buster for years to come).

Underneath Lew’s Pete and his Pimple strip were a couple of plops drawn by Ian Jackson who, along with some bad (as in groan-inducing) spotty puns, commented on everything that was going wrong with the strip. They appear throughout the comic, getting increasingly worried about what’s happening right up until we get the delight of seeing Harry the Head drawn by J.T. Dogg.

Normally drawn by his creator Marc Riley, we’ve become used to seeing Harry in Marc’s simplistic but energetic fashion, so to see him rendered by Malcolm Douglas (J.T.’s real name) like this is a sight to behold. There’s no writing credit but I think it’s safe to assume Marc would’ve still been responsible for the script. Oh, and that little image at the bottom leads to Uncle Pigg exploding on the next page!

Well, sort of. When he blows up screws and metal bits and bobs come flying out and the real Uncle Pigg soon reappears to explain with some “handy plot explanation”.

What an issue! It’s been an absolute delight to read this one again, it’s more than held up to the fond memories I had of it from 35 years ago. In fact, I can remember walking back from the newsagent with it in hand in 1987. Walking very fast actually, because I was thrilled with these exciting changes to my comic and couldn’t wait to see what this would mean on the inside. (I’m sure the stickers helped quicken my pace too.)

“Fat! Floppy! Fun! The biggest news ever for pig pals!”

A fabulous start to OiNK’s Golden Age (my own term, see here for more on that) and one of the best all round issues so far. It feels brand new again, like a fresh start in the same way #15 did. Also, all the best issues are the ones with a strip continuing through the comic in fun and original ways, such as #3‘s Star Truck and our editor again in the festive #17. The next edition is the Happy Families issue and I remember the fun Mike Higgs cover, the cut-out game and most of all the three-page Hadrian Vile strip!

You’re going to get sick of me saying this over the next few months, but I can’t wait for the next issue. Speaking of looking forward to things, the inside back cover finally revealed what had been hinted at for months. So that’s me looking forward to Christmas now too!

The review of OiNK #37, the Happy Families issue will be published on Monday 19th September 2022.

iSSUE 35 < > iSSUE 37

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OiNK! #32: PHYSiCAL FUN

11 July 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

I’m not a sports fan, never have been. As a kid when OiNK was published my dad and brother were football mad but I simply had no interest. The Olympics were always the exception though and that remains true today, I’ll be glued to the TV day and night for two weeks solid (I’ve even booked time off work before for them) but then normal service resumes for four years. So it was with trepidation that I approached the latest issue of OiNK, which upon first glance I had no recollection of from childhood.

But now I’ve finished the issue I needn’t have worried. It begins with that cover by Steve McGarry whose work we haven’t seen since #4, and this would be the last cover (and accompanying strip) he’d draw for the comic, his contribution to The OiNK! Book 1988 already completed even if we wouldn’t see it for a while yet. But the panels down the left really had me laughing, in particular the one about sports commentators. A funny start and inside the first laugh out loud moments come courtesy of Jeremy Banx’s smelly alien, Burp.

At this point Burp’s attempts at ingratiating himself with his human neighbours seem to be entering a rather gory phase, beginning with the malfunctioning fast food machine in #30 and in a strip I didn’t feature last issue he sliced off the top of Ronald Reagan’s head to have a chat with his brain. Bringing this little girl’s teddy bear to life might be the thing of fairy tales but as you can see Jeremy took it a step further to show the repercussions of such an act bedtime stories never would.

As well as the blackness of the blood adding to the funny horror and the bear’s protestations, there are a many more moments I found myself chuckling away here, not least of all Burp’s long explanation of what he did to the bear while never catching on that this was previously a toy. Also the fact it’s all done with ‘Bupa’ rays. Adverts for Bupa were on the telly all the time back then so even as a child I’d have found this funny. (UPDATE: Having now read further I can reveal this wouldn’t be the last time we’d see this teddy.) This issue was also the first time we saw two other individuals.

David Haldane’s Torture Twins were a regular staple of the comic from here on in, appearing in every regular issue except the penultimate monthly. A tale of twin brothers who really enjoyed their work. Their work just happened to be medieval torturing. In such a dark profession I guess it helps to have a good sense of humour. From gags and puns based on what devices they were using, to more ridiculous forms of torture, they were a highlight and a fan favourite. It’s good to finally see them here.

I knew of Day of the Triffids from watching the movie not long before this issue, so it was the perfect material to parody

While this issue as a whole didn’t seem to jog the memory cells as much as others there’s one definite highlight that takes me right back. It was the first time I’d come across certain characters (my first issue was #14) who had made such a huge impact with pig pals who’d been with the comic from the start. Written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by J.T. Dogg, the second epic adventure for The Street-Hogs began here. The Day of the Triffics would be a lot shorter than their original story but this one made a huge impact on me.

For young readers already familiar with them it must’ve felt like an age since their last appearance in #11. The hype of their return began in #27 and was further added to last time with a large poster, but now the moment was finally here. I was completely won over by two things, namely the return of Dogg as the artist after I’d loved his work on Ham Dare and the reason behind the plants being called ‘Triffics’! (In the spread below, your eyes may instinctively try to read the whole of the first page thanks to how those TV screens are laid out, but this should be read all the way across)

It’s been too long since we’ve had a series of one preposterous cliffhanger after another with equally ridiculous escapes the following issue. I knew of the Day of the Triffids from watching the movie late one night with my mum not long before this, so it was the perfect material to parody as far as I was concerned. The mysterious baddie really isn’t mysterious at all for those who’d read the first adventure, but that was all part of the fun, that our daring, gung-ho heroes couldn’t even figure that much out. I’m really looking forward to the next few issues.

So far out of the highlights I’ve shown only one has stuck to the theme, so here’s a selection of panels taken from throughout the issue. Pete and his Pimple finally work together to show it’s not all a bum deal for the spotty teen, there are some exercise ideas even I could get behind, a very funny spoof tabloid The Bumb is more believable than the real thing (and stars radio DJ Mark Radcliffe!) and then the final panel is about as close as we’d get to a friendship between Hector Vector and his Talking T-Shirt.

**Pete and his Pimple** by *Lew Stringer*
**OiNK Exercises** written by *Howard Osborn*, drawn by *Ian Knox*
**The Bumb** starred *Mark Radcliffe*
**Hector Vector and his Talking T-shirt** by *Jeremy Banx*

DJ and TV presenter, and close friend of editor Patrick Gallagher and writer/artist (and fellow radio DJ) Marc Riley, Mark Radcliffe worked alongside both on The Mark Radcliffe Show on BBC Radio One after OiNK and Round the Bend came to an end. The three also performed as The Shirehorses, a parody band that came off the back of the radio show. Also, Patrick and Mark performed with Chris Sievey aka Frank Sidebottom in his Oh Blimey Big Band, a photo of which you can see in #16‘s review. Of course, you’ll also know Marc and Mark as Mark and Lard! Thanks as always to Patrick for the info and the photo.

Do you remember spot-the-ball competitions? They could still be around for all I know, but in case they’re not I’ll explain. They’d run in newspapers and magazines back in the 80s and would involve a photograph taken during some action in a football game, with the ball itself removed from the picture. This would always be very cleverly disguised and given the technology of the day was quite the feat because there’d be no trace of it in the photo.

Competition entrants would need to look at the positions of each individual player, their actions, where they’re looking etc. and try to figure out where best to place their ‘X’ to highlight where they think the ball was in that precise moment. The team behind OiNK decided to run a similar competition and went to the same painstaking levels of professionalism to ensure it was as difficult to work out as possible.

I was so happy to see the return of Tom’s Toe in this issue! Originally appearing back in #12, co-editor and writer Tony Husband‘s creation then popped up in the first Holiday Special before disappearing again until #30. Given the nature of the strip, that it would parody clichés from OiNK’s own sister publications, it worked best as a special character who’d just pop up now and again. If Tom had been a regular I think the joke could’ve worn thin and he could’ve strayed into cliché himself.

Thankfully that never happened and here his return is marked with a brilliant strip which really highlights the differences between OiNK and other comics of the day. Of course, it’s all helped along by the fact it’s drawn by John Geering whose usual work was among that which Tom was parodying! So, this time Tom and his friends are playing a game of footie when the ball bursts. What to do? Well, we have a boy whose toe can take on any form so naturally he grows it to resemble a football.

Tom’s four appearances were brief but memorable and the perfect antidote to the safer humour OiNK was created to counter

This halfway point of the page feels like the end gag for a traditional strip in another comic; “Haha, oh he made it into a football this week, I wonder what he’ll do next time haha?” But this is OiNK. OiNK was different, it went further. In this case, it takes the scenario further to see what would actually happen next, turning the second half of the strip into something else completely. The whole page is kind of like a metaphor for the difference between traditional comics and this one.

Unfortunately, this would be the last time we’d ever see Tom. His four appearances were brief but memorable and the perfect antidote to the safer humour OiNK was created to counter in the first place. John would return in the first OiNK Book, drawing more jokes aimed at other comics he worked on. As a child I’d no idea this was the case because OiNK was the only humour comic I collected for a while, but now I can appreciate his contributions even more than I originally did.

The final page I’d like to highlight is Frank Sidebottom’s. Chris Sievey was a creative genius, let’s make no bones about it, and since he joined the ranks of OiNK he’s designed a cut-out zoetrope, his own Time magazine cover and even created working programs for young ZX Spectrum computer users. The page he’s brought us this time once again shows the insane amount of work he’d put into OiNK. We appreciated it every single time.

No other character had such a variety of content from issue to issue. We just never knew what would be next with Frank. He particularly seemed to enjoy giving us an excuse to cut up our precious comics, giving us even more value for (our parents’) money. He certainly didn’t let us down with his (deep breath) Frank “Windy” Sidebottom vs Elton John All-Star Cut-Out Snooker Game. The rules alone were surely a feat to create. At one stage he even suggests throwing them out, they’re that intricate.

A simply wonderful page for us to finish on this time. The next OiNK comic review will be up from Monday 25th July 2022, the theme of which really puzzled me back in 1987, then made me very happy indeed to be living in Northern Ireland and not another part of the UK as a child. You’ll have to come back in a fortnight to find out what that’s all about.

iSSUE 31 < > iSSUE 33

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ZZAP! 64 #26: PiG PLAY PREViEW

14 May 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Back in 1991 I received one of the greatest Christmas gifts of all, a Commodore 64 home computer. I adored that machine and I adored the magazine I collected alongside it, namely Commodore Format. Through that computer I met a chap named Colin who would go on to be one of my closest friends. He was a long-time reader of Format’s rival, Zzap! 64 and we’d take plenty of well-meaning jabs at each other’s favourite magazine over the next few years. (Actually, this continues to this day.) For the blog I now find myself buying my first copy of Zzap.

In the summer of 1987 the OiNK computer game would be released on the three main 8-bit computer systems of the day, the Commodore 64, the Spectrum range and Amstrad CPCs. I must’ve seen the adverts for it in the comic but having no interest in computer games at that stage it slipped my mind by the time I was loading up cassettes and disks at the beginning of the next decade. Over these next few months on the blog I’ll be covering this unique piece of piggy merchandise, showing you previews, interviews, a review and more. It’ll even include a special issue of OiNK!

The first mention of the game came in issue 26 of Zzap! 64, released on this day 35 years ago. Inside the June 1987 issue the preview followed an interview with none other than Douglas Adams, which was a bit of a scoop! But I digress. The article contained a look at the origins of the comic itself and, unlike modern day press reference to OiNK, it’s an accurate depiction of those events (in other words there’s no mention of Viz). There are also some interesting nuggets of information for seasoned pig pals and a cameo by Marc Riley in his Snatcher Sam guise.

There’s a mention of the original idea for the comic being that of a fanzine, so unsure were Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers of whether a publisher would pick it up, which is new information to me. However, when the dummy issue was produced (a lot of which made its way into the preview issue) it went down a storm with IPC Magazines and our favourite publication was born. Also here is the first mention of the forthcoming OiNK record and a quick mention of the original flexidisc being played on a local radio station (we already knew John Peel played it on his BBC show).

Here’s the article in full, the opening paragraphs of which do beg the question of how many times can you mention Whizzer and Chips?

As OiNK fans who played the game will attest, the finished product had little-to-nothing to do with the individual characters it was meant to represent. There were some comic panels in it written by Tony Husband to try to bring a bit of the comic’s humour to the game, but that was really about it. As such, the general consensus seems to be that the game sucked because of its lack of OiNK content, but is this actually an unfair conclusion? You’ll find out in a couple of months when Zzap! 64 reviews it.

Already on the blog you can check out a Retro Gamer article featuring an interview with the game’s coder Jon Williams. There’s more to come, including a special issue of OiNK inside Crash magazine, which also had a special article and an extra page from none other than Frank Sidebottom, so look out for that on Saturday 25th June 2022. Then just a few weeks later I’ll show you the Zzap! 64 review of the game to see how it was received at the time, on Saturday 9th July. Later in the year I’ll tell you how I was finally able to play the game decades later when it was released under a completely different name, plus there’ll be a full guide to beating the game. These both relate to Commodore Format and in keeping with the real time nature of the blog I’ll be covering those issues on Thursday 13th October and Thursday 10th November.

THE OiNK! COMPUTER GAME MENU

OiNK MERCHANDiSE MENU

OiNK! #26: AGED BACON

18 April 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Usually with comics the special anniversary issues would mark the beginning of the next year of publication, on sale over the date of the first issue. OiNK decided to mark the end of the first year instead with their celebratory issue actually due to come off the shelves two days before the date of #1‘s release the previous year. Instead, #26 celebrated the launch of the preview issue, bundled inside other IPC comics on 26th April 986. That free issue gets several mentions inside.

Patrick Gallagher‘s Uncle Pigg and that shiny golden logo welcome us to the celebrations and inside it’s party time. If memory serves the second anniversary would be marked by nothing more than a passing mention on the letters page and unfortunately there wouldn’t be a third, so I intended to enjoy this one. Thankfully it wasn’t to let me down, starting off with this brilliant Pete and his Pimple from Lew Stringer in which he’s been invited to sign copies at a newsagent for the anniversary.

I did laugh when Pete felt he needed to elaborate on his comment about how it was a good thing he didn’t put the cream anywhere else. Lew’s background characters are as eclectic a bunch as you would expect and is that Wilfrid visiting from Bash Street in the doorway? Well no, that’s just a coincidence, but in asking Lew he pointed out someone I did miss. Standing in the doorway just behind him is none other than Lew’s spoof superhero character Brickman who, after the (temporary) end of his strip in 1986, made disguised cameos (without mask, coat on top of his costume) in other strips in the Lewniverse. I can’t be the only fan who’ll find this surprising and funny in equal measure. (At the time one young reader did spot him and sent Lew all of the panels she’d spotted him in!)

At this point in the review I must issue a Reader Advisory before you scroll on down to the next strip. Those with a nervous disposition or a tricky tummy right now may want to skip past this next section. Don’t blame me, blame David Leach. What’s a party without a cake, and what could be better than a surprise cake? Well it all depends on who baked it I guess.

While David’s modern day Psycho Gran comics are much more adult than her antics in the pages of OiNK it’s very much the same sense of humour. In fact, this strip wouldn’t look out of place in one of her new comics, even if David might push the cringe factor more in that final panel. She had made her debut in #15 before disappearing again until half a dozen issues later (David was told very last minute they’d like her to be a regular character) and by this stage she was appearing in almost every issue, quickly becoming one of my favourites.

“I’ve picked some prime porky pranks from my readers to help celebrate a year of OiNKin’ good fun!”
Uncle Pigg

OiNK was a lot more interactive with its audience than most comics of the day. Marvel UK had those fantastic, fondly remembered letters pages and IPC Magazines would feature something similar in their humour comics, with reader jokes and sketches thrown in. Closest to OiNK would’ve been editor Barrie Tomlinson‘s comics which were always known for their highly original ways in which readers could take part (see Wildcat, Ring Raiders and Super Naturals for example).

Compiled by co-editor Patrick Gallagher, OiNK’s Grunts page could contain rude jokes for Nasty Laffs and Specs, celebrities given a piggy makeover, photographs of readers with their homemade OiNK cakes and models, pig-related newspaper clippings (and those relating to the comic itself), messy bedroom competition entries in the early days, readers updating us on the latest sightings of terrifying butchers from Jeremy Banx‘s Butcher Watch series, drawings and even a personal problems column in which Uncle Pigg‘s answers were of no help whatsoever. For the birthday issue we got a double helping so that twice the amount of pig pals could receive “a piggy prize”.

I had no idea who the StreetHogs were when I read this originally but I’d soon be finding out. Above was also the first mention of the book to come. Now that was exciting! I never did write in and I’m not sure why. I had drawings published in Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends and Barrie’s Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles Adventures, then when I moved on to computer games magazines I was always writing into them. But for some reason I never took the time to contact Uncle Pigg or the other OiNK characters. The comic was always asking readers to get in touch one way or another, the most memorable example being when Lew Stringer‘s Pete asked readers to send in pimple busting cures.

For the birthday issue, three readers got the ultimate piggy prize when they appeared in a photo strip alongside Snatcher Sam (Marc Riley) and Frank Sidebottom (Chris Sievey). This had been the star prize in a competition run on Radio Manchester in conjunction with Casio Electronics (hence the product placement) and the three lucky winners got to star in their favourite comic and also went away with their own keyboards. Not too shabby at all. The pig pals we were very jealous of were Ruth Salts, Paul Pike and Paul Rafferty.

I love how they’ve touched up the photographs with these garish colours, making it feel more like a comic strip, adding to the ridiculousness of it all. Obviously the Casio keyboards are the central plot device here and it works, with Frank struggling to think of new lyrics for a song. The inspiration in the end is brilliant, or “fantastic” as he might say and I genuinely did laugh out loud when what Sam starts yelling just happens to be the lyrics to a famous song. It’s completely daft and so uniquely ‘OiNK’. Great stuff.

Time for a quick glance at some of the other highlights of the issue. Dead Fred gets a full page to himself for his Happy Death Day, it’s a happy ending for Hector Vector and his Talking T-shirt much to the annoyance of said garment, GBH got in on the birthday action with some highly collectible memorabilia, Frank Sidebottom‘s own strip has one of the best captions in comics history and there’s that stance and glare again from Hadrian Vile‘s mum (see the Holiday Special for more on that).

**Dead Fred** by *Wilkie*
**Hector Vector and his Talking T-shirt** by *Jeremy Banx*
**Frank Sidebottom** by *Chris Sievey*
**Hadrian Vile** written by *Mark Rodgers*, drawn by *Ian Jackson*

A little change happened with one of the above strips this issue, namely The Secret Diary ov Hadrian Vile – Aged 8 5/8 (yearƨ). Eagle-eyed readers would’ve spotted he’d jumped from 7 5/8 in the past fortnight. A nice little touch and he’d remain this age for the rest of the year. As the comic continued we’d see his mum become pregnant, eventually giving birth to a new baby sister for Hadrian, who he then took under his wing! Seeing him and his family develop in real time was subtle but a unique point of interest. If OiNK had continued longer than the two-and-a-half years it was published for would Hadrian’s age have continued to increase? Who knows. But it’s interesting to imagine.

There’s a special poster in the middle of the issue which I’m going to sign off with, but first I can’t let this issue go by without showing you a very special strip indeed. This issue’s Tom Thug stands out for a few different reasons. First up, I always enjoy it when characters break the fourth wall, to coin a phrase. Basically, when they refer to being in a comic. Tom does this here to great effect when explaining to Wayne Brayne why he’s trying to duff him up when his bullying ways are brought into question (the panel is completed with an automatically-appearing sticking plaster). However, the main highlight happens when he trips over his untied shoelace. Obviously he never did learn to do that properly.

“How do you get nostalgic about a comic that’s only a year old?”
Lew Stringer

Tom is becoming worried about his constant failures as a bully. It’s his whole reason for being and yet he hasn’t yet managed to do it successfully. Of course, we loved his strip because of his constant failures and that was the whole point of it, for the bully to fail. But Tom thinks Uncle Pigg is going to toss him on the comics scrapheap if he can’t manage to successfully cause some bovver. It’s this scrapheap he imagines which is the main highlight, as he places himself next to all of the forgotten comics characters of yesteryear, each drawn by Lew very much in their original artists’ styles.

I think this was a wonderful idea. As Lew asked on his own blog when discussing this anniversary story, “How do you get nostalgic about a comic that’s only a year old?” They’re all classic IPC characters, then several years later some were sold off to Egmont while others were kept by IPC, meaning they could no longer appear together, making this an even more unique page than it already was. Nowadays, Rebellion owns them all and I think it’s time for a reunion, including Tom. The strip ends with Uncle Pigg demoting him to half a page. With so many regular characters now the editors had decided to do this, and this was an original and clever way of actually working the decision into the strip (although due to his popularity he’d return to full strength very quickly). It kept him in every issue when others had to skip some, so it was for a good reason in the end.

One final note about that strip. In the second panel a little plop is holding up a sign saying hello to a reader by the name of Ben Gibbons. This is actually the son of comics artist Dave Gibbons. Ben was a regular reader of OiNK and Dave himself would contribute to an issue with the very funny artwork for The Superhero’s Day Off written by Lew. We’ll get to that eventually. It’s worth the wait!

This has been a great celebration of the first year of what is still my favourite comic of all time

We’re at the end of another review and it’s crazy to think I’ve been at this for a year already. The blog itself relaunched before this time last year, when Visionaries was the first comic to begin its real time read through (I didn’t want to wait another year for the sake of a few weeks before the blog’s namesake began). It’s been a blast and the best is still to come as far as I’m concerned. The latter months of this year especially.

This has been a great celebration of the first year of what is still my favourite comic of all time. The next issue of OiNK will be themed around the world of pets and you’ll be able to read the review from Monday 2nd May 2022. But first there’s one more thing I want to show you and that’s the OiNK Anniversary Portrait. Drawn by Ed McHenry it’s full of all of the main characters including those no longer in the comic. I was happy to see Sally Scowl received an invite to the party after her funny strips were unceremoniously dropped after only two issues! (I’m still hurting about that.)

Happy (36th!) Birthday OiNK.

HOLiDAY SPECiAL 1 < > iSSUE 27

OiNK! #24: TiME FOR LAUGHS

21 March 2022 Phil Boyce 2 Comments

As both an OiNK and a Doctor Who fan, seeing our editor Uncle Pigg dressed as the Doctor, swirling about through time being chased by angry butchers and all drawn by Ian Jackson is an absolute treat for my eyes. What a way to start an issue! As a kid I only began watching Doctor Who the following year and by then Sylvester McCoy was already in the role, but I was fully aware of who this parody was based on. At the time of its publication Colin Baker had finished his final series but had yet to be replaced, his character’s horrid dress sense perfectly captured here.

As we had with the first Christmas issue, this Time-Travel Special sees Uncle Pigg leave the OiNK office and set out on a multi-page strip throughout the comic, courtesy of writer Mark Rodgers. Running late, he stumbles upon butchers unloading livestock and makes a run for it, mistakenly assumed to be one of their escaped pigs. He dives into a rather familiar looking police phone box to hide and the adventure begins.

I love the fact the disguise he’s grabbed in a haphazard hurry from the local fancy dress shop is a dead ringer for the Sixth Doctor‘s eyesore of a costume and the fact it’s his trotter that gives the game away and not his piggy face! He rematerialises three more times on separate pages in the issue, the first set in prehistoric times where cavemen with butcher aprons and hats are chasing down wild boars.

He quickly sets course for home. He wants to stay because the hogs look underfed and miserable, but he can’t change the past, it would be too dangerous. Unbeknownst to him, his sudden appearance scared the butchers so much they end up worshipping the very animals they were trying to eat. Then it’s off to 2987AD, exactly one thousand years into the future and bumps into familiar-looking future versions of butchers, the most terrifying of all! Have a look.

I love this theme of simply adding an apron, hat and butcher’s tools instead of the 80s sink plungers. It’s such a simple idea but absolutely hilarious. Uncle Pigg gets out of this tight spot by sharing copies of OiNK, its humour overloading their circuits and freeing the people from their tyranny. As he leaves he tells them if they need more copies for the fight they should place a regular order at their newsagents. We then see the people later worshipping a statue of him while asking, “What’s a ‘newsagent’?”

Uncle Pigg’s TARDIS pops up at various points in the issue

It’s imaginative, original and genuinely very funny throughout. Mark is nothing short of a comics writing genius and Ian’s artwork brings these ideas to life in a way that completely matches their crazy nature. It’s such a shame this would be the last time they’d create a long strip like this for the character. It’s definitely the highlight of the issue and indeed one of my favourite moments from the whole run, not least because he’s not confined to the pages of his own story.

Much like Star Truck in #3 (and the forthcoming OiNK! Book 1988) which saw our heroes appear among the stars of other strips, so Uncle Pigg (or his TARDIS at least) pops up at various points in the issue and it was fun to spot these as a child. Heck, let’s face it, it’s fun to see it pop up now as an adult, whether it’s in the background or in a way that actually affects the plot of another story.

**Pete and his Pimple** by *Lew Stringer*
**Dick Tater** written by *Tim Quinn*, drawn by *Ed McHenry*
**Spotticus the Slave** by *Davey Jones*

We can see the TARDIS floating about in Lew Stringer’s Pete and his Pimple strip after Pete accidentally falls into a time warp and ends up in prehistoric times, then in Dick Tater, Dictator of Time written by Tim Quinn (his one contribution to OiNK) and drawn by Ed McHenry he causes a pile-up in between time zones and in Spotticus the Slave he saves the title character from being eaten by a lion. This last strip was (and I quote), “Writed and drawed bi Davey Jonsey, Pillock-of-the-Year 1981“.

The conclusion is right at the back of the comic and the solution is a simple one; just land on the butchers’ heads and free all the captured piggies. A happy ending all round. We even get a little cameo from the Doctor and this wasn’t the first time Colin Baker had been immortalised in an Ian Jackson drawing. Check out #3‘s review for his earlier appearance. What a fantastic strip this has been!

The rest of the issue is just as good, with the vast majority sticking to the theme either by including time travel or being set in the distant past or future. But my first non-editor highlight is neither, it was just too funny and too memorable to leave out. It’s the first time I’ve shown an entry from this series on the blog and it might surprise pig pals to know there weren’t that many overall.

In my head the Rotten Rhymes series was in nearly every issue, particularly during the later fortnightlies but in reality there were only 13 of these funny takes on nursery rhymes, and mainly during the monthly issues towards the end of the run. Taking a traditional nursery rhyme and changing the last line, often throwing away the need to rhyme at all, they’d be written and drawn by a variety of contributors and Humpty Dumpty by Davy Francis is one of the very best.

My memory may have let me down insofar as how many Rotten Rhymes there were, but I can actually remember reciting this in school to several of my friends. It’s strange the little random memories this blog has brought back to the surface. There are others in this series I loved but this always remained the most memorable, simply because of how brazenly it dealt with the main character. But that’s not all from Davy that I want to show you.

Sometimes in humour comics a character could become a one-trick pony, their regular antics basically playing out exactly the same way every issue but perhaps in a slightly different setting. This was certainly the case with some of the other titles I dipped into back then to see if any would interest me in the same way. None of them really did, so I stuck with OiNK exclusively. Some of its own characters could appear on the surface to be examples of these repetitive strips, but in reality they were far from that. Take Davy’s Greedy Gorb for instance.

A boy who eats everything, food or otherwise, is a simple idea that could’ve run dry very quickly in lesser hands. But thanks to Davy every episode was fresh and funny, and he never failed to raise a laugh. The brilliantly named mad scientist Doctor Maddstark-Raving would also get spun off into some strips of his own now and again, such was his potential in Davy’s crazy mind.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Snatcher Sam in the comic and this issue puts that right, although not in his usual photo story format. Instead, Mike Taylor does a superb job of drawing Marc Riley as the clueless thief (and I think Pat Healy as the guard, previously seen in #7‘s Swindler Sid story). It suits the Olde English theme of the page a lot better than photographs ever could and I think the style Mike has used here is very inventive, giving it a unique feel.

As if reinventing Marc as an actual comic strip wasn’t good enough, that final pun is just brilliant; all of the ridiculousness, the seemingly random pratfalls and idiocy is all building to the name of this Dick Turpin-inspired highway robber. It’s nothing short of comic genius, in both Mark Rodger‘s writing and Mike’s illustrations, hiding behind what on the surface is just plain silliness. Surely that’s the very essence of OiNK?

Chas Sinclair‘s artwork is perfect for stories such as the next one, written by Tony Husband. He has a knack of making a strip look more mature, a little more like something I might have seen in my brother’s Roy of the Rovers or something. For me this works perfectly because given OiNK’s track record so far, the more it looks like a story we’d find in a non-humour comic, the more insane it usually is. Check out Scruff of the Track, Janice and John and Watery Down for instance. I’m very glad to say No News Is Good News keeps to this tradition.

I really thought the strip was going to end with James Fishpond being hit by the bus and it’d be an OiNK version of The Twilight Zone, the prediction in the newspaper actually causing the event. (The later regular strip, The Swinelight Zone would do strips like that.) But not only is it completely ridiculous how he’s able to talk aloud about how the bus is going to kill him and devise a plan to stop it from happening, all before the bus actually does so, instead of jumping out of the way, but the poor chap who does get hit is even worse! A brilliantly funny strip that uses the subject of the issue in an original way. Great stuff.

Next to this page is the first of a two-part Tom Thug strip. You might think upon reading it that all would just return to normal by the next issue, but I can remember the final panel here being picked up on in #25. We welcome back Tom’s nemesis, posh clever kid Wayne Brayne who was first introduced in #10 and who would normally outsmart the dimwitted numbskull with ease, but here he’s decided to be proactive in an attempt to stop Tom’s bullying for good. As you’ll see, in a surprise twist the person punished at the end isn’t the one you’d usually expect.

Remember kids, never lower yourself to the level of the bully, even if your intentions are good. I recalled the panel of an elderly Tom but I thought I remembered it being some kind of time travel where an actual older version of himself popped up. Nope, it’s all a ruse but it has the same effect. Another incorrect assumption on my part was thinking it’d all simply be back to normal next time, but you’ll see I was wrong about that too.

Of course, the world sadly did lose Mark in the early 1990s, so this little gag of his is a bittersweet moment

Back in the 80s I can remember one piece of primary school homework when we were asked to imagine what our lives would be like in the year 2000. Cue lots of moving walkways and flying cars. It seemed so far away and it’s scary to think that futuristic date is actually further into the past now than it was into the future when we were imagining it!

We weren’t the only ones to dream of life in the future. Co-editor and writer Mark Rodgers and artist Ed McHenry have created this brilliant back cover to finish the issue. Using the logo of the famous sci-fi comic, a stablemate of OiNK’s from the same publisher, there’s a lot to love here in the little details. Ed is friends with Davy Francis so check out the little desk inscription next to the Cowpat Planet strip, the name of the robot churning out the art, the huge computer monitor layout still using a fiddly indoor aerial, the piggy bank and even a standard office-like holiday rota for plops!

One little detail stands out though. At the bottom you’ll see Mark has written in that his brain is being kept alive in a jar hooked up to a script computer. Of course, the world sadly did lose Mark in the early 1990s, so this little gag of his is a bittersweet moment. However, Mark would want us to laugh and it is funny to think of how his own creation would still expect him to keep on churning out the ideas.

That’s all the time we have for this time-travel issue and it’s been a blast from the past. Mark and the entire team pulled out all the stops for this one and the fortnightlies only get better and better from here on. My own favourite point in OiNK‘s lifespan will be towards the end of the year and I simply can’t wait. Next up though is the Toys and Hobbies Issue, the review of which will be here from Monday 4th April 2022.

iSSUE 23 < > iSSUE 25