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OiNK Comic Reviews

OiNK! #68: HiNDMOST HOG

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The following post was originally written for Sunday 22nd but was held back after the sad news of Tony Husband’s passing

Co-editor Patrick Gallagher has a vague recollection of OiNK #68 being held back a bit to better coincide with the publication of the first merged Buster comic. It was definitely a week late when this issue arrived in my local shop in Northern Ireland. Now on rare occasions a comic could be a day or two later getting over here (or up to the farthest areas of Scotland). According to some in England I’ve spoken to in research for this post they recall receiving their #68s on the Thursday or Friday so this seems to track. When it finally did arrive few of us were prepared for what it contained (unless you had read the previous week’s Buster.)

I certainly wasn’t aware of the merge at the time so, in the early evening of Saturday 22nd October 1988 as the cold, dark night drew in I ran to the newsagent just before dinner for the umpteenth time that week to (hopefully) buy what I thought would be the latest issue. As always, before going to the counter to ask for my reserved copy, I scanned my eyes over the comics shelves. I saw the piggy pink logo… twice. I could see Pete, Tom and Willy peering out at me from behind the new issue of OiNK! What was this?

For a second I thought it was some kind of promotional thing. After all, this and the other comics I’d begun collecting by this stage were all still going strong and those my brother or friends read seemed to last forever, such as Beano, Transformers, Roy of the Rovers etc. I’d never seen a comic cancelled before and after two very happy years I just assumed OiNK would go on and on too. It was my first comic, so I didn’t know this kind of thing happened!

I picked up a copy of OiNK from the shelf, its gorgeous Frank Sidebottom cover (one of my favourites of the whole run) in all its glory and I noticed the banner across the top which soon gave the game away. Surely this couldn’t mean what I was beginning to think it meant? I began flicking through it to see if there was any indication inside and lo-and-behold on page four where the letters page would normally be was a message from Uncle Pigg, drawn by Michael Peek.

My heart sank. Our esteemed editor may have been cheery at the prospect of an early retirement and he tried to keep his loyal readers chirper with the news of the Buster merge, the already-released second annual and the promise of a holiday special the following year (a lifetime away for a ten-year-old), but that wasn’t enough as far as I was concerned. So as I went to ask for my last reserved OiNK I also picked up a Buster, hoping for the best. You can read all about what happened with that in its own post also published on the blog today.

Now, 35 years later as an adult this message is all the more heartbreaking because this is actually the best of the monthly OiNKs by far. There’s not a single reprint in sight, the team using up what they could of the leftover material they’d have kept for the following issues. Plus we had our 12th free gift! Stapled to the middle pages was a tiny 16-page preview of Wildcat, so I really came back from the shop with three different comics. The gift was a welcome surprise actually, as the cancellation had distracted me from the news of it on the cover.

OiNK began with IPC Magazine’s first preview comic, so now 68 issues later it felt like things had come full circle. In fact, I’ve described before how this felt like OiNK passing the baton which, after I read this superb freebie, I was more than willing to let Wildcat take up. This was particularly welcome after Buster disappointed me, so something good had come out of this after all, just not in the way I’d initially hoped. Wildcat was a superb comic and I’ve already covered it on the blog, where you’ll find a full review of this freebie.

On page two was a small note that the regular Wildcat comic would have pages the same size as OiNK’s, even though this was mentioned on the back of the preview. Alongside it our final issue starts off strong with some cracker (no pun intended, really) mini-strips such as Kev F Sutherland’s take on another Rotten Rhyme and the first of this issue’s Wally of the West strips by the always funny Ed McHenry.

Only a few of the contributions mention the fact this is the final issue, while a couple more don’t reference it directly but clearly knew it was the end. For example, Chris Sievey’s Frank Sidebottom doesn’t say anything about it but does sign off with details of where readers could see him on TV, listen to him on the radio or meet him in person before saying thanks and that he’ll see everyone soon. Which he did, as he never seemed to be off children’s television at the time.

Taking over a double-page spread Frank really does squeeze in as much as he possibly can into a strip about his school days. There are no less than 33 individual panels across just two pages! Not only that, look at the amount he draws into each of these tiny little rectangles, such as his mum’s kitchen floor, cooker and sink when all he needed to show us was him running out the door. Also, before you read this if you have a pair of old fashioned 3D glasses please do try them on at a certain point here and let me know how you get on! Haha.

We all knew that despite Frank being a superstar he still lived at home with his mum so I love the ending which, intentionally or not, is a callback to an earlier episode of Frank’s which referred to him going to bed at 9 despite being an adult. Having the final caption as a never-ending cycle back to the beginning feels like the perfect way for him to wrap up the final regular contribution to OiNK he crafted.

From one OiNK star to two at once. Two cartoonists decided to create something similar to each other’s, a visual gag only achievable in this medium and one where OiNK was the perfect place to try it. So Charlie Brooker’s Freddie Flop and Brian Luck return for their final appearances and, suitably for the last issue, the randomly-appearing Mr Plinge returns for one last time and with a twin sister in tow alongside (or rather above) a one-off Mr Girth.

Placed nowhere near each other in the issue, the joyous surprise at seeing the same gag played out after enjoying it so much the first time is a delight. It reminds me of my embarrassing moment in the hospital waiting room when I discovered a second Herbert Bowes strip in the first OiNK Holiday Special! Thankfully this time I was reading alone.

For their final regular attempt to extort as much money as possible from people the gangsters at GBH pulled out all the stops with a middle-page spread of the ultimate luxury in holiday travel, on a cruise. Thomas Crook was a name used already by Simon Thorp in previous Madvertisements but this is surely the funniest of the lot. I love the sheer audacity to list off all of the gags! This kept me giggling for a good while in both 1988 and 2023 and is one of my favourite GBH entries from the entire series. Please take your time and savour every little bit of this one.

My favourite parts of this have to be the lifeboat drill, the scales, the ship’s “washing machines”, where the food is served, the stabilisers(!) and best of all the fact that this isn’t a cutaway, it’s noted that the ship itself actually has a huge hole along its side. Simon’s Madverts were always so packed with little sight gags for us to find and I love how his last one labels them all, making sure no one misses a single one. Still a regular Viz contributor to this day, I’m really going to miss his OiNK pages.

#68 is a fitting, funny and fantastic send off

Fittingly, one of the pages that mentions this is the final issue is co-editor Tony Husband’s Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins in which he laments the end of the comic (as do watching aliens) before he and Mandy decide to cheer up by getting married. Tom Thug’s strip begins with him telling us he’s received some terrible news and we think it’s about OiNK, but actually he’s just been offered a job. A job he ultimately fails at on day one, naturally.

Children’s television presenter and artist Tony Hart and his plasticine pal Morph are the subject of a spoof in the shape of The Amazing Adventures of Murph and in a three-page Pete and his Pimple strip he’s daydreaming about being a superhero called Zit Man. Thankfully his arch nemesis Mister Squeeze trips over his own words, quite literally, in the nick of time and falls into his own death trap. Ingenious stuff.

Horace Watkins by Tony Husband
Tom Thug by Lew Stringer
Adventures of Murph written by Charlie Brooker,
drawn by Ed McHenry
Pete and his Pimple by Lew Stringer

Of course it wasn’t the end for two of these characters, however it’s rather strange there’s no Weedy Willy strip in this final issue when he’d join Pete and Tom in Buster.

Meanwhile, Kev F Sutherland must’ve created a lot of content for forthcoming issues because it appears it’s all been collected together here. Just like Ian Jackson and Jeremy Banx before him, Kev’s work is synonymous with OiNK in my eyes and here he has eight strips in total to his name across a whopping ten pages. His Meanwhile… series was always a highlight so I couldn’t let this issue go without including at least one, and it’s one which got a memorable roar of laughter out of me at ten-years-of-age.

It seems if OiNK were to continue one of Kev’s Three Scientists from #66 was going to be making an Alfred Hitchcock-esque cameo in every issue. Did you spot him above? In this issue Kev brings us not only this and the Rotten Rhyme above but also his take on Jack & Jill and Who Killed Cock Robin?, spoofs of 80s car commercials and weather forecasts, and last but by no means least the brilliantly titled The Plop Factory – The Studios of Britain’s top record producers Sock, Bacon and Waterworks.

The final strip I’m going to show you (although not the final image) from all 68 regular OiNKs should really be a large, multi-page affair, shouldn’t it? Some big, grand gesture to round things off with. Nope. One of the biggest laughs in this issue comes from a tiny little quarter-page strip of Ed McHenry‘s Wally of the West. A simply perfect example of the mini-strips crammed into each issue and how OiNK could generate a ton of laughs from content of all shapes and sizes.

With a lack of Uncle Pigg or the plops and very few pig-themed strips and spoofs, would new readers to OiNK Monthly have been confused as to why the comic had the name it did? However, for seasoned pig pals such as myself these final six issues have each been mammoth specials crammed full of content, with the bonus of some bigger than usual entries for a handful of our favourites. So if you ever hear a pig pal rubbish these monthlies, I say they should really reconsider them, especially #68 which is a fitting, funny and fantastic send off.

There’s a ton of OiNK content to come on the blog over the next few years at least, I promise

But unfortunately a send off it is. Fleetway’s well-intentioned reboot hadn’t had the effect they’d wished for, but by no means were OiNK’s sales plummeting as much as some have commented. As co-editor Patrick Gallagher recently told me sales were down across the board and OiNK’s were by no means the worst. But with Fleetway having now forced two revamps they called time on the comic, although it wouldn’t be the last to fall as they continued to chip away at the titles they’d purchased from IPC.

If OiNK had continued in its best format as a fortnightly under IPC, who were very happy with the sales figures and the press coverage it was creating for them as a publisher, could it have lasted longer? Perhaps. We’ll never know. For now this final issue wraps up with the first of a new series. Judging by the old OiNK logo this was created by Michael Peek when it was still a weekly and, with this being the last page (save for a Fleetway Annuals advert on the back) Patrick added a little sign-off gag with the speech balloon.

This is by no means the end of OiNK on its own blog! There’s a wealth of extra features for our favourite comic already on here and a ton of OiNK content to come over the next few years at least, I promise. Actually, the read through itself isn’t even finished yet with four more editions to come over the next two years and yes, I’m going to make you wait for each of them, just as I have to wait until their real time release dates to read them. The first of these will be The OiNK! Book 1989’s review which will be published on Christmas Day 2023. Perfect anarchic post-dinner laughs, I think.

Now, I wonder what happened to Uncle Pigg on that tropical island…

iSSUE 67 < > BUSTER MERGE

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OiNK! iN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS!

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These two issues of OiNK were linked by a somewhat famous incident in the life of the comic when #64 published what was initially just another funny page. However, it resulted in a follow up in #67 when it became the topic of conversation in a rather important place in the UK. I don’t think many of our comics have the honour of being a search result on the government’s website, but that’s certainly the case with OiNK. Let’s start at the beginning.

Back in the review for #64 I highlighted writer Howard Osborn‘s Ten Things You Need to Know About the New Poll Tax, retooled as a way of taxing parrot owners across Great Britain, which made about as much sense as the real thing. It was a hilarious piece of satire at a time when Margaret Thatcher’s Poll Tax on the mainland (it never made it over here to Northern Ireland) was getting ridiculed across the media, from the news to Spitting Image. Now a children’s comic was having a go too.

As I said in the review certain points of this feel very prescient, which is actually something I’ve noticed in a lot of OiNK’s more satirical jokes recently. The Poll Tax itself was so universally hated I can remember it being on the news constantly, even though I never paid attention to such things at a young age. The aforementioned latex puppets probably helped in that regard.

Fast-forward three months and #67 had the blurb, “As read in the House of Commons!” emblazoned on the cover. Inside, Uncle Pigg announced that a young pig pal by the name of William Pickering had reached out to local Labour MP Jeff Rooker, who the comic describes as William’s “pal” and showed him OiNK’s piece, for which Howard finally received the writing credit. Uncle Pigg thought readers might like to know his fine publication was then spoken about (and even quoted) in the corridors of power.

It’s quite funny to think this happened at the time, our little comic being referred to by the government and not in a critical way like some late Northern Ireland politicians who had wanted it banned. Instead the rebellious, anarchic OiNK was being held up by a government official, albeit as an example of the contempt felt by the populace for the party in power. But that’s not the end of this particular story.

OiNK had proved its point beyond its wildest dreams

The text is from Hansard, the official record of the UK parliament. “From what I remember, Hansard made contact with us and informed us,” OiNK co-editor Patrick Gallagher told me. “It’s what we pay our taxes for, particularly Poll Tax in this case.” Just for the blog, Patrick reached out to Uncle Pigg on his tropical retirement island for comment, who snorted, “The impression I got was that they [Hansard] were a fan. Don’t forget, we also made an excellent impression on Edwina Curry so we were well respected and talked about in certain quarters of the government, too.” Indeed, here’s a photo from the Smokebuster Special promotion to prove his point.

The parliamentary records are much more accessible today thanks to the Internet and a quick search for ‘OiNK’ in the year 1988 brings up the full session from that day. This includes the complete exchange between Rooker and fellow MP Patrick McLoughlin who, in typical Conservative fashion, completely ignores the point of why the comic was quoted in the first place.

OiNK’s inclusion by Rooker was to show how the tax was so widely unpopular that even children were mocking it. Rooker also clearly explained he didn’t read comics and that a young child of a constituent had pointed it out to him. Despite all of this, the Tory member accuses Rooker of having nothing better to do than read comics, which just showed everyone McLoughlin had no good response to OiNK’s ribbing. He really should’ve just stayed seated and quiet.

So there you go, the day OiNK was read out in the House of Commons. If you’d like to see it on the government’s website for yourself you can check it out at this link, although the screenshot above is all there is on OiNK. I loved the original piece by Howard and seeing the ruling party’s pathetic response just makes it all the funnier. OiNK had proved its point beyond its wildest dreams.

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KNOW YOUR OiNK!: CARTOONiSTS’ PROFiLES

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This is a nice little bonus post even if I do say so myself. Although I can’t take any of the credit, that must go to ten of OiNK’s top contributors who each decided to tell us a little bit about themselves in the second Holiday Special, released in March 1988. Sprinkled throughout the issue were fun little quarter-page profiles containing a self-portrait of some sort and a description of the cartoonist or editor in their own words.

The last part of that sentence is key. Don’t be expecting any actual real information here. This is OiNK after all. If you chose ten of its talented team and asked them to tell the readers something interesting about themselves do you really think they’d waste that opportunity with actual facts? Or would you prefer they took the chance to use their unique senses of humour to have a laugh instead? It’s a no brainer. Let’s kick things off with the three people responsible for OiNK in the first place, shall we? Here are the comic’s creators and editors. These were the people in charge!

I particularly like Patrick Gallagher’s pen name and his unique way of presenting his age, and it’s hilarious to have the incredibly talented Mark Rodgers’ profile presented as so amateurish. Tony Husband’s artistic depiction of himself is so funny but poor Paul Husband! If you take a look at the very first OiNK, the special preview issue, you’ll see he doesn’t actually look like Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins. If readers had wanted to see what all three of these individuals really looked like they would’ve had to check out the article in Crash magazine from the previous year.

As a kid I never knew of Crash (or the unique free edition of our comic tucked away inside that issue), so as far as I was concerned these profiles were the closest I was going to get to really knowing those who made us laugh so much. As a kid I had no idea it was Patrick and Mark who had appeared in photo stories such as Castaway and Star Truck previously. The latter also starred Tony albeit behind an evil alien (chicken) mask,  but we never knew who they were in those strips. That’s what makes these silly not-so-fact files so funny of course; this is how readers would imagine the amazing talent behind the comic. It’s just a shame we didn’t get more!

Ian Jackson is synonymous with OiNK and did appear in a photo story alongside Mark way back in the Valentines issue but, like Tony, he was behind expensive (not really) alien special effects. In fact it was only two years ago, not long after I started this website, when John Freeman‘s Down the Tubes website published a spotlight article about Ian that I finally found out what the person behind Uncle Pigg, Mary Lighthouse and Hadrian Vile looks like.

This imaginative profile not only sums up his wacky sense of humour with far-fetched nonsense, he also manages to highlight the truth about being a cartoonist

Marc Riley appeared as another anonymous kind-of-actor in Star Truck but was probably best known for portraying Snatcher Sam during the first year of the comic and The OiNK! Book 1988. The grisly world of punk rock he refers to is The Fall, the band he was a part of for four years between 1978 and 1982 before forming The Creepers. Of course, Frank Sidebottom needs no introduction or indeed a silly drawing! We all knew him from countless children’s television appearances already and the man behind the papier-mâché, Chris Sievey, was always so brilliant with his fans that of course he’d take any opportunity to give them a chance to get in touch directly.

Below is David Haldane’s profile, he of Hugo the Hungry Hippo, Rubbish Man and Torture Twins fame and this imaginative profile not only sums up his wacky sense of humour with far-fetched nonsense, he also manages to highlight the truth about being a cartoonist! Then Steve Gibson, who’d go on to produce a range of very adult comics after OiNK brings us a depiction of himself that’s really rather disturbing and perfectly illustrates (no pun intended) his art style. If you’re interested in a full-page strip of that Judge Pigg he’s drawing then check out the review for #58.

Quite a few years ago now, perhaps about a decade back I had the pleasure of meeting Davy Francis a few weeks before Christmas and had the chance to purchase some of his original OiNK artwork which currently takes pride of place on my wall. I didn’t even know he lived in Belfast like me until I was at a film festival earlier that year, and while chatting about comics to someone and mentioning OiNK they told me they knew Davy. An absolute gent with a brilliant sense of humour and an incredible caricaturist his contribution here keeps to the theme of telling us absolutely nothing about him and instead giving us a good chuckle.

Like Ian and David, Davy works his usual signature into his profile so readers can instantly recognise who this is and then we finish the Holiday Special off with Davy’s good friend Ed McHenry. The drawing in Ed’s is in my mind probably the most accurate, based on my completely unknowledgeable assumptions about cartoonists’ work areas. I really like how he’s tried to incorporate as many of the little random details from his description into the drawing too, it’s packed full of little sight gags and details. Absolutely classic Ed.

A few months after the special one more profile appeared in one of the monthly issues, OiNK #66. While it got my hopes up there’d be more in future issues this was sadly the last but it’s a nice little bonus. Especially since it’s by one of my favourite cartoonists of all time and was in an issue where he contributed almost a third of the contents! Lew Stringer is very much a child of the 60s and plays up to that here, beginning with the profile number being made up of three key 60s movie/TV/comic series. I just wish I’d thought of his excuse for why I sucked at school sports!

There we go. Don’t you feel completely informed about who made the funniest comic of all time? Me neither. Or maybe we should. The details may not be entirely accurate but they portray the sense of humour OiNK encapsulated, the craziness and imagination that captivated us and the combination of comic talent that was like no other. These great profiles inside the second OiNK Holiday Special may not have been an introduction to these cartoonists, but they could very well be the perfect introduction to OiNK itself.

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UNCLE PiGG’S CRACKLiNG TALES: VOLUMES OF FUN

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In the issue of OiNK on sale now (at the time of writing) back in 1988 a special competition was published in which pig pals could win a set of two new books called From the Pages of OiNK!: Uncle Pigg’s Crackling Tales, new entries in publisher Knockabout’s Jester range. These were novel-sized collections of strips from the first couple of dozen issues of our favourite comic. The competition in #64 also acted as the only advert they’d ever receive. They passed me by as a kid and I only found out about them again a handful of years ago.

I’ve read online from certain quarters that apparently they were of very low quality, that all the reprints were very badly reproduced and that they felt like cheap cash-ins, but nothing could be farther from the truth! So today, at the point in OiNK’s real time read through when they were first announced to the readers I’ve decided to take a closer look at both books, while showing you just how good they actually are.

Given the rough matt quality of paper used for novels these feel like OiNK has been given the Big Comic Book treatment. Novel-sized and with 100 pages each, volume one contains a whopping 53 strips and the second has even more, with 63 classic funnies. They both come with new introductions, the first from Uncle Pigg and both books finish with a little promotion to buy OiNK every week using the design from the OiNK 45 record (the comic was still weekly when these were put together but monthly by the time they were released).

Uncle Pigg’s introduction is full of his usual boasts and I like what the initials after his name really stand for. Rhyming off the achievements of the comic up to this stage makes it all the more saddening to know that at the time of their release we were only a handful of issues away from the end! Also, while he tells the reader to watch out for her, unfortunately Mary Lighthouse (and Uncle Pigg himself) is nowhere to be seen in strip form.

But it’s the person who wrote the introduction to the second book that’s a real surprise. It’s none other than Alan Moore himself (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke). Yes, that Alan Moore has written his own personal introduction for this OiNK collection. While it’s great to find out such a legendary comics writer was a fan, initially I thought it was a shame he seemed to get some facts wrong and didn’t seem to have gotten the point about a character. Thankfully Lew Stringer has clarified the latter.

It did read like Alan had missed the point about Tom Thug somewhat in his comparison to Dennis the Menace, which would be completely wrong; Tom was just a bully and always the loser and butt of the jokes. “Alan Moore’s comment about Tom Thug is tonue in cheek of course,” Lew has says in his comment below this post. “He certainly gets what Tom’s about as he compares him to a fascist movement.”

Mad Magazine’s satire and the wish to make something relevant to kids of the 80s inspired OiNK

While some did liken OiNK to Viz after it was released, its three creators certainly did not take their lead from Viz, a myth that particularly irks me as it takes away from its (and their) originality. Viz had no influence on the team’s creation whatsoever. Mad Magazine’s satire and the wish to make something relevant to kids of the 80s inspired creators Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers. That last important point Alan correctly points out.

I asked Patrick about the books and Alan’s inclusion. “From what I remember, when we were working on the Crackling Tales books, we were also really busy dealing with the early stages of the TV side of things, which, initially, was to produce OiNK! for TV,” he told me. “I think we allowed [publishers] Knockabout to produce the Crackling Tales covers to our specifications but we provided everything else. I also think that Knockabout was the contact for Alan Moore.”

These are excellent additions to anyone’s OiNK collection

So what makes up both books? There’s a star strip in each, with 12 Burp strips by Jeremy Banx in the first volume and a ten-part Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins story by Tony Husband in the other. Things kick off with the very first Burp strip in fact and after reading his misadventures all the way through to the final weekly by now, these early editions feel so different. That’s not to say they’re any less funny than they were originally of course. Both characters are perfect ways to highlight OiNK’s uniqueness.

As you can see the strips are printed sideways which makes more sense when you think about how much smaller these pages are than the comic’s; if they’d been printed normally they’d be far too small to enjoy properly. With 100 pages the books aren’t thick enough for this to get in the way of the strips and their middle panels are still easily read, even spaced out a little more when the art allows. This makes for a decidedly different reading experience, which let’s face it suits the OiNK perfectly.

Alongside Burp and Horace you’ll find a selection of other regulars such as Tom Thug, Weedy Willy, Cowpat County, Zootown, Hugo the Hungry Hippo, even the likes of Lashy the Wonder Pig and a Butcher Watch are included. Also here are some others who never made it past the first year of the comic, like Maggie Pie, Pete’s Pup and Kid Gangster. There are also a selection of one-offs like Jeremy’s excellent Curse of the Mummy and Mrs Warsaw-Pact which I found so funny back in #13 and #10 respectively. Absolute classics!

As you can see from these photos of one-off Scruff of the Track and a Cowpat County the reproduction is superb even on this very different paper, all of the intricate details of Andy Roper’s and Davy Francis’ artwork still as crisp as they were on OiNK’s much larger glossy pages. It’s great to see things like Scruff here too, especially for readers who had come to OiNK much later and could use these books to catch up on some of what they missed. I expected these to be made up solely of the regulars still in the comic at the time of publication, so I’m glad to see I was wrong.

Below you can see the smaller strips look just as good with anything between two and four of them fitting in when spread across this format. Some of my favourites from the whole run are here too such as Henry the Wonder Dog by Davey Jones and Ian Knox’s Roger Rental He’s Completely Mental, who I’ve been really missing from the comic for a while now. The regulars also have a chance to share this space, their half-page entries sitting alongside their larger strips elsewhere, as you can see in two from Lew Stringer here.

When OiNK was printed on gloss paper (up to #35) greyscale colouring was something unique for us to enjoy, with other humour comics printed on newsprint of much lesser quality they were unable to produce the same result. Even when it changed to matt paper initially it was of a good enough stock for artists such as Lew to continue with this style (although it did stop when the comic went weekly for a while due to the paper). Pete and his Pimple above may not look quite as good as they did originally but I don’t think it looks bad at all for this paper.

So where did all those criticisms of the reproductions come from? There are some examples of strips losing detail in the transition to these books, although across the combined total of 116 only three strips suffer from this. One is below and unfortunately it’s a really rather good Burp strip. I’m not sure how this was okay for the publishers, maybe it just slipped through by accident, but to write off these books because of three such instances is just silly.

It’s great to see Willy here too in some of his earliest adventures back when he was guaranteed to pop up in every issue. His earliest pages were definitely among his strongest (not an adjective Willy was used to) and it’s been great to see him back on form these past few months in the read through ever since the second Holiday Special. Reading those and his starring role in these books, it’s clear he was a good choice to make the transfer to Buster later in the year.

Some other pages I was very happy to see reprinted were an early Tom Paterson contribution when it was still a possibility he could’ve been a regular cartoonist for Uncle Pigg, there are a few Christmassy strips which made me very happy indeed including a classic entry from The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile, it was great to see Pete’s Pup again from the late Jim Needle, a character who really should’ve stayed around, and the first appearance of Tom’s Toe poking fun at conventional comics still grabs your attention thanks to his cartoonist being none other than John Geering!

Meet Mister Cheese by Tom Paterson
Hadrian Vile written by Mark Rodgers, drawn by Ian Jackson
Pete’s Pup by Jim Needle
Tom’s Toe written by Tony Husband, drawn by John Geering

These books appear on eBay quite regularly for a few quid each and for anyone who wants to relive some of their favourite childhood comics but doesn’t know which issues to choose from, or who likes the fact they can do so while storing them easily on a book shelf, these are a must. Unfortunately, there would be no more volumes in the series. “I don’t think we had any concrete plans to produce any more Crackling Tales books,” Patrick says. “That would have been dependent on how the first couple sold. But by the time that information might have come through, OiNK was probably history!”

Sadly that was most likely the case. I doubt these got much of a promotional push by Fleetway by this late stage in OiNK’s lifetime, especially seeing as how it had basically been rebooted as a monthly ‘magazine’ for teenagers by now. As it stands though, these are excellent additions to anyone’s OiNK collection, or even for your book collection as a great round up of OiNK’s crackling sense of humour.

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OiNK! #63: NEW PiG ON THE BLOCK

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That looks a bit different, doesn’t it? While OiNK did change a little for the weeklies this was a complete transformation. As I said previously I liked the funky new logo as a kid but nowadays I already miss the original. Note how it promotes itself as a “magazine” now too. It’s thicker, glossy (again) and monthly, but its contents is that of a pure comic. Mad and Cracked were marketed as magazines and you may spot a little in-joke there on the cover, but this was a rebranding based solely on its new physical form. There was no such thing as monthly children’s humour comics at the time.

Lew Stringer made a good point about the younger audience not having the patience to wait a month between issues

Inside it was our OiNK but ramped up to Holiday Special levels. 48 pages in total and back to the paper it was printed on for its first 35 issues. As such it feels very special when you first get your trotters on it. Later monthlies would benefit from content created specifically for the format (just like the weeklies eventually did), for now it feels a bit like two weeklies stapled together and with good reason, the change had happened suddenly. Over the next six months you’ll spot a shift, not only in the size of some of the strips but also their tone, as OiNK repositioned itself into the teen market, which I feel was a mistake as I mentioned back in #61‘s review.

When discussing these last six issues with Lew Stringer he made a good point about the younger audience not having the patience to wait a month between issues. I did because I had a regular order and other comics to fill the gaps by this stage. However, at such a young age that long wait was the reason I never collected new comics such as Death’s Head even though I enjoyed the first issue, because by the time the next one came along my attention span had forgotten all about it! This could’ve contributed to OiNK’s sales falling. But we’ll get to that later, there are six big porkers to enjoy first. Let’s begin this one with Cowpat County.

Davy Francis’ strip of “The Everyday Lives of Country Folk” was the very first to appear in OiNK, in the preview issue no less. A fan favourite, it was strange to learn it was only a regular for 14 issues before appearing sporadically from then on. This is actually the penultimate outing for this daft lot. They’ll be missed but Davy’s contributions will continue in different forms, no fear.

This was possibly intended to sit comfortably both on the regular comics shelves and those higher ones W.H.Smith had banished it to

Elsewhere Grunts is renamed simply ‘OiNK’s Piggin’ Crazy Readers’ and Uncle Pigg introduces us to the ‘new’ publication and the characters within, even though many are long-established strips. This was clearly intended as a kind of reboot for the comic for a different audience than originally intended, possibly to sit comfortably both on the regular comics shelves (as it did in my newsagent) and those higher ones W.H.Smith had already banished it to.

Something the teen audience would definitely have appreciated (or rather, not appreciated) was acne. Pete and his Pimple had always been a popular addition ever since he first appeared up in #15. Here we’re treated to two strips for Lew Stringer’s character, originally intended for #63 and #64. We kick off (no pun intended) with this memorable one about the flying naked rugby players. It’s silly and immature fun and we loved it! Heck, I still do, it’s just so ludicrous (or Lewdicrous I should say).

Did you spot (no pun intended) the little mention of Cowpat County’s cartoonist there?

As you can see in the second strip the ongoing tale of Pete and Spotless Suzie comes to an early close. While she was perfectly fine with his huge zit (due to her Y.T.S. course on compost analysis) she also understood Pete’s desire to see the back of it and would help out with the reader suggestions coming in thick and fast. After all of the elaborate suggestions comes a very simple one from Glasgow’s Stephen Donnelly. Bribery. We even end up with a brand new strip.

I was surprised to see just how much of a thug Pete turns into so quickly, but I did enjoy seeing Lew depict himself throughout and what pig pal doesn’t want to get their hands on some Uncle Pigg notes? Of course Pete gets his comeuppance and loses everything in the end. A harsh lesson for young Mr. Throb but a necessary and ultimately funny one. There’s a lesson for the readers here too about hubris when we overcome challenges in our lives that others still face, of not pulling the ladder up behind us so to speak, all told through humour and it’s just as relevant today.

Written by Charlie Brooker and (I’m going to assume) assembled by co-editor Patrick Gallagher, this GBH Video Madvertisement not only fits their usual M.O. perfectly, it also reminds me of all the awful low-budget knock-off movies that pop up when big blockbusters are released. I’ve seen some of those horrible Transformers and War of the Worlds copies on the SciFi Channel and these GBH ones sound better than all of them! Speaking of Transformers, The Transformoids make another appearance in this issue but it’s not a sequel to the brilliant strip in #3, it is the strip from #3.

Yes, the dreaded reprints have begun. By 1989 and into the early 90s some of my other comics would also begin doing this, although OiNK was the first as far as I was concerned. At the time I wasn’t aware until a later monthly issue, as the ones used here were from before I discovered the comic, but unfortunately the much hyped ‘bigger’ OiNK wasn’t all new material despite it being just two-years-old. It’s only six pages (Transformoids and the first two Superstar Posters) but you can’t help feel a bit cheated. Within the next year or so reprints became a regular thing across the UK comics market.

Fleetway published two very lucrative fortnightly comics based solely around the idea of reprints

As the UK market became saturated sales of individual titles fell (much like the videogame crash earlier in the decade) so cutbacks had to be made and “classic” tales would return to fill out page counts for cheap. Fleetway even published two very lucrative fortnightly comics based solely around the idea, namely Big Comic Fortnightly and Funny Fortnightly, which Marvel UK then copied with its Marvel Bumper Comic. While reprints were great for newer readers (I personally liked catching up on older Transformers stories I’d missed, for example) it was a sticking point for long-time fans and I could see why.

OiNK had always been a little more expensive than its contemporaries, a result of the earlier gloss paper, its fortnightly schedule (thus less issues to make money on) and being produced independently. Now, with the return of higher quality paper and a much higher page count a few reprints would help keep costs manageable without increasing the cover price even higher. It still contained 42 pages of all new material, including many choice highlights such as these below.

Neighbours of the Dallasenders Hotel
Tom Thug by Lew Stringer
Batbottom + Bobbins by an unknown dynamic duo
Arnold Schwarzenhogger by Simon Thorp

Dallasenders Motel had been a story in #23 made up of six photo-mini-strips, but this one (renamed ‘Neighbours of the Dallasenders Motel’) was brand new, made up of seven full-page episodes originally intended to run across multiple weekly issues. Elsewhere, Tom Thug’s constant truancy comes to an end and he faces a reading and comprehension test, Batbottom and Bobbins continue their takeover of Frank’s page and cover star Arnold Schwarzenhogger gave us his Guide to [Ham] Acting.

Back in 1988 I was so excited to see the next strip, the return at last of The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile Aged 8 5/8 (yearƨ). The last entry of his diary was back in #50, then his mini-series about television took over the back pages from #56 to #61. As a child I’d always assumed the diary would return and this appeared to be the case here. Unfortunately not. No more diaries would appear in the regular comic, just the one in The OiNK! Book 1989 released later in the year. Despite that, this issue’s strip shows the potential for future storylines involving his baby sister who we first met in #37.

While Ian Jackson‘s art is as brilliantly funny as ever (so is Mark Rodgers‘ script), the typed sentences aren’t as chaotic as usual, making me think this part of the page was finished in a bit of a hurry. I’d guess this strip was originally planned for the weeklies when the diary was due to return after the aforementioned Vidiots series but, as previously mentioned by Patrick Gallagher, Ian was now busy on work outside of OiNK.

This suggests the diary wasn’t coming back for quite some time, but instead of holding this completed page of artwork back indefinitely it may have been quickly finished off to help make up the larger page count. It’s still a delight to have him back even if it is a one-off. It just makes the issue that little bit more special.

Ed McHenry’s gorgeous full-page mini-strips (as I called them) were a delight in the later weekly issues and we’ve two here. One is actually a Wally of the West but I found this one funnier. As someone who used to jog in Saturday morning Park Runs where there were always those in the crowd who took the fun activity far too seriously, I found this particularly funny.

Kev F Sutherland’s contributions to the monthly OiNKs is staggering, quickly becoming one of the comic’s most prolific cartoonists. His Meanwhile… series was always a highlight and this issue’s two entries are no exception. Sometimes it’s the simplest ideas, the silliest little strips, the best puns that stick in our memories the most. Meanwhile, At The Fishmarket… checks all of those boxes.

There are many common misconceptions about OiNK. Two of the most prolific being it was a children’s version of Viz and that it was cancelled because of the Janice & John strip, which was actually published all the way back in #7. Another is that it went monthly because it was on its way out, that it was an admission from Fleetway the comic was failing. Co-editor Patrick previously confirmed for the blog, “I think it was Fleetway‘s intention to go monthly as it had been to go weekly, from what I can remember, which I didn’t mind – though I can’t remember at the time thinking the writing was on the wall. I think sales were down across the board but OiNK’s figures weren’t the worst – it was the other comic’s figures that dragged it down.”

There was definitely no intention to cancel the comic at this stage

The survey question in #54 which asked readers if they wanted it to go monthly was genuine, to see if the majority were behind the idea, and as it turned out they were. “I think it was more a case of Fleetway considering going monthly and in the meantime checking the audiences’ opinions, which may have had some sway,” Patrick continued in that issue’s review. He has elaborated further since, saying, “However, if something else financially detrimental occurred within Fleetway, unconnected to OiNK, that alone may have forced the decision to go monthly if it saved money – so that’s the only scenario I could imagine where OiNK might have gone monthly ‘regardless’. Hope that makes sense – it wasn’t always exactly black and white!”

Over the course of the years some fans have since written off the monthlies in the same way some complained about the weeklies. (Some people just don’t like change, which can be understandable.) I hope I’ve been able to correct these assumptions and show the weekly comic settled into its format and became the excellent OiNK we’d all known and loved. Let’s see what the monthlies have in store for us over the next five months. There was definitely no intention to cancel the comic at this stage, merely reboot it as I mentioned above. It’ll be interesting to see it develop and settle into its third format now. The next issue’s review isn’t until Sunday 18th June 2023, we’ll find out then if it’s worth the wait!

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