It’s time for celebrations as OiNK‘s birthday approaches this coming Monday. Released at the end of the first full year of the world’s funniest comic, Uncle Pigg et all were about to pull out all the stops to mark the occasion. A golden logo on the cover would be just the start of it!
Promo by Patrick Gallagher
There’s a great poster featuring all your favourites including those that had already said goodbye by this stage, a “fantastic” photo story featuring some lucky competition winners and a very special Tom Thug strip which will make classic humour comics fans’ day. Make sure to come back to check out the full review for these highlights and more, it’ll be up on the blog from Monday 18th April 2022.
Coming up Monday on the blog is the very first OiNKHoliday Special, a 48-page feast of summery goodness featuring the return of old favourites, absolute classics from regular characters and some extra special one-off strips to make it that bit more special. This was a huge deal for pig pals. Preview issue aside it was the first extra edition of OiNK beyond the regular fortnightly and from the moment eyes fell upon the unique Ian Jackson cover fans were not to be disappointed.
These promos for the Holiday Special are taken from issues #25 to #28. The first three were all put together by co-editor Patrick Gallagher (the Tom Thug panel taken from Lew Stringer‘s strip), the final one by Chris Sievey as Frank Sidebottom. The special was released on the same date as #25.
As well as the very best Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile yet and the long awaited return of Pete’s Pup, look out for the most unique OiNK character yet whose strips in this edition resulted in a rather embarrassing moment in the hospital for me(!), and 2000AD fans can look forward to the brilliant The Game is Greed which is incredibly drawn by none other than Kevin O’Neill! Yes, you read that right.
The first OiNK! Holiday Special comes to the blog on Monday 11th April 2022.
What’s this, a price rise? It had to happen eventually, but it’s crazy to look back and think about our comics costing only 35p for all of that hard work that went into them. OiNK was already more expensive than its peers and as the likes of Buster and Whizzer and Chips went up 2p each to 26p, our piggy publication went up by 5p to the grand sum of 35p. OiNK was independently produced, contained a lot more individual strips from more contributors and was printed on lovely large, glossy paper, all of which made it more expensive to produce but they also made it worth every extra penny.
This is the Toys and Hobbies Issue and it’s full of interactive elements for the young readers. By that I mean things to cut out and make. In fact, there’s so much here the comic would be nothing but a pile of twisted paper if the reader did them all! I’ll show you one further down the review. To kick things off, apparently for Hadrian Vile and his artist Ian Jackson the theme has conjured up an image of voodoo experiments. As you do. The surprises continue inside with a memorable strip involving killer playthings and the insane artwork of Jon Langford in The Terrible Toys.
Written by Mark Rodgers, this should conclusively show that even such a safe topic could be completely turned on its head by OiNK. Jon’s art always made an impression and this is no exception, especially the fang-toothed Santa Claus at the end. (This wouldn’t even be the scariest Santa we’d see in OiNK!) His use of thick, heavy lines, as if he’s leaning furiously on the page as he draws, and a lovely loose freehand style bring complete chaos to anything he crafted. You can also just about see a couple of edits around copyright names, the most obvious being “Borbie Dolls” where the ‘O’ has been changed. I’m not sure what Hasbro would’ve said!
Back in #20Lew Stringer introduced us to a new character called Specky Hector, the Comics Collector by way of a funny three panel strip. I was delighted to see his return in this issue with a full page all to himself, in which he shares his tips for what he sees as the correct way to collect and store comics, complete with ink stains and finger prints which are very unbecoming of someone who prides themselves on their mint collection. After this I looked forward to future instalments from Hector in whatever form they would take but unfortunately the character never returned to this comic. However, for pig pals who followed some of the characters to the pages of Buster after OiNK folded he would pop up on occasion and you can even read this previous blog post to find out how he’s doing today.
There are a lot of great gags here and I particularly like the front cover of The Beany. Look closely and you’ll see the strip has someone ask for credits and the star of the strip says, “Jings! We don’t run credits!” This was a dig at the comics which never credited their writers and cartoonists, something else which set OiNK apart from the very beginning. This was a specific point of difference for its creators Mark Rodgers, Tony Husband and Patrick Gallagher, that everyone should receive on-page credit for their work and it was a hot topic in the UK industry at the time. So I particularly liked this joke.
“I’m even giving up my old hobby of collecting squashed hedgehogs!”
Tom Thug
Just as a point of interest, I don’t personally protect the comics I collect and read for this blog in carded plastic bags or store them away out of sight. Mine are all proudly displayed on shelves around the small office in my house (I say office, it’s the spare bedroom with a desk instead of a bed) and can be picked up and instantly flicked through. I remember a friend years back would go to painstaking lengths to keep his comics and novels pristine and the way he’d hold them while reading looked so uncomfortable. To me, a bookshelf full of novels with cracked spines shows they’ve been loved. The same goes for my comics. Don’t get me wrong, I look after them, but comics are for consumption, to be read over and over, and most importantly loved. I don’t think Hector would really disagree with that sentiment.
Also in this issue is the second part of that Tom Thug story which began last issue. To recap, Wayne Brayne tricked Tom (not difficult) into thinking he was seeing his older self as a decrepit pensioner spending his last days in prison and it terrified him. Determined not to end up that way we saw him reformed, prancing down the road barefoot with bunches of flowers and a shiny halo above his head. Originally I’d thought it was just a funny ending for that issue and things would be back to normal this time. But that’s not the case and the strip kicks off with his dad getting the shock of his life.
This is a great strip, from the question mark beside the title, to his idiotic attempts at being nice and his eventual return to form. There’s even a quick reference to a hobby for the theme. I particularly like the panel where he swings at Wayne and punches the tree, the exaggerated punch and the pain in his eyes are perfect. In the end he hasn’t even returned to his normal thuggish ways out of his own choice. Instead he’s once again been manipulated by Wayne, this time at the encouragement of the locals and even Tom’s own dad. It’s a great end to a very funny two-parter.
In the pages of OiNK Wayne always reminds me of a younger version of Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye and team captain on Have I Got News For You. Interestingly however, when Tom’s strips became regular full-colour pages in Buster we found out Wayne is actually black, which was sadly a rare thing in our comics at the time. Speaking to Lew, he tells me he imagined Wayne as being black at some stage before the colour strips, however at one point OiNK gave him pink skin when someone at the office did the colouring.
Dead Fred written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Wilkie Hadrian Vile written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Ian Jackson Rubbish Man by David Haldane Blow Peter by Tony Husband
Here are some of the other highlights of the issue, with Dead Fred taking on a handy new hobby, in The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile the young lad’s completely normal pastimes get him into trouble, Rubbish Man uses some of his memorable superpowers to great effect and in the strangely named Blow Peter co-editor Tony Husband takes aim at the very random things the programme would’ve built and encouraged their young viewers to copy.
On the front cover we were told there’s a “fantastic cut-out zeo-trope” inside. It’s a name that flew over my head as a kid but when I saw the page I instantly recognised the device used to produce basic animation. The fact it was billed as “fantastic” could only mean one thing, that this was going to be on Frank Sidebottom‘s page. I wasn’t wrong. Chris Sievey‘s imagination and ability to come up with unique ideas for his character’s pages never ceased to surprise.
I remember versions of this on children’s television at the time. The correct spelling is “zoetrope”, originally named when its inventor William E. Lincoln took the Greek words meaning ‘Wheel of Life’ to describe his new toy, which produced animated drawings before the days of film. As Frank explains, once assembled and spun the user looks through the holes, each one flicking by to show the frame on the opposite side, one by one. When spun quickly this gives the illusion of motion and it’s surprisingly good, as I found out when I built it recently.
With the zoetrope, a cut-out stage and finger puppets depicting Uncle Pigg, Snatcher Sam and Mary Lighthouse, as well as a DIY Harry the Head which involved cutting out his features and gluing them to a pink balloon, there wouldn’t be much left of this issue if we’d actually created everything included. I don’t remember doing any of them, or indeed any of the board games or other models which required cutting my precious OiNKs. I may not have stored them in big plastic tubs away from sunlight, but I didn’t cut any of them up! Well, apart from coupons for the merchandise, of course.
Always a great character with consistently funny strips, Jeremy Banx‘s Burp was hitting a stride about this time in OiNK’s run that would continue without faltering all the way to the end of the weeklies when he’d disappear from the comic. Between now and then he’d even get a few two-page strips and some stories so surreal they could make Jeremy’s other regular character, Mr Big Nose look positively sane (almost). This issue’s strip is a favourite of mine and shows just how out of control things can get in a Burp story.
My favourite part is the large panel showing our planet zooming through the cosmos, the speech balloons at various points in its trajectory conveying the speed at which we’re hurtling about, culminating in Burp’s brilliant line, “You’re brutal, you are!” This broke me. In an issue of OiNK it’s always going to be very difficult to point at a page and say it’s the funniest, but even though it’s a closely run race as always, this had me in stitches. It’s even signed upside down to match the final panel. Simply brilliant stuff.
Written by Tony Husband and drawn by Clive Collins, Maggie Pie Collector of Weird Things had been a semi-regular in the early issues of the comic but her most recent appearance before now was back in #14. She would only appear a few more times (twice more in the comic and once in the first annual) and given how the theme includes hobbies she just had to be present in this one. Not only did she get her usual (well, unusual) story page, she also presented us with this guide to stamp collecting.
There’s some special news in the middle of the comic
I particularly like the Penny White and the Latverian ‘Big Brother’. At ten-years-of-age I wasn’t really aware of any world events and had never been bitten by the stamp collecting bug, but enough of my friends collected them and I’d seen enough episodes of The A-Team freeing villages that I still found these funny.
There’s some special news in the middle of the comic. Throughout its life (and after) OiNK would produce a variety of holiday specials, books and special editions. The first of these was the 1987 Holiday Special and it went on sale along with this issue as the advert below by co-editor Patrick Gallagher announced.
This was really exciting as a child! I also have some very distinct memories of that particular edition, both from my childhood and from later on in life and I’ll share these with you when I review it in just seven days from now. But this wasn’t the only reason for pig pals to get excited and I’ll explain that right after our final highlight of the issue.
Drawn by Steve Gibson, Watch the Skies takes inspiration from the Highway Code’s road signs to create a symbols guide for airplane spotters everywhere. Reading just the first two had me laughing. This is the final interior contribution to the issue (the back page had a script to go with the finger puppets I mentioned earlier) and was just below the Next Issue promo, which is where the further exciting news could be found.
The next issue of OiNK is the birthday issue! That’s right, can you believe it’s already been almost a full year since this read through of the world’s greatest comic began? The issue marks the end of the comic’s first year rather than the beginning of the second as would be traditional (typical OiNK), and marks a year since the release of the preview issue. This might seem strange at first but remember the preview wasn’t a shrunk down, miniature sneak peek of what was to come, it was a full-sized issue and worthy of celebration.
But wow, a full year has passed already. There’s still plenty to look forward to over the next year-and-a-half of OiNK and next up is that Holiday Special on Monday 11th April 2022, followed swiftly by #26 on Monday 18th April. Extra rashers all round. See you all soon.
In three days the it’ll be time for the next issue of OiNK to celebrate its 35th anniversary, the Special Toys and Hobbies Issue. With another Ian Jackson cover (that’s two in a row, us lucky porkers) it includes guides to collecting comics and stamps and plane spotting, all in the best possible OiNK way. It also has the funniest Burp yet. As a quick preview, the previous issue had this very difficult quiz to end on.
Promo by Patrick Gallagher
The issue would also have plenty for readers to get their creative trotters on, not to mention plenty to get their scissors and sticky tape into. There’s even an extra special piece of DIY interactivity from Frank Sidebottom which would also require a record player. Confused? Come back on Monday 4th April 2022 to see what I’m on about.
So what exactly makes up an “all-electric” comic? Context is key here. This was the 1980s and electronic entertainment of every description was taking a hold in our daily lives. Things we take for granted today were in their infancy and it was an exciting time, especially for kids. I can clearly remember being very young indeed, possibly five or six years-of-age when our family bought our first VCR and an engineer had to come out to instruct us on how to use it. I was fascinated. I ended up being the only one who could operate it after he left!
Video recorders were brand new and completely changed how (and the amount of) television and films we watched, with video shops popping up for the first time. Computer games were fast becoming the biggest form of entertainment for children, something which just hadn’t been predicted. Interactive television in the shape of Teletext and Oracle was revolutionising how we kept ourselves up-to-date on the latest news. 3D movies, portable music, digital watches… everything was brand new. All perfect material for an OiNK subject, and that’s before we’ve even touched upon 80s movies and TV.
So first up here’s a particular fan favourite, Lew Stringer‘s Pete and his Pimple. First appearing in a tiny strip underneath a Tom Thug story in #6, he became a regular character from #15 onwards and Pete and his giant exploding spot were a highlight of every issue he appeared in. Tom and Pete were always (and remain) some of my very favourite OiNK characters and I’m not alone. Later in the comic’s run during its weekly and monthly phases, Lew asked readers to send in suggestions for cures for Pete’s problem and the pig pals really responded!
However, when OiNK folded into Buster towards the end of 1988 Pete’s strip had to be sanitised somewhat. Panels full of pus, covering everything and everyone, just weren’t something you could show in that comic. After six months the strip disappeared from its pages but while OiNK was being published Pete was a superstar. So much so a Sylvester Stallone-alike was going to play him in a new TV series and even his pimple was going to be played by an actor. This strip contains everything we came to love about a Pete story. I like the little details such as the “advanced technical stuff” which of course now looks lovely and retro, the panel dramatically revealing Fatty Beltbuckle and the skin and pus holding the strip’s name together.
The first caption almost saw my comic being confiscated by our Latin teacher when my friend, who was reading it, burst!
Moving on and the next strip is one I clearly remember from the time because I had to ask my dad what a TV Licence was. There were a few of these strips in OiNK’s lifetime which acted as a kind of Public Service Announcement (there’s a second one further below), albeit in the comic’s usual style. There would be anti-smoking messages, even a special free edition all about that, and one particular message about looking after our teeth which terrified me as a kid. With the way the world of entertainment is evolving these days I can’t see the TV Licence being a thing in the next ten years or so, so this Tony Husband strip will be very much of its day. Another piece of lovely 80s goodness.
Now, there are certain 80s movies which are simply deemed classics. They don’t necessarily have to be Oscar contenders, I’m talking about the fun films we grew up with which left an indelible impression on us. I think 80s films have a certain feel to them that just screams that decade and one particular film is the next to get the OiNK treatment. I only saw it recently for the first time and, while it didn’t enthral me in the way it would’ve at the time, it still had a lovely mix of 80s stars and big chunky keyboards when a computer game nearly results in thermonuclear war, as only an 80s film could.
I am of course talking about WarGames starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, which writer Tony Husband has decided to take aim at in a strip drawn by Chas Sinclair. Whereas in the film the kids almost accidentally start a war, here they accidentally stop one and this doesn’t go down well with the world’s leaders who want nothing more than to obliterate all life on the planet so they can feel superior. The message in this strip is clear and it’s hilariously presented, right down to that 80s movie cliché of just how easy it apparently was to hack any computer in the world.
“We’ll find out who did this terrible thing”, says the American, referring to the children who have actually stopped the world’s populace from being annihilated. I laughed at how he and his enemy are on the phone, angry at having been stopped from destroying each other. Some things in the world have not changed and yes, this is a highly exaggerated spoof, but as far as the tensions of the Cold War in the 80s go I think it summarises that time perfectly.
A couple of issues ago the back page of the Valentine’s OiNK had another of those superb full-colour Ian Jackson contributions, one of which (back in #4) remains to this day as my very favourite page out of all of OiNK’s issues. I remarked in #21 how it would’ve been wonderful to see every issue of the comic end with one of these, a series of completely unconnected strips, all hilariously illustrated by Ian. Imagine curious kids picking up an issue from the shelves and turning the comic over to see one of them. How many would’ve been instantly won over? This issue’s isn’t on the back cover, instead it’s tucked away inside but it’s still just as funny.
It almost feels a shame to have it inside the comic but when you see what’s on the back page you’ll understand. So let’s have a quick look at some of the other highlights of the issue. There’s a photo story made up of a series of mini-strips running throughout the issue which combines the best (worst?) of American and British television, in the King Solomon’s Swines serial Sir Herbert Quarterbrain‘s attempt at pleasing the enemy backfires and Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins makes a stand against some new friends. Also, Burp gets to enjoy all those fantastic 80s 3D feature films in the comfort of his own home and The Spectacles of Doom makes a funny reference to a song which at the time was actually banned.
Solomon’s Swines written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Ron Tiner Horace Watkins by Tony Husband Burp by Jeremy Banx Spectacles of Doom written by Tony Husband, drawn by Andy Roper
OiNK finished its regular run in 1988 but a couple of years later I was in my second year of grammar school and a new kid had joined our class. Because he hadn’t been taught Latin in the first year of his previous school he had to sit out those lessons, and was meant to use the 35 minutes of that classroom to study. On one occasion however, I happened to have the OiNK! Summer Collection with me, the final special released after the comic had finished made up almost entirely of reprint material. The next page from this issue was one of those reprints.
How Radio Sound Effects Are Produced was written by co-editor Patrick Gallagher and Marc Riley who put it together from plundering an old book of Victorian illustrations and creating brilliant captions to completely change their meaning. The first caption almost saw my comic being confiscated by our Latin teacher when my friend, who was sat right behind me, burst! A huge “HA!” erupted uncontrollably from him before he was able to stop himself. He quickly hid the comic inside a text book and said he’d seen something outside as the teacher glared him down. Have a read for yourself and see if you can spot the moment which produced this outburst.
Of course, the official meaning of the word you’ve probably spotted is “a tube made of fur or other warm material into which the hands are placed for warmth”, which you can clearly see in the illustration. However, the dictionary also lists the word as ‘vulgar slang’ and, being an immature 12-year-old boy at the time (as we all were) it took him rather by surprise, to say the least. I can remember being physically sore trying to hold my breath to stop myself from laughing after this happened! Just another fantastic OiNK memory.
Those Victorian illustrations would return in later issues, used by Patrick for newsagent reservation coupons, of all things.
Before we see that back page I mentioned it’s time for a Public Service Announcement from new OiNK writer Howard Osborn. Howard would contribute to 19 editions of the comic altogether, often writing a few strips per issue. Here he’s partnered with Weedy Willy artist Mike Green to teach the kids about looking after their teeth and it includes a comical shark, so I was always going to include it.
I crease up every time I see that shark sitting on top of the shallow waters with its cheeky grin and crazy eyes. I’ll admit I was a somewhat lazy kid when it came to brushing my teeth and generally looking after myself, but that would all change with a later strip in OiNK which we’ll get to eventually (the one that scared me). But for now, I do love the moral at the end of this particular strip, with the usual wording flipped on its head.
So it’s Lew Stringer who brings the issue to a close with a full-colour strip on the back page. But it’s not just any strip, it’s told in rhyme, something Lew seemed to really enjoy as he’d do it quite a few times for OiNK. This particular strip focusses on one of the truly great pieces of 80s technology, the personal stereo (or ‘Walkman’ as most of us called it after Sony’s name became ubiquitous with the devices). So with music playing a central role here the rhyming captions are the perfect way to tell the story.
According to Lew the bit at the bottom was an addition co-editor Mark Rodgers asked for (and wrote). The idea behind the strip was to shock children into paying attention when they crossed the road, but he believes Mark may have thought it could be misconstrued as making fun of road deaths, hence the Green Hog Code being added. It’s a great addition and after the ending I think it’s funny to have a pig come in with their stern look and tell us off. The strip itself is brilliant and this wraps it up as if the whole page was spoofing those Green Cross Code videos and leaflets we saw so much of as kids.
It also wraps up the issue. It goes without saying this is another top edition of OiNK. The comic really could do no wrong at this stage and this will continue with #24, the Time Travel Special. Complete with an 80s Doctor Who themed cover and multipage Uncle Pigg strip it’s one of the very best. Its review will be right here on the blog from Monday 7th March 2022.
OiNK Blog 