Tag Archives: Patrick Gallagher

Christmas, OiNK Comic Reviews

OiNK! #43: CHRiSTMAS, STUFFED!

Leave a comment

I have so many happy memories associated with OiNK, none more so than in and around Christmas 1987 when the comic was at its height. First up was this superb second festive issue, followed 13 days later on Christmas Day with The OiNK! Book 1988. The double whammy of these two editions can’t be overstated as far as I’m concerned. This issue ended up being my favourite regular issue of the comic and the book my very favourite edition of all! Do they live up to the memories? Let’s start with #43.

Just like all the best issues it begins with an Ian Jackson cover, possibly my favourite of his in fact, with apparently obscene words for us kiddies to guess at the time. I always looked forward to the festive issues of my comics and seeing the snow covered logos always made them feel extra special. There may be no multi-page Uncle Pigg strip like last year’s (by this point he and Mary Lighthouse seemed to be limited to the Grunts page and promotions) but it still manages to outdo even that issue with its plethora of Christmassy contents.

Let’s begin with The Night Before Christmas, a Yuletide Tale from David Haldane. Sounds nice and traditional, doesn’t it? It does and it’s right there at the very beginning of the comic, setting the anarchic tone for all that follows. OiNK was always great at taking traditional comic elements and turning them on their head. Surely nothing could be more traditional than Christmas comics, and upon reading this issue the feeling you come away with is one of the whole team having a blast with poking fun at the season and everything we loved about it.

Haldane’s naughty child was the epitome of an OiNK reader wrapped up in one quick half-page strip. No, we didn’t really steal all the other children’s gifts from Santa but this cheeky, irreverent nature of the comic was what we lapped up, encapsulated here in the first strip of the issue. Things are looking good. A few pages later Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins gave readers a chance to appear as themselves and show just how irreverent they could be with letters to his headmaster.

After being banned from playing for Melchester United, Horace asked readers to send in letters begging his headmaster to change his mind. Well, the word “begging” was replaced with “telling” by those who wrote in, including one Stu Perrins, an OiNK fan who in recent years has written comics series such as Megatomic Battle Rabbit and Chrono-Cat. All of these readers won a Horace t-shirt which is something I’ve yet to see.

Way back in the mists of time when I reviewed #3 of OiNK I loved a particular spoof of some favourite comic and movie stars of mine, the Transformers. Named The Transformoids and drawn by Ralph Shephard, the go-to guy for such stories at the time, it made fun of the characters and their abilities. This issue the target is the Hasbro toy line itself, in the very capable hands of Dave Huxley. This reminds me of my parents’ attempts at following the instructions of my Transformers toys when I got into them about a year or so later.

I remember my dad in particular treating my Headmaster Slapdash like some kind of elaborate Rubik’s Cube puzzle on Christmas Day, following the instructions step-by-step and still not being completely sure he’d got it right in the end. Similarly, the above was based on Dave’s own struggles with his sons Alan’s and John’s Transformers toys which he described as “near lethal” in an article in Crickey! magazine some years later. He even drew his sons into the madvertisement, although apparently they weren’t too impressed.

This next page is so clearly the work of the mind behind Screen Wipe and Black Mirror

Dave’s work would only appear in three issues altogether, going on to become Dr. David Huxley at the Manchester School of Art and for a while had a page of his work, including one or two OiNK pieces, on their website. Unfortunately he no longer appears on there so must have moved on. However, look out for a post about that Crickey! article at a future date on the blog.

After that hilarious cover, thankfully the OiNK team weren’t done with spicing up our favourite Christmas Carols and who better to write some than Charlie Brooker? As we all know he was still at school at the time of contributing to the comic but this next page is so clearly the work of the mind behind Screen Wipe and Black Mirror. These are great fun and next to the carols is a Christmas pop song, the Jackson 5 version of which I have on my Christmas playlist every year, but now I can’t help but replace the words in my head when it comes on.

Alongside Charlie’s words are some crazy illustrations by Steve Gibson, whose tiny drawings always added so much to the text-based pages of OiNK. If social media is anything to go by these carols are fondly remembered and recited to this day by many pig pals. Oh, and in case you’re wondering ‘James Lost’ is a reference to the ‘happy music’ of James Last, who wasn’t a stranger to releasing some top-selling Christmas ditties.

If like me you make a bit of an occasion out of wrapping your Christmas presents, you might have a TV show (usually Channel Five) counting down favourite Christmas songs and music videos on in the background while you wrap. At some point during it you’re very likely to hear the inspiration behind our next strip, just as you’re guaranteed to see the animation itself on Channel Four. Every. Single. Year. Raymond Briggs’ name is easily changed into a piggy pun and Davy Francis doesn’t disappoint with that and the quick gag of his The Snowbloke.

Despite only having sat down and watched the original The Snowman once when I was a kid, seeing even small parts of it on the TV and hearing that song never fails to make me smile because it reminds me my favourite time of the year is here, and hearing a song we hear every year at Christmas reminds me of all the things I like to do every festive season. Even seeing this small spoof brings those same feels. I’m really enjoying this issue.

Other highlights here include Ponsonby Claret, the Know-It-All Parrot taking the pirates he lives with to task, Rubbish Man and Boy Blunder’s Christmas dinner has more hidden surprises than any pack of crackers, the GBH Christmas Catalogue order form has one particular addition I found very funny (the Yes/No part) and Weedy Willy finds something he’s capable to contributing to at Christmas that doesn’t strain/exhaust/scare him.

Ponsonby Claret written by Griffiths+Kane, drawn by Steve Gibson
Rubbish Man by David Haldane
Weedy Willy written by Howard Osborn, drawn by Mike Green

Something you’ll see on the TV every year from about October onwards are a plethora of extravagant, clearly very expensive advertisements for various brands of perfume. It always confused me how they’d spend so much on these every year and yet not one of them actually tells us anything about what the product smells like. This might be a blessing for this next piece of fragrance marketing however, because Jeremy Banx’s Burp appears to have released his own to cash in on the gift giving.

This being Burp of course this particular spray (a deodorant) isn’t straight forward. We’ve all seen how Burp interacts with his internal organs, how many of them act independently of their host, even leaving his body to go and live the lives of villains, superheroes and lovers in the outside world. So, after a suitably moral reminder that beauty is not just skin deep the following strip really takes a turn for the bizarre.

I love how Burp is interrupting each of his organs as they go about their daily lives inside his body, reading OiNK, eating dinner or simply having a nice, relaxing glass of wine. Then, just as the stupidity and weirdness ends Burp reminds the reader that all of these fragrances etc. are really about inner confidence, not the glamorous models on TV. A good message but also a wonderful way of poking fun at those advertisements and with a laugh in every panel.

The last page I want to show you is another of those traditions we loved as kids, namely writing the letter to Santa Claus and who better to type out one in OiNK than Hadrian Vile, as ever written by Mark Rodgers and drawn by Ian Jackson. I remember writing my letter several months before Christmas, my parents reading it over and over (it was as if they wanted to memorise it for some reason) before it went up the chimney to Santa.

“Noeboddy wud bee daft enuff to dress up in a red duffel cote and climb down chimbleys.”

Hadrian Vile

I’m glad Hadrian waited until now to write his though, it makes for a great strip near the back of the issue just as young readers were preparing for their holidays and the arrival of the man with the bag. There may only be three drawn panels to go alongside the pages of the letter but they’re packed with detail and lots of sight gags and cameos from other characters in Hadrian’s regular diary. Watch out for a special mention of Mark’s friend and OiNK writer Graham Exton too!

After this issue it was only 13 days until Christmas Day itself when that gorgeous big, floppy and ultra glossy book would be brought down “ower chimbleys”. I’d seen it on the shelves of my local newsagents for a couple of months now and marvelled at its shine and the big piggy grin on the cover. It really stood out amongst all the other annuals and I’m so excited to almost be at the point when I’ll be reviewing it for the blog. When can you see it? That’ll be on The Big Day itself of course. While it had been in the shops for a while, we all received our annuals from Santa, didn’t we?

Of course, I’ll be breaking the rules of the real time read through a little bit and reading it a few days in advance simply because it’s Christmas, but it’ll be published first thing Christmas Morning so you’ll have a bit of OiNK to wake up to as we did 35 years ago. One more rule break: the Hogmanay issue’s date is Boxing Day so it appeared early back in 1987. I can’t be sure of the exact date and I didn’t read my issue until Boxing Day because it just didn’t feel right back then to celebrate the New Year before Santa had even been. So I’ll be keeping to the cover date for that one. A double whammy for you, OiNK reviews two days in a row.

With all of this to look forward to back in 1987, the news of the comic turning weekly in January (drawn above by Patrick Gallagher) was just the icing and the marzipan on the cake. Of course, we weren’t to know yet of the changes to come when it went weekly but the excitement at this time was electric for pig pals; the festive season had so much to enjoy and the future looked very bright and very pink indeed. 

For now it’s time to sign off, but watch out for a little extra OiNK-related post on Christmas Eve as Psycho Gran prepares to welcome the jolly man down her chimney and in the meantime I hope you’re all having as good a holiday season as I am. The blog is jam-packed with content this month and it’s nowhere near over yet! Check out this post for more details (including a special make-your-own OiNK Christmas Angel from this issue), then the review for The OiNK! Book 1988 will be here on Christmas Day with #44 quickly following on Boxing Day.

iSSUE 42 < > THE OiNK! BOOK 1988

OiNK READ THROUGH MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU

CHRiSTMAS 2022

OiNK Merchandise

THE OiNK! 45: THE ViNYL FRONTiER

3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The OiNK! Song written by Mark Rodgers and Marc Riley

Lyrics page from #1 by Patrick Gallagher

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

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

“What the heck you think you’re doing, you?”

Frank Sidebottom, The OiNK Get-Together Song

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OiNK MERCHANDISE MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU

CHRiSTMAS 2022

OiNK Comic Reviews

OiNK! #41: POP-OUT COMiC

Leave a comment

It’s been a long time since we’ve had the pleasure of a Jeremy Banx cover, the last one was for #19 at the beginning of last year. His covers hold a special place in my piggy heart since his was the first one I ever saw in #14. For this issue’s front page Burp the Smelly Alien is giving himself an all-over body workout, quite literally. But despite Burp’s starring role, the biggest headline is given to Pete Throb of Pete and his Pimple.

Inside this issue is an eight-page pull-out comic all about one of OiNK’s most popular characters, one Lew Stringer’s creations who had really captured the imaginations of the young readers. He certainly had when I was in the target audience, quickly becoming one of my favourites so I was excited by this issue. We’ll come back to him in a bit, first up Burp earns his front page stardom with another unique double-page spread.

It’s a delightfully written tale of our smelly friend simply enjoying himself while on holiday. It just so happens that holiday is on a distant, desolate planet made entirely of sand. The first page alone would’ve made for a great strip, with its atmospheric captions and imaginative representations of this wonder of the universe, only for it to house Burp’s holiday ranch! Naturally. But we also have him enjoying his unique vacation before, as always, he inadvertently causes a bit of chaos.

Just try to explain this one and why it’s so funny to anyone who has never read OiNK!

If there was an ongoing theme to Burp’s strips it would be how his good natured intentions always produce the opposite results. Whether it’s his never-ending quest to ingratiate himself with us humans or annoying the large god-like beings of the universe while doing a deep space tour. Here, even on a lifeless planet he still somehow ruin things, even if only for himself this time. This is one of my favourite Burps. It’s just such a unique strip, but then again most of Jeremy’s are; just try to explain this one without it to hand and why it’s so funny to anyone who has never read OiNK!

At the beginning of the latest Psycho Gran it appears David Leach has decided not to follow the issue’s theme of health and fitness, unless you go down the route of saying an explosion affects people’s wellbeing. But if we’ve learned anything since her debut in #15 it’s that we should never try to predict or assume with Psycho.

Nice to see another little cameo from Albert, the long-suffering life partner of our little old dear. Also, did you pick up on the gag of what’s really on those papers held by newsreaders? In case you’re wondering what the shout out in the title panel is all about, no David hadn’t just been let go from a prisoner of war camp. David tells me he’d had an emergency appendix operation in the Prince of Wales hospital in Bridgend in Wales and had ended up in for a week, so wanted to give a big thanks to everyone there.

Regular readers might recall the Scare Boars from #13, the first Hallowe’en issue. They were GBH’s take on the Care Bears, one of the 80s’ biggest toy and cartoon franchises. Ingeniously created, co-creator/co-editor Patrick Gallagher still owns one of them to this day and posted a video of them together last year, which you can see in the review. A year later and GBH are back with more cuddly monstrosities, this time with the Crummi Boars: Spotti, Snotti, Potti and Scratchi.

This time it was a riff on Disney’s Gummi Bears, another toy and cartoon hit, which themselves were clearly inspired by the success of the Care Bears although officially they were based on the chewy sweets. Of course, once something became a hit with the UK kids of the 80s OiNK was ready to pounce. With a lot of the original names ending with an ‘i’ and each one having a very specific, narrow characteristic it was the perfect franchise to rip into. Again, as with many of the props used in OiNK’s madverts recently the little details are superb.

“See Janice and John ignore a warning sign.”

Janice and John and the thermonuclear reactor

The Crummi Boars may have been a spiritual sequel to a previous madvertisement, but in this issue we get an actual sequel to a much earlier strip. In fact, this issue’s story starring Janice and John was mentioned way back in #7. Why did it take 34 issues to arrive? Well, if you’ve been following along over this past year-and-a-bit you’ll know all about their original story leading two people (only two) to complain about OiNK to The Press Council, which the comic then responded to in #28!

While the complaint was rejected these things can take a while to work through, hence why there was a 21 issue gap before the response was printed. The editorial team would’ve been just right not to print another strip until the outcome of the complaint was known. By now more than enough time had passed sine the first story and OiNK’s cheeky rasp to the complainers. So finally, here’s the long-promised second part of Uncle Pigg’s Reading Course, Janice and John and the thermonuclear reactor written by Mark Rodgers.

Unfortunately they wouldn’t return to face the demons from hell but the two strips we got were great fun. The first is my favourite, possibly because it was the first and made a bigger impression, or possibly because of the furore it created at the time (which has since been wrongly attributed to OiNK’s much later cancellation). Either way it’s a shame we won’t see any more of Trevor Johnson’s great way of spoofing classic children’s picture panel stories. In fact, we won’t see any more of Trevor at all until the second OiNK Book, which most of us didn’t read until after OiNK’s final issue.

But this isn’t the last you’ll hear of his work (specifically Janice and John) on the blog. There’s a very special post planned for the future which will take a behind-the-scenes look into the complaint made against OiNK and the process between OiNK Publishing and IPC Magazines thanks to insider information and documents provided to me by co-creator/co-editor Mark Rodgers’ wife Helen Jones! For now though, let’s take a peak at some other highlights from this issue before our main event.

Horace Watkins by Tony Husband
Grunts compiled by Patrick Gallagher
The Slugs written by Tony Husband, drawn by Lezz
Spectacles of Doom written by Tony Husband,
drawn by Andy Roper

Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins’ cross-country training for his new football career takes a turn for the worse and sliding on a cowpat isn’t the worst thing to happen, Ireland represents on the Grunts page, we take a closer look at the lead singer of The Slugs (although I wouldn’t recommend getting too close) and in the penultimate chapter of The Spectacles of Doom versus The Monocle of Mayhem Andy Roper’s detailed art (right down to the monocle on the skull flags) is once again the star as the nasties assemble for battle.

With all of these highs, it’d be quite the feat to outshine them all. It might even require a character to have their very own pull-out comic to stand out. What luck! That’s exactly what Pete Throb of Pete and his Pimple fame has in this very issue, an eight-page mini-comic. According to Lew Stringer, the idea was Mark Rodgers’ who wanted to do an occasional series of such pull-outs spotlighting (no pun intended) different characters.

I never pulled the comic out, I didn’t want to destroy one of my beloved OiNKs although I was tempted to colour in the cover. (I never did.) Inside was a five-page Pete story by Lew, made up of three strip pages and a centre-spread poster of him and his pals, including object of Tom Thug’s desire Zeta (Pete’s sister), fighting the alien Zitbusters! This was followed by Zeta’s pimply problem column, Acne Activity Time with art by Ed McHenry and a look at Pete’s Acne Ancestors written by Lew and drawn by friend Mike Higgs.

Pete was always one of my childhood favourites, although I wouldn’t be such a fan of pimples a few years later. I wasn’t alone, with Pete frequently climbing to the top spots (again, no pun intended I swear) of reader polls, so he was a natural choice for the first of these little specials. Unfortunately there’d never be a second mini-comic, which could be because of the changes that would come to OiNK when it went weekly (less pages) and then monthly (some main contributors left and some strips were given multi-page stories anyway).

Just as well our only one is quite brilliant then! Below is the Pete strip and the poster which made up the main battle. A battle in a Pete and his Pimple story? Not only that, he was battling scary aliens called Clive, Trevor, Darren and Sharon on their never-ending quest to enslave all those who dare have pimply complexions throughout the cosmos. It also gives us a little look into Pete’s everyday life including his local greasy hang out and his equally spotty pals.

If you’re going to create a special comic inside an OiNK you may as well go bigger and zanier than ever with the main story, right? Lew certainly did. As always, it pays to read it slowly and pick up on all the little sight gags, such as Shaun’s t-shirt slogan, the Greasy Spoon’s menu and of course the slap up feeds at the end. My personal favourite moment is Pete’s heroic speech, a moment where for once he can be the saviour instead of the nuisance, cut short by the fact the aliens had already left. (They’d return in #64.)

Of course, all of that glowing praise in the final panel would be short lived and we’d be back to normal next time. I think this issue shows more than any other why OiNK should’ve stayed in this format as a fortnightly 32-page comic with subjects to tailor the contents around. As a child, the news presented by Patrick Gallagher below was exciting (and I can remember my mum giving off that she’d have to pay for it twice as much) but little were we to know the news would lead to some not-so-welcome changes too.

Still, there are another three fortnightly issues to come, one of which could take the crown as the best regular issue of all going by my memory of reading it as a child. Plus next month contains the greatest OiNK of all! Ooh, I’m all excited again. Next up though is the Fantastic Fashion Issue with a quite ‘Mad’ cover to match. It’ll be up for review on Monday 28th November 2022.

iSSUE 40 < > iSSUE 42

OiNK READ THROUGH MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU

More OiNK

PROTECT YOUR PORK: FiREWORK CODE

Leave a comment

Back when I were a lad (as they say) fireworks of the outdoor variety were illegal in Northern Ireland, unless they were part of an organised event run by a council for example. Living in a tiny town back then this meant fireworks displays were never part of my youth around the time of OiNK. Sparklers were about the height of it. But of course in the rest of the UK (and from my teen years onwards too) such limitations weren’t in effect and Uncle Pigg wanted to make sure his piglets didn’t turn into barbecued pork.

So a copy of the Firework Code was pasted onto a page of #39 by co-editor Patrick Gallagher, the issue going on sale Saturday 17th October 1987. When I saw this while reviewing the issue I initially found it strange it wasn’t in the Hallowe’en issue for that holiday and the 5th November in particular. But given how many nights for what seems like weeks around this time are accompanied by loud bangs and whistles from every direction I think they got the timing just right.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed the spooky season and remember Uncle Pigg’s sage advice above, the last thing you want to end up as is a “burnt banger”.

‘MORE OiNK’ MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU

OiNK Comic Promos

COMiNG UP: OiNK! #36

Leave a comment

A few days ago I published a blog post called ‘OiNK’s Golden Age’ where I explain I believe the issues that make up the rest of this year are the very best of OiNK‘s run. It all kicks off with #36, the OiNK Goes Peculiar issue! New paper, new size and a new cover design signal the beginning of the time I’ve been looking forward to since I started this real time read through in April 2021, and to celebrate Uncle Pigg even gave us some free stickers.

Both promos by Patrick Gallagher

The issue itself is one of the best OiNK produced with highlights including the craziest Burp yet, Tom Thug taking control of his own strip and J.T. Dogg bringing his art style to a character you wouldn’t expect. I’ve distinct memories of this issue and many of the ones to come between now and the end of the year. To say I’m excited for this would be a massive understatement. Let’s hope it lives up to those memories! You can find out in the review, which will be here from Monday 5th September 2022.

GO TO iSSUE 36

OiNK iSSUE PROMOS MENU

‘MORE OiNK’ MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU