Tag Archives: Mark Rodgers

Creating OiNK

THE OiNK SCRAPBOOK

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These days we can document our lives as much (or as little) as we like thanks to the phones that never leave our vicinity. In fact, now I’ve a cat living with me it’s become my camera that just so happens to have a phone built in. Back in the 80s the process of getting our hands on the photos we’d taken was a more involved process, for me it required trips to the local chemist and at least a 24 hour wait and everything! So we were a lot more selective with our documenting back then.

Over the last several years some of the OiNK team have either very generously sent me photos or shared them on the Facebook group which I’ve then saved. This has endied up becoming a little collection of its own. So I thought the festive season, when we’re taking lots of photos to capture new memories with each other as well as thinking back to our own younger days, would be the perfect time to show these off in a kind of random scrapbook-like post. And here we are.

Let’s kick off with Jeremy Banx (Burp, Mr. Big Nose).

“So this is me posing in front of some pictures I’d drawn of Supercar when I was about 4”, Jeremy tells me. “I’m looking dubious because my dad or my gran or maybe both had told me by taking the photo it would make my drawings come to life just like on TV. This of course did not happen and I’ve never trusted anyone since.”

Jeremy’s photo reminds me of the comics my friend Roger and I created as kids. Roger created The Battle-oids, The School Busters and The Wally, while I created WarBots, The Real Smoke Busters and The Idiot. (Hey, he inspired me!) Also, together with our friend Bruce we made a monthly comic for our primary school classroom called The Moo! But anyway, back to the OiNK team and David Leach (Psycho Gran, Dudley DJ) 

“Reading that article again after all this time is funny”, said David when I asked him about it. “The strip I’m working on in that picture is the birthday strip for the OiNK anniversary issue, where Psycho emerges from a birthday cake. The story about me working for Bob Godfrey is true, he was the first person I worked for as a cartoonist, I did that for a year drawing Henry’s Cat. I was Bob Godfrey’s ghost artist.”

At the end of the article a potential new OiNK character who never made it into the comic is revealed. “Brian Damage was something I was noodling with back then, but never got beyond the planning stage, although he did become a female character called Maxine Damage: Hit Girl for Hire, that was drawn by Jim Cheung and scheduled to appear in a Marvel UK comic magazine I developed called HYPER. It was to be a frenzied monthly anthology based on the style of Japanese Manga and would have featured a strip called B.O.B about a sentient walking bomb walking through a battlefield in search of his target written by Banx.”

Co-editor Patrick Gallagher has shared a plethora of old photographs both online and over our email exchanges, often jazzing them up with graphics and behind-the-scenes insights, such as these example. Below, you can see OiNK photographer John Barry with a rather familiar looking crocodile in front of him, but it’s the unfinished sculpture in the background that caught my eye, hence the superimposed OiNK Book 1989.

As described by Patrick, “John also helped out when we were pitching the TV show Round the Bend. Here he’s sculpting a model of Doc Croc in clay and on the desk in the background is a cast from a previous sculpt based on the butcher on the cover of The OiNK Book 1989. Also on the desk is a junior hacksaw he moulded from Play Doh.” Typical Patrick!

You’ll also see in the background Ian Jackson’s cardboard cutout of Mary Lighthouse from the first OiNK Holiday Special casting a beady eye over John’s work. Speaking of Round the Bend, it was co-created by OiNK’s three editors, Patrick, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers and was nominated for a Royal Television Award. Tony shared these photographs from the night of the awards event, the first showing (from left-to-right) Patrick, Mark and Tony, while the second also includes Mark’s partner and friend of the blog Helen Jones, and rather randomly Rory McGrath!

“Patrick, Mark and me at the Royal Television Awards with Round the Bend,” said Tony. “Where we came runners up so we got pissed, and me and Rory McGrath were nearly thrown out for shouting abuse at Richard Stilgoe, who was doing a set and we thought he was smug and shit.” (Stilgoe is a songwriter, musician and broadcaster and has contributed lyrics to Cats, Starlight Express and The Phantom of the Opera, in case you didn’t know.)

These weren’t the only photos in Tony’s archive. Next up is a wonderful collection of polaroids and snaps by OiNK photographer Ian Tilton that Tony scanned in, mainly of #30’s OiNK Awards when they worked with the Spitting Image Workshop to produce an apparently star-studded event. You’ll also see one of the actual celebrities, John Peel amongst the chaos, a photograph taken of Marc Riley as a disguised Snatcher Sam and Tony’s son, Paul Husband who you’ll also see in the next photo posing with some of his dad’s creations.

Today, Paul is a renowned commercial photographer and OiNK had its very own renowned snapper in the guise of Ian Tilton. That last photo in the collage was taken during the making of The Bully Who Went Bald in #2 and according to Tony, “With Marc all hunched over dressed like this, passers-by and car drivers were stunned and puzzled.” As for Ian, he has worked with such icons as Kurt Cobain, Iggy Pop and The Stone Roses, and has been praised by Q Magazine for “one of the six best rock photographs of all time”.

He also photographed the equally iconic (in my eyes anyway) cover to The OiNK! Book 1988 and there’s a special post about that cover and Ian’s other OiNK work which went up on the blog earlier this Christmas season. Something less plasticine based and more liquid based is next. Ian first met the OiNK guys at its launch party in some nice, plush pub in Manchester when he’d been asked to come along and take a portrait of the three editors for some pre-publicity. Family and friends were all watching as Ian attempted the photo session. “Attempted” being the operative word.

As told to me by Ian, trying to find Patrick, Mark and Tony had been difficult with the crowds in attendance, never mind trying to organise the three of them under his studio lights now that they were so drunk! Ian says it was great fun and the shots of them grinning and gurning were worth it. (I think we can all agree on that.) Not that they hung around though, they immediately ran back off to get even more drunk.

The next horrifying image is of Hunchback Boar of Scare Boars fame from #13, the last surviving member of the terrifying trio… or the only one we know the whereabouts of! According to Patrick he found him lurking under the lid of his scanner in the lead up to Halloween 2021, just in time for the review of 1986’s spooky spectacular. Check it out and you’ll even see a video of Patrick and the Scare Boar together again after two-and-a-half decades.

The next photos will be rather small when you click on them because that’s the size they were when shared by Patrick. First up is a photo of him and Marc Riley (of The Fall and BBC 6Music and creator of Harry the Head, Doctor Looney and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth) on holiday, followed by a shot of some lucky pig pals getting to sit in on the recording of the OiNK 45 record. Not only did they get to meet Patrick and Marc (fresh back from that holiday and rather tanned), they also hung out with Frank Sidebottom himself, Chris Sievey. Then, a photo of Patrick with someone who didn’t work on OiNK but who you just might recognise.

Patrick met David Bowie when he was tasked with looking after him for half an hour before the Mark and Lard radio show (Mark Radcliffe and our own Marc). The photo was taken by David’s manager and you can tell Patrick’s just a little bit happy, can’t you? While there were no mentions or clippings on the Grunts pages mentioning this particular celebrity, Patrick tells me David Bowie confirmed he was a bona fide OiNK reader!

I’m going to wrap up our OiNK Scrapbook with some of my own photographs. The first time I met Patrick was during the days of the old blog. He was on a family vacation in Donegal and took the rather long drive to Belfast (across the island!) to see me in my old house to discuss some future projects. Not long after that I then got to meet Lew Stringer (Tom Thug, Pete and his Pimple, Pigswilla) and Davy Francis (Cowpat County, Greedy Gorb, Doctor Madstarkraving) at the Enniskillen Comic Fest.

I’ve spoken with Patrick and Lew ever since and count them as true friends. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Davy a few times over coffee or a Greggs sausage roll, and I’m glad to say he’s an absolute gent and a really funny guy to hang out with. In the photo with Davy is the fantastic Jenika Ioffreda (Vampire Free Style) and the last photo was taken during what ended up being a simply hilarious chat in a local bar after the comic con with Lew, Ian Richardson (Sinister Dexter, Captain America, Judge Dredd) and the man who had us in stitches most of the night, Yanick Paquette (Wonder Woman, Batman Incorporated, Swamp Thing).

Yes, these last few aren’t from the time of OiNK but they’re most definitely memorable moments from the time of the OiNK Blog. Maybe one day I should share more of the behind-the-scenes of this site and the work (and fun) that goes into it, but for now we’ll close the OiNK Scrapbook. These photos are just the smallest of hints at what it must’ve been like to put our favourite anarchic comic together.

Wouldn’t it be great to know more…?

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OiNK! SUMMER COLLECTiON!: THE FiNAL FiNALE

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Five months ago I spoke about the surprise of finding the OiNK Winter Special waiting for me in the newsagent when I went to pick up my comics back in 1989. With no mention of it in the previous edition it felt extra special to get one final issue of my favourite (and first) comic, but I believed that was the end. So I was extremely happy when, in April 1990, a whole year-and-a-half after OiNK‘s cancellation I was proven wrong.

It’s a weighty volume at 64 pages so it’s a lot thicker than the previous holiday specials, but my teenage enthusiasm was tempered somewhat when I read the strapline along the bottom of the cover. The “Summer Collection” title referred to the fact this was a collection of reprint strips I’d read before, with only one new four-page strip in the middle of the comic featuring cameos from favourite characters rather than new individual stories.

As such, I knew this must definitely be the last OiNK there was ever going to be. Since I hadn’t read any of my issues in a long time, 13-year-old me did sit down and read the whole thing, and I really enjoyed revisiting a lot of the strips that had made me laugh so much previously. So how does it hold up today? The new strip is by co-editor Patrick Gallagher and in a neat, funny twist he takes the name of the special and turns it into the plot of his final tale.

It’s a simple story and all of these fan favourite characters are reduced to one gag each as the aliens examine them, which was a shame when the arrival of a new issue of OiNK was such an event after it ended. However, I do like Dead Fred‘s ever-so-polite response and I genuinely laughed out loud at the plummeting spaceship making such an anti-climatic crash landing! Uncle Pigg is the real star here and is always entertaining, although as a kid I was gutted to see him back on the sand and raking in the cash like we’ve seen him before but with no mention of any future OiNKs.

Before you disregard this final ever edition as “just a bunch of reprints”, think of it in the context of today. For any pig pal who has been enjoying the blog and would love to read some of their favourites again but can’t decide which memorable issues to buy, and perhaps worry about spending a lot of money in the process, the Summer Collection could be the answer. Here’s just a small selection of the classic treats included.

Tom Thug by Lew Stringer
Uncle Pigg by Mark Rodgers and Ian Jackson
Vernon the Vet by Wilkie
Sammy the Steam Engine by Ralph Shephard
Greedy Gorb by Davy Francis
How Radio Sound Effects Are Produced
by Patrick Gallagher and Marc Riley

I’ve featured all of these on the blog before and for good reason. In fact, that’s a good point to make about this collection, that it feels properly curated for the most part. It’s not a random selection of reprints to fill a quota of pages. The strips are pulled from throughout OiNK’s run and the selections for each character are some of their best. So yes, if you no longer own any OiNKs this is a great place to start.

Unfortunately, some of those who had left OiNK before the end aren’t present (perhaps something to do with reprint rights) so don’t expect anything from the likes of Jeremy Banx’s Burp or Mr. Big Nose, but there’s still plenty to go around and loads of Ian Jackson, someone we missed during those monthly issues. There’s also one new contributor. Despite this being a reprint collection and Patrick’s strip being the only one given publicity, there are two new ones hidden away inside.

I can’t seem to find any information online about Steven Smith, if that is indeed his actual name. As you can see, one of their strips is dated so these were clearly created long after OiNK had been cancelled. Unfortunately, Patrick can’t recall any details about them or how their strips came to be randomly included, and extensive searching online doesn’t produce any results either.

The style is reminiscent of some Viz artists and the bad taste comics that flooded the UK market around the time but speaking with Lew Stringer and Davey Jones (both Viz contributors over the years) Steven wasn’t in that comic either. In fact, it comes across like they’re trying too hard to copy styles from those comics. Personally speaking, the strips feel quite stiff too, despite what actually happens in both. They’re not bad, but after 79 other OiNK reviews they’re not setting the sty alight.

This final panel from a Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile – Aged 8 5/8 (yearƨ) written by co-editor Mark Rodgers and drawn as ever by Ian Jackson could’ve given a little bit of false hope at the time, mentioning a “neckst issyoo” as it does. But even as a kid I concluded this was just an unfortunate choice of reprint rather than anything else. And with that, we’ve reached the end of OiNK’s real time read through on the blog, a whole four years after it began!

It’s only after reading the whole run as an adult that, as I close over the last page of the OiNK Summer Collection, I see it couldn’t have ended on a better and more personal note. The back cover is the same back cover as #14, the very first issue of OiNK (and the very first comic) I ever bought. Written and drawn by the wonderful team of Mark and Ian, it’s one hell of a coincidence. OiNK ends by bringing me full circle back to that fateful day in November 1986 when I discovered it in the first place. 

With 80 real time reviews now up on the blog and a wealth of extras there’s tons of content available for pig pals. I’m not ending things here, though. I’ve a wealth of special posts planned for the next few years at the very least and other exciting OiNK-related projects you’ll find out about soon. This is called the OiNK Blog after all, and just as the promo for the Holiday Special ’89 said, “It hasn’t got the chop, it hasn’t had its bacon”, the OiNK Blog continues.

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Annuals, Buster, Christmas

BUSTER BOOK 1990: COMiC BOOK OR BOOK COMiC?

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This is the first Buster Book I’ve ever read and it’s surprised me straight away, but not in the way you may think. The Buster Book series has been added to the blog because of OiNK star Tom Thug. He continued in the pages of Buster weekly all the way to its end over a decade after OiNK’s cancellation. I thought buying the remaining annuals in the series from the moment Tom appeared would be a fun addition to the blog every Christmas. New Tom Thug is always a treat after all!

Knowing Weedy Willy and Pete and his Pimple were also in this edition I was looking forward to large multi-page strips or special stories of some sort, the likes of which we’d have seen in the OiNK books or the Beano and Dandy annuals every year. Surprisingly however, apart from a few exceptions this book feels more like several editions of the weekly wrapped in a cardboard cover.

The first and last 14 pages are of a lovely and smooth, higher quality paper stock, with some of the strips in full colour, but the rest of the 112 pages in total are the same matt paper as the Big Comic Books, mostly in black and white with the occasional two-colour strip. Also, apart from 2-page Buster, Ricky Rainbow and Chalky stories in those outer pages, and a 4-page BeastEnders inside, all the strips are the same length as they would be in the weekly comic.

Once you hit those inner matt pages it just doesn’t feel as special anymore. So yes, I was surprised when I compared it to its contemporaries but the main reason we’re here is for the OiNK strips (and perhaps a couple of other little treats too). The first of our piggy publication’s characters we bump into is Weedy Willy, as ever written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Mike Green.

This wouldn’t feel out of place in OiNK itself. The simplest of tasks were always an epic struggle for Willy and going to see a slushy movie was no different, complete with the obligatory snow for the Christmas annual, albeit five snowflakes. It still counts. Surprisingly, it’s Pete and his Pimple who gets the full colour treatment on the deluxe paper rather than our next star.

The yearly annuals are written and drawn so far in advance of publication (and publication is a few months before Christmas, although they were always Christmas presents), Lew Stringer’s strips for this particular book – released in 1989 – would’ve been created soon after OiNK’s cancellation in 1988. While both characters were fan favourites, Pete was probably the more popular of the two in OiNK and Buster’s editor may have thought that would be the same in Buster.

You see? More snow and ice. Of course these books were for Christmas! I’d loved to have seen the impact into that tree, though. Maybe we would have in his original comic, but it’s still a fun strip. As the months rolled on Tom’s popularity soared in Buster while Willy was quickly dropped and poor Pete went the same way a few months later. In the years that followed Tom became one of the comic’s standout stars, getting full colour pages to himself and he even appeared on the cover. But for now, a single black and white page must suffice.

Pete, on the other hand, is in glorious full colour (coloured by John Michael Burns – thanks to Lew for the info). Alas, this doesn’t mean readers could be made even more squeamish with some technicolour pimple bursting. As I’ve mentioned before when the comics merged, given the younger audience it was decided the pus had to remain put. But that doesn’t mean the fun is kept bottled up. Here, that old OiNK classic of dressing up the pimple is taken to a hilariously Christmassy conclusion.

Unlike a lot of the Buster regulars, these three only get one strip each this time around and I did hunt down their pages within the book first for obvious reasons. It’s going to be an agonising wait for next Christmas before I can read any more from them (most likely just Tom), so I made the most of my purchase on eBay and read through the rest of the book for more highlights to show you.

The first comes courtesy of Ricky Rainbow and he’s on the final two pages of the book. When Pete crossed over into an issue of Buster to promote the then-weekly OiNK back in March 1988, it hadn’t been too long since Nipper comic had merged into it, bringing Ricky along. I’d particularly liked that strip, even though he only turned see-through in it. Usually he could change colour on a whim or based on his mood and I said at the time I’d like to see more of him. It had the potential to be really funny.

Drawn by James Hansen, here we see him unwittingly change colour because of his temperature for the most part, and it’s really enjoyable. It’s also made something of a theme out of very funny letterbox moments this Christmas on the blog. (See Kids’ Court in the Big Comic Book 1989 review.) It’s madcap fun, bouncing between different predicaments for Ricky with Bruiser always on his tail. I know Nipper was a comic aimed at a younger audience than Buster but Ricky Rainbow fits in perfectly here. He’s one of the best parts in this whole book.

OiNK boasted of Pete Dredge winning the Provincial Cartoonist of the Year award from the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain

Finally, another OiNK artist pops up with his Young Arfur strip, namely Pete Dredge. Pete contributed to a handful of OiNKs randomly throughout its run including strips like spoof movie anthology The Golden Trough Awards, Master T and Dimbo, his take on Sly Stallone’s 80s action hero. OiNK also boasted of Pete winning the Provincial Cartoonist of the Year award from the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain in #49.

Young Arfur started out in School Fun comic before making the transition to Buster in 1984. (School Fun was actually conceived by OiNK writer Graham Exton.) Arfur is basically a young version of Arthur Daley from the hit TV show Minder, a minor con man who used the gift of the gab to earn money through various dodgy schemes. Young Arfur has that same gift but instead uses it to get him and his pals out of doing anything they don’t want to do.

As you can see his reputation precedes him. Not that this knowledge helped the teacher any. You could see him as a more charming (albeit that’s part of the con) and chatty, streetwise version of the Roger the Dodger strips in Beano at the time. He’s a fun character and must’ve been enjoyed by Buster readers as he was part of the comic until 1987, five times longer than School Fun’s whole run.

With that, we round off our look at the first Buster Book to co-star some of our old OiNK pals. I don’t need any will power to not look at the next volume because I haven’t bought it yet, but if you have these yourself (or can remember them) don’t tell me what’s to come, I look forward to finding out for myself each Christmas. One final surprise is on the back cover. Instead of a repeat of the front cover image by Tom Paterson, or a funny reverse cover like OiNK’s books, it’s an advert. But it’s one I’m sure anyone around my age will remember (fondly or otherwise) from a lot of our comics back then.

It’s strange to see an advert in an annual but the Big Comic Book also had it this year, as did the OiNK Winter Special released in November 1989. Anyway, that’s enough waffle from me. Pete may have been given top billing out of our three pig pals here, but it’s Tom Thug who has a few more Christmassy mishaps to come, so I look forward to our next festive feast of new OiNK-type material in twelve months!

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SPEAKEASY #81: A CHAT WiTH MARK RODGERS

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Just five short months after the previous issue of Speakeasy that featured on the blog came their Christmas issue, complete with snow and holly on the title (as it should be) and our piggy publication got a headline mention too. That’s because inside there was a massive double-page spread all about our favourite comic.

OiNK featured in the earlier issue in a much smaller way. Here, an unknown writer (no credit is given so it could be anyone out of Cefn Ridout, Dick Hansom, Bambos Georgiou and Nigel Curson) chats to OiNK co-creator/co-editor Mark Rodgers and the big news was that OiNK was finally going weekly with #45!

I remember the first time this was announced in the comic and I was absolutely thrilled. The loss of some key characters to a semi-regular basis and a reduction in pages was a bit of a shock though. If I’d been reading Speakeasy I’d have had a heads up and Mark’s explanation about some characters being on a regular rotation makes perfect sense. If only the comic itself had told us this at the time, maybe more readers would’ve stayed around.

There are a handful of previews for the new weekly strips here, showcasing Lew Stringer’s main characters who would now always have full pages to themselves. David Haldane’s are shown in their entirety and Billy Brown’s Black Hole was a one-off but even on such a smaller scale Simon Thorp’s detailed artwork still looks the part. Two-thirds of it are shown here even though we wouldn’t see it in OiNK until #68, the final issue!

“The pigs started taking over. We eventually decided to call it OiNK.”

Mark Rodgers

The piece begins with the well-known tale of how OiNK’s three creators (Mark, Tony Husband and Patrick Gallagher) met and, once we get to the point in the story where OiNK received its name, the writer takes every opportunity to insert a surprisingly well-crafted pig pun. The article focusses on OiNK’s independence and what set it apart from its contemporaries. Most interestingly, Mark likens OiNK to its stablemates when they were younger comics, when they pushed the envelope with their own rebellious senses of humour.

But by the 80s what was once rebellious had become stagnant. OiNK was their attempt at rekindling that same feeling for the modern audience. I’ve no doubt those that complained about OiNK failed to see the similarity to the comics from their own youth. Other interesting tidbits here include Mark admitting the humour was going to be gently changed to appeal to the middle-ground of their readers’ ages, Burp is misspelled throughout for some reason, and the DallasEnders photo strip mentioned wouldn’t actually see the light of day until #63, the first monthly.

“It’s going back to the basics of children’s humour comics really.”

Mark Rodgers

Lew Stringer also pops up towards the end when he’s asked about his involvement with the weekly relaunch. To help with the quicker turnover of issues Lew was asked to design half a dozen of the covers, three of which he would draw himself and the rest would be handed over to others. Lew discusses the idea behind them and it’s interesting that he came up with a theme for them in response to the fact the issues themselves would no longer be themed. Clever.

There’s one point here that’s particularly relevant. Mark talks about some of the more popular characters and how readers could identify with them. They were highly exaggerated versions of us and our likes, dislikes and behaviours of course, but it meant we could laugh at ourselves alongside the celebrity spoofs and random characters inside the comic. In a world where certain corners of the internet bemoan comics (and other mediums) wanting to create identifiable characters for modern audiences, it’s clear they don’t know their own comics history. It’s always been a thing, whether in superhero comics or silly ones about pigs and plops.

It’s time for a quick look at some other little bits that caught my eye as I read this edition of Speakeasy. Some things never change, as some got into a tizzy over new Bible-based comics. They were reported on as “obscene” and “degrading”, created by “perverts who should be prosecuted”. Reported as such in a tabloid that had topless women every day and another that constantly runs bikini photographs of celebrities the second they are of legal age.

A paragraph about the atrocious ratings of a Marvel TV series ends with the first news of one of my favourite shows of all time, the 80’s War of the Worlds. Well, the first season was ace and ahead of its time, a superb sequel to the 1953 movie and which had a clear multi-year arc long before Babylon 5. But then the studio began interfering. When they didn’t get their way they fired show runner Greg Strangis, relaunching it with a completely different season two which was lame, contradicted everything that had come before and killed off any non-white characters (but I’m sure that was just a coincidence, right?). Am I still bitter all these years later? You betcha.

Marvel UK’s licenced comics get an update (the update for Fleetway would have you believe they only published 2000AD), however there’s no word on those Action Force issues being the last. Then there’s a rather familiar name associated with an anti-smoking campaign and I for one would be happy to be incorrectly identified as that person. Finally, Pat Mills and Hunt Emerson brought us a role-playing game book that just might have a point behind it. It’s subtle.

That brings us to the end of another look at Speakeasy, a time capsule for the comics scene of the 80s. I know it was publisher Fleetway’s idea to turn OiNK into a weekly but Mark seems genuinely enthusiastic for its potential. It’s always enjoyable to read about his love of the comic, it’s so infectious. Christmas 1987 was such an exciting time for pig pals, with the very best issues of OiNK the team produced, the first OiNK Book and news of the weeklies to come.

Very happy memories indeed and you can relive them (or discover them for the first time) in the OiNK Real-Time Read Through. Enjoy!

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OiNK! WiNTER SPECiAL: OOOH, SHiNY!

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On a chilly November morning in 1989 I innocently toddled off to my local newsagent’s to pick up my Transformers, The Real Ghostbusters and Big Comic Fortnightly, only to be met with a lovely, glossy OiNK-shaped comic handed to me from the reservations box too! I’d no idea this was coming. I’d thought the Holiday Special from earlier in the year was the final issue ever. Seeing no annual on the shelves by now I’d given up hope of ever seeing a new OiNK again.

So you can imagine my excitement when this surprise 68-page OiNK Winter Special slid out from behind the others. You can probably also imagine the speed at which nearly-12-years-old me ran back to my house to ask my mum and dad for more money, and their shock when I told them exactly how much it was. Needless to say my other comics were ignored that day. Oh, and the cover image was drawn by co-editor Patrick Gallagher and that’s his brother and OiNK photographer James as David Smellamy.

Inside, it begins with an OiNK Book-like introduction page. Unfortunately these little glimpses of Psycho Gran, The Spectacles of Doom and Greedy Gorb are all we got of them as they don’t actually appear anywhere else, and Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins only pops up in a reprint, but at the time I was just so excited to get a new OiNK I don’t think I realised how much of it was reprint material. I’ll get to that later but first up I have to talk about the paper quality here.

This is very much in keeping with the tradition of the previously published Buster and Wildcat Winter Specials from 1987 and 1988 respectively, including their price. Inside the thin but gorgeous card cover are 64 shiny, high-quality pages far above that used at any stage in the regular comic. It may have the same amount of pages as the second annual but the paper stock makes it feel a lot thinner. It’s gorgeous to look at and hold though. Can’t fault it at all!

We kick things off with a fun three-page Pete and his Pimple and it’s great to see him back after missing him in the Holiday Special earlier this year, when he and Tom Thug (who also returns in this issue) kept themselves to Buster comic instead. With this being the final Pete strip in an OiNK, Lew Stringer decided to pick no less than ten reader ideas for ridding Mr. Throb of his pimple and, while they’re all fun, the best part for me is Lew’s interpretations of what the readers could’ve looked like!

I would particularly like to know what Kevin Leeden of Goole’s reaction was upon reading this, and poor little Janice Hogan of Cumbria! (At least her dungarees provided a little context.) Lew began asking readers for their suggestions way back in the first weekly issue, #45. Inspired by Ken Reid’s Dare-A-Day Davy strip from Pow! in 1967 (readers sent in dares for the character), Lew ended up receiving many more than he could ever possibly have used, hence the list at the end.

There are some fun little additions too (although that alien on the first page wasn’t Lew’s), like an apology to fellow OiNK cartoonist Davy Francis and marking the occasion of David Leach’s wedding. At the end you’ll see Pete was due to reappear in the Buster Book 1990 which readers of that comic would soon receive for Christmas. I didn’t move over to Buster (the comic or books) as I explained when I reviewed the early merged issues, but that’s something I’m going to correct this year.

Starting this Christmas I’ll be reading each of the remaining Buster Books, one per year, so watch out for Lew’s Pete and Tom strips this festive season. They’ll both be brand new OiNK character strips for me, for the first time in decades for these two in fact, so I’m very excited to say the least. Although due to changes made for Buster, the pages above would be the last time readers saw all that ‘orrible pus exploding everywhere.

I remember laughing so hard at The Pig With No Name as a kid that I developed a little pain in my side

There are a few even larger strips here too, such as an eight-page story for The Slugs, although it’s written by Charlie Brooker and Mark Rodgers instead of Tony Husband, the first time that’s happened, but it’s still brilliantly brought to the page by Lezz. It involves the band being told they need a female lead singer by their agent and it’s funny what their main complaint about this is! But Anna Key is even louder and more obnoxious than they are and it brings their adventures to a happy ending.

David Haldane‘s Rubbish Man also returns in the nine-page Plague of the Zombie Tortoises and it’s much better than his last strip in the monthlies; his idiocy has returned, as has (I’m very happy to say) his disgusting superpowers. So Jimmy got the send off he deserved in the end. Then on Tom Thug’s page is another classic Lew Stringer rhyming script with a plug for where we could find Tom for the next several years.

The third and final multi-part strip was most likely created for the weeklies, seeing as how it’s made up of two-page spreads with edited cliffhanger captions and even looks like it may have originally been in colour (there are black and white reprints of colour strips elsewhere with the same finish to them). Drawn by Chas Sinclair, The Pig With No Name takes on all of the clichés of cowboy and western movies. It’s one I remember laughing so hard at as a kid that I developed a little pain in my side. That moment comes on the second page below and I’m sure you can work out what bit I’m talking about.

After I picked myself back up from that bathroom door scene the rest of the story is a cracker (crackling?). In part two the usual man-enters-a-saloon-and-everyone-stops scene is spoofed, quickly followed by the evil butcher villain and his men having a complete panic and showing the reader what really must go on behind the door in such scenes in these movies. Then finally, it all builds up to the stereotypical quick draw and ends with a hilarious, surprising defeat!

So who wrote this incredibly funny strip? Patrick confirms that it was his fellow co-editor Tony Husband, who worked so brilliantly with Chas on many strips, but strangely it includes no credits all. In fact, Tony’s signature is nowhere to be found in any of the new material. There are reprints of Horace Watkins, one of Tony’s Golden Trough Awards from an early issue and some of his quick gag pages from the weeklies, but for all intents and purposes he’s absent. I asked Patrick about this and he tells me the reason is most likely because they were simply so busy on the Round the Bend TV show by this time.

It’s all very funny, but a few bits and pieces feel like they would’ve been better suited to a comic like Gas

Altogether there are 12 pages of reprints. As a kid I remember recognising some but I’d no idea until right now there were so many. They are some of the very best examples of OiNK’s humour though, so for those unfamiliar with them they add a great deal to the package.

The photo of Patrick is reprinted from an earlier Grunts page but everything else here in GBH’s newest scam is brand new. The small print under the “All Goods At 1/2 Prince Unless Otherwise Stated” headline, the not-at-all-subtle dig at 80s marketing for new fangled music equipment and of course the boasts about the very ordinary features their TV includes are all classic GBH! I’m going to miss these gangsters.

A couple of pages later comes a double-page which shows how much OiNK had changed since its early days. Drawn by Mike Peek with admittedly very funny lyrics written by co-editor Mark Rodgers, this went way over my head at the time. The same thing happened a few times in the monthlies after publisher Fleetway’s well-intentioned (but misguided) tampering to push OiNK towards a slightly older teen audience.

This and some censored, but still very obvious, bad language (in particular in The Slugs) shows OiNK wasn’t a young children’s comic anymore and I think that’s very sad. Its humour was always cheeky, rude even, but it had an innocence about it. While some contents, like most of what I’ve shown you here, could still fall under that category, this spread and a few others contribute to an overall feeling of OiNK no longer being the same publication I remember so fondly.

The team that were still working on it were definitely producing the goods, however OiNK was at its best when it was a children’s comic that could be read and enjoyed by anyone of any age, rather than a comic with a teen-and-older target audience that could (upon occasion) alienate its younger readers. Don’t get me wrong, as an adult it’s all very funny, but a few bits and pieces feel like they would’ve been better suited to a comic like Gas, which a lot of the OiNK team did contribute to (look out for that at a future date).

For the final time, let’s sign off the issue with some new Ian Jackson art.

If you look closely at the first and last speech balloons, the words “effort” and “Holiday Special” seem added in after the fact, like there was originally mention of a “Book” or “OiNK Book” respectively. I asked Patrick who confirms some of the material here was indeed intended for The OiNK! Book 1990 before OiNK was cancelled and he thinks I’m right about the edited words above too.

This particular edition of OiNK is a bit tricky to track down these days, only rarely popping up on eBay but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye out for. It truly is a gorgeous issue and, while there’s a reprint collection to come, this feels like a fitting swan song for a comic that was so fundamental to my life. It feels like a very special issue when held in your trotters and gives some fan favourites a suitable ending after the sudden cancellation last year. Coveted by a lot of fans, the OiNK Winter Special is a treasured piece of my collection and contains a lot of happy memories.

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