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OiNK! #64: WAKA-WAKA-WiT

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The second of our monthly OiNKs brings a surprise cover star in the shape of Police Vet, a character who had appeared before in The OiNK! Book 1988 in a funny take on 70s police dramas, with a pre-Ace Ventura slant of an officer who only investigates missing pets etc. While it’s easy for us to look back on the 80s and have a well meaning giggle, here we have the 80s and its excesses taking the hand out of the decade that preceded them. So it’s a retro look at a different retro time and I think it’s great fun.

On the inside cover is the most blatant example of how OiNK had been rebooted for an older teen audience. Mark Rodgers’ script for the latest Rotten Rhymes completely baffled me at the time. I was only ten-years-old and firmly inside the original target bracket for the comic. Reading this now, as funny as it is it would suit another publication more, inside OiNK it just feels out of place. I know that’s the way the comic was heading but it’s jarring after 63 issues of hilarious children’s comics. They had been suitable for all but now this was aimed way over the heads of the loyal fans who’d been pig pals since the start, for the first time excluding a part of the audience.

It reads like a cross between Austin Powers and Ace Ventura which is quite the feat when neither existed yet, with a liberal sprinkling of Starsky and Hutch thrown in for good measure

The rest off the issue is more like the OiNK we knew and loved. The main event is the six-page Police Vet story written by Mark and drawn by cover artist Eric ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson. Beginning with its own version of a Shaft-like theme tune we soon shift to some pretty awful (read: funny) puns as our hero gets his assignment. This reads like a complete strip and not a serial originally meant for several weeklies pasted together. The monthlies will have a mixture of these kinds of larger strips (edited serials and tailor-made). This could also have been made for a future special or annual and brought forward for the new format. As such it changes the pacing of this particular story and is all the better for it.

It reads like a cross between Austin Powers and the aforementioned Jim Carrey movies which is quite the feat when neither existed yet, with a liberal sprinkling of Starsky and Hutch thrown in for good measure, particularly in Police Vet’s nonchalance of being in an exciting car chase. The best bit for me is how he deduces Foxy isn’t a real woman because she was too much of a bad stereotype, only for the culprit to be the most stereotypical French person imaginable. Brilliance.

We even have an example of the 70s laughing at the fashion of the 80s! It’s a shame we never got to see the character return, as after this he’d hang up his platforms for good. Maybe it was for the best before the joke wore thin. To perk me up from knowing that was the end of Police Vet is Misplaced in Space on the very next page with a very surprising special guest artist, following the likes of Dave Gibbons in #49 and Kevin O’Neill in the first special and book. Pencilling Davy Francis’ script here is none other than John McCrea (Hitman, The Boys: Herogasm, 2000AD).

Another local (to me) talent like Davy and OiNK’s Ian Knox, John was born in Belfast and good pals with Davy, who approached him about contributing to the comic. Renowned for his 2000AD strips in particular his body of work is quite staggering and in 1988 he added a page of OiNK to that list. Written and then inked by Davy, John brings a unique look to the strip. Especially unique because he didn’t normally do humour comics work. What a treat to see these two completely different talents combine their styles inside my favourite comic. OiNK really was one of a kind.

I have a vague recollection of news bulletins in the 80s being filled with something every night that seemed to unite mainland Britain in anger, and which Spitting Image took great delight in poking fun at. It didn’t affect the populace of Northern Ireland but that didn’t stop me from knowing just enough to enjoy this next piece written by Howard Osborn. I am of course talking about the Poll Tax. OiNK taking its role as a children’s comic very seriously for a moment here to educate us on the latest piece of legislation.

As I mentioned in the preview for this issue there’s a page in here that would end up being read out in the House of Commons. No piggy prizes for guessing correctly this was it. OiNK would actually tell its readers about this in a future issue so we’ll check back in on what happened when we get there. I wonder what Howard thought of that! It feels very current too, especially the digs it takes with points five, six, seven and the final sentence. Unfortunately some things just don’t change, eh?

A couple of quick Lew Stringer highlights next. A quite monumental moment was approaching for Tom Thug, something that had never happened before in children’s funny comics. Reminding me somewhat of how The Sekret Diary ov Hadrian Vile saw his mum go through an actual pregnancy before his new baby sister appeared in the story, Tom would actually leave school and go out into the adult world. But he still has to finish his final year of course. Then in Pete and his Pimple, with the Zitbusters from #41 back a lucky reader got to see themselves as the person who saves the day! Sort of. Well, basically how Lew imagined they might look anyway.

Tom Thug and Pete and his Pimple by Lew Stringer

This issue leans more towards the text-heavy pages than normal and there are more examples of the partnership that seems to have blossomed between young writer Charlie Brooker and the unique art of Steve Gibson on these pages, specifically Doctor Jonathan Swiller’s Home Health Check-Up. The character is a parody of Dr Jonathan Miller, a physician who also happened to be a director, author and actor, and was well known in the 1980s.

The following self-diagnosis test asks the readers to answer honestly so they can get a free and easy assessment of their overall health. With only eight questions in total, to get the thorough diagnosis we’re expecting surely these questions will really probe deep, right? Not quite, no. Starting with the insanely easy and making its way to the ludicrous in no time at all, this is genuinely very funny and, even though I never knew the person this was based on, I remember finding it just as funny as a child. Sometimes the silliest ideas just work.

Charlie’s work as both cartoonist and writer in OiNK is a highlight of the whole run for me. He contributed a lot for still being at school, appearing on no less than five pages out of the 42 pages of new content here (#6’s Watery Down and two of the OiNK Superstar Posters are reprinted). Speaking previously with co-editors Patrick Gallagher and Tony Husband on separate occasions both praised Charlie’s work, remembering how the amount of his contributions kept rising, so impressed were they with what he was producing.

Before I show you a handful of the issue’s great mini-strips we’re off to the sunny climes of the Bahamas once more after we visited there in #61 for the GBH Desert Island Survival Kit. Clearly co-editor Mark Rodgers, his partner Helen Jones and writer Graham Exton felt the gorgeous setting and opportunities it provided were ripe for more than one OiNK moment. This issue we find ourselves on a golden beach (albeit in black and white) as bored Robina finally finds what’s been missing in her life in Castaway, a “Heart-Wrenching Photo-Story”.

I think this is all the funnier knowing now that’s real-life partners Helen and Mark. Playing on the expectations of those typical love photo-stories found in women’s weekly magazines (which have been a target since the very beginning of OiNK) I love how Helen’s acting is deemed to need a large arrow telling the reader what she’s portraying, plus her goofy look in the panel below. This must’ve been so much fun to produce.

The characters of When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth sign off with one of their best entries

While the issue has its fair share of text-heavy pages and the like it’s also got a particularly good selection of mini-strips sprinkled throughout. Below are the best of the crop. A recent addition to the regular OiNK team that’s becoming just as prolific as Charlie is Kev F Sutherland whose Rotten Rhymes version of Polly Put the Kettle On is classic OiNK. Marc Riley’s Harry the Head is still in mini-strip form from the weeklies and appears to be staying that way with this acknowledgement of the new look.

Davy Francis’ Doctor Mad-Starkraving (a spin-off from Davy’s Greedy Gorb) tells a great gag that in hindsight is actually the most obvious time travel joke! It’s just that no one had thought it up yet. An instant classic gag from Davy then. Finally, Marc’s zany characters in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth make their final appearance in a new strip (they’d return next issue but as a reprint before disappearing) and they sign off with one of their best entries.

There’s one more page I’ll show in a special post next week. It’s a competition to win a couple of books of particular interest to pig pals and I’ve been able to procure them in time to have a closer look at, so watch out for that post.

While OiNK would take another issue or two to truly settle into its new guise this issue has still been a belter. As more and more gets created with the new look in mind we’d see bigger and better strips from all of our favourites and some truly memorable moments that are among the very best OiNK produced. The Next Issue promo in this issue elicited real excitement too when it signalled the return of The Street-Hogs at last in ‘Malice in Underland!’ You’ll see that promo in the preview post on Thursday 13th July 2023, swiftly followed by the review of #65 itself on Sunday 16th. 

iSSUE 63 < > CRACKLiNG TALES BOOKS

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OiNK! #58: JUDGED TO BE FUNNY

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I have distinct memories of showing this issue of OiNK to some friends of mine a few years after its publication when I’d moved on to grammar school and met some huge 2000AD fans. Their reaction to the cover and the strip inside was one of laughter, naturally. One of them had also collected OiNK, for the others it was something new and they were gutted not only at the fact Judge Pigg wasn’t a regular strip, but also that the comic itself was no longer being produced.

The lack of colour on the cover is a bit of a disappointment. The strip suits being in black and white as it’s a spoof of the earlier days of Judge Dredd when the majority of 2000AD also lacked colour, but I can’t help wonder how much better the cover could’ve looked. Interesting to note the comic is committing to ‘satire’ now too, after writer Graham Exton previously went to lengths to explain OiNK focussed on parody instead of satire and the difference between them . Perhaps this was another sign of the changing age of the audience mentioned in #51.

Steve Gibson is the perfect artist to parody the hard-edged style of classic Judge Dredd, making the joke of the whole thing even more reminiscent of what inspired it. In fact, I’d go so far as to say there’s something quite Brian Bolland about it, like Steve was spoofing that particular Dredd artist. It’s written by Mark Rodgers (of course it would be), someone who had worked for IPC Magazine’s humour comics for many years and who would’ve been very familiar with their stablemate sci-fi comic.

Also, as a regular cat sitter myself and someone who can’t walk past a kitty without trying to befriend them I just love that ending. This is one OiNK strip that’s even more enjoyable to me nowadays than it was when I was a mere ten-years-old. Not just because of the cat though. I think I appreciate the work Steve has put into the style of the strip overall because I’ve read a good bit of Dredd in the intervening years, whereas originally I don’t think I even knew the character.

Frank makes tabloid headlines the butt of his jokes with the actual story being very different to the assumption the headline produces

Since going weekly co-editor Tony Husband has contributed a hybrid full-page/mini-strip to each issue. Containing only two or three panels each but taking up a full page, there’s a chance those unfamiliar with OiNK and the freestyle drawings of Tony might initially think these pages are light on content, maybe even rushed as one friend put it at the time. Not true of course and when each and every one of them produces a good laugh who cares anyway?

Those of us used to two years of Tony’s award-winning style and his Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins strips enjoyed these bold full-page gags every week and they were a defining part of OiNK’s short but memorable 18-issue stint as a weekly comic. Tony also created one of my favourite non-regular characters, the multi-named Wonder Pig who this issue goes by the name Lazzie. They were getting a four-issue run (quickly followed up by one more in the first monthly) and the repetition of the predicament that would befall his owner continued to raise giggles.

Other highlights of #58 include Frank Sidebottom’s Little Bit of Show-biz (sic) Gossip at the bottom of his page. As per usual Frank makes tabloid headlines the butt of his jokes with the actual story being very different to the assumption the headline produces. Also, Hieronymous Van Hellsong is in the pits of hell looking for the soul of singer Raoul McCurtney and it appears even in that dark place there’s always that one person.

Lazzie written by Tony Husband, drawn by Chas Sinclair
Hieronymous Van Hellsong by Jeremy Banx
Frank Sidebottom by Chris Sievey

I’ve mentioned before I’ve been surprised at how infrequently certain characters actually appeared in OiNK, simply because they’d formed such a strong part of my memories of the comic from childhood. Perhaps the very fact some of my favourites weren’t in every issue helped make their appearances all that more memorable and I think this applies to the following series as well, which I’m very surprised to discover had only six episodes.

Charlie Brooker’s The Swinelight Zone popped up in #44 as a one-off strip and then reappeared three weeks ago in #55. It’s been in each issue since as well as the recent Holiday Special but it disappears after this, never to return. I’d thought it was a regular fixture all the way through to the last issue. What a shame, but at least they go out on a high. Quite literally in this case.

One strip which would remain with us until the very end was Kev F Sutherland’s Meanwhile… series. Each had a completely different scenario with nothing to link them other than the title and the cartoonist’s unique sense of humour. Kev would take a seemingly trivial locale or event and create a guaranteed laugh from it in his own unique way, such as ‘Meanwhile at the Fun Fair…’ back in #49. That was a properly funny mini-strip and I’m very happy to see the return of the series for the first time since gets a full page.

There’d be at least one in each of the monthlies and they really were a constant defining highlight of those later issues. The Meanwhile… in this issue is the perfect example of what we could expect so much of. It takes a simple idea, a simple joke that could’ve worked in a smaller capacity and takes it to another level, making it as crazy and as funny as possible before the pay off. So, after Kev’s pun-packed March of the Killer Breakfasts last week comes something completely diffferent.

That was the beauty of the Meanwhile… series; on the surface they were more like a series of one-offs by the same talented cartoonist, every single one felt completely different, yet that idea of taking a joke and getting as much value out of it as possible was key. The example above still pops into my head today whenever I hear someone utter those words, and I have a little chuckle to myself every time.

From strips I thought were regulars but weren’t, to one I thought was a tiny little one-off when it appeared in the previous Christmas issue but then was delighted to see return just a few weeks ago. It’s The Kingdom of Trump. This is another last appearance unfortunately, but then again I didn’t expect more than one in the first place so I’m just happy to see it. This is also the most memorable of the trilogy.

I’d loved to have seen what else Davey could’ve come up with

Davey Jones’ King isn’t the main character in this one but the silliness of his kingdom and all those who dwell within is very much front and centre. Davey’s sense of humour is completely insane; go and have a look at #20’s war spoof Bridge Over the River Septic if you need any more proof of that! He’d later become a hit in the pages of Viz and you can clearly see why in his OiNK work.

From the wooden stick masquerading as a horse to the dragon living in a cave right next to the throne with a polite little doorbell, there’s so much that made me laugh on this half-page. Funniest of all is that silent penultimate panel with that facial expression! The Kingdom of Trump really should’ve been a regular, the three examples we got were so funny, each one better than what came before. I’d loved to have seen what else Davey could’ve come up with.

On that note we come to the end of another review. We of course finish with co-editor Patrick Gallagher’s newsagent reservation coupon as per usual, moving from the already random Great Moments in History to the completely daft Great Moments in the Height of Good Manners (number 76 no less). April is the last month full of weekly issues so make sure to come back next Friday 14th April 2023 for #59 as we inch closer to the next big evolution in the life of OiNK.

iSSUE 57 < > iSSUE 59

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OiNK! #57: ROLL ON EASTER

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This issue’s cover is one of my favourites from all of OiNK’s issues for two reasons. It’s a Jeremy Banx cover featuring Jimmy ’The Cleaver’ Smith, the comic’s villainous butcher baddie in a pool of glistening blood on a splattered background. You wouldn’t have got this in other humour comics, that’s for sure. The second reason is the audacity that the issue’s cover, its selling point on the shelves, states clearly it has absolutely nothing to do with the contents inside. 

This is actually a bit of a sticking point with me as far as some modern American comics go. They can have lovely elaborate covers, yes, but they don’t always relate to the story inside. If this issue of OiNK was released today I’d swear they were taking a shot at those. Inside, it’s also the Easter issue, with Uncle Pigg chowing down on a mountain of chocolate eggs while he cracks (sorry) puns, but apart from Lew Stringer’s two strips no others shell out (sorry again) on eggy scripts. Tom Thug’s title panel also seems to follow the theme from the cover.

The fact the egg (or rather Tom) appears to be asking for “Ralph” or “Hughie” is a great gag; we know exactly what’s happening to the dim-witted one inside and the panel showing us the results is convincingly disgusting! Having once stupidly gone on an amusement ride after eating ice cream and the result of that I almost feel sorry for the dolt. Almost. The limited colours given to the page really help highlight the main plot device (the egg) and the one splash of green makes for a funny moment in itself.

Did you also spot the ‘School Rules’ on the wall? At the time of the comic’s release I could definitely empathise with the kids at Tom’s school with that, finding it very funny in the process. This and Pete’s strip (a highlight is further below) being Easter themed makes the whole issue feel extra special in 2023 too, what with the Easter holidays happening almost at the same time as in 1988. With this quality no wonder Tom carried on for so many years in Buster comic.

This particular issue contains something of Kev F Sutherland’s that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time

Kev F Sutherland first contributed to an issue of OiNK in #38. Having proven himself with that mini-strip his work has finally become a regular fixture and this particular issue contains something of his that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time in this read through, March of the Killer Breakfasts! As a kid I loved my various cereals and their advertisements on TV promising toys and surprises. I can understand why things have changed (for the better) today, but this next strip takes me back to that time and laughing at all of the references to those adverts, never mind the onslaught of over-the-top puns.

There’s something quite genius right there on page one, when Kev perfectly lays down two future jokes when he names his protagonist. To the reader it’s initially just a funny name tied in with the cereal theme, but later two perfectly timed puns in the same caption tell us why ‘Dr Brek Sugar’ was really given that name. This is one of Kev’s best and one of the funniest strips in OiNK. Out of all of his contributions I think it’s tied for first place with his time travelling professors we’ll meet in a monthly later in the year. It’s comedic genius and it’s inside a children’s comic.

Right from the start OiNK wanted to give a chance to young, new talent in the world of children’s comics and hired accordingly. This commitment rubbed some long-time professionals up the wrong way but the comic stuck to its guns. Now, with Kev centre stage in each issue and the likes of young Charlie Brooker producing so much material, OiNK had evolved a lot since its early days and it makes me wonder what other new talent it could’ve discovered if it had continued for longer than the two-and-a-half years it ran for.

Pete and his Pimple by Lew Stringer
Laffie written by Tony Husband, drawn by Chas Sinclair
Burp by Jeremy Banx

There’s the Pete and his Pimple strip I mentioned earlier, when Pete eats too many Easter Eggs and discovers his pimple’s pus takes like delicious milk chocolate. Of course it runs out just as he tries to impress Lovely Lucy. The Wonder Pig (this time called Laffie) is back in the first of a series of weekly adventures with the usual predicament, and then on Mercury a rather familiar looking royal family have summoned Burp to help with the sweltering heat on the first planet next to the sun. This leads nicely on to one of two GBH Madvertisements in this issue.

Are you sick and tired of your job? Don’t you just wish you had the ability to leave it, perhaps by winning the lottery and not needing the money anymore? Well GBH has just the thing for you. Their special offer of two free (not free) books will teach you everything you need to know to do just that. In fact, all you need is a lot of privilege and being born into the right family. Surely this isn’t something you can teach, right? Well that kind of detail never stopped these gangsters from trying to hock their latest scam.

While OiNK’s humour for the most part has not aged, when it spoofs celebrities of the 80s it’s inevitable that kids reading it today (as some blog readers have told me their own kids do) may not appreciate those particular strips as much as us who grew up with them. This particular Madvertisement has aged but for a whole other reason, however let’s not shut down the whole country again and just move on, shall we? I do like Steve Gibson’s very Spitting Image-esque drawings too.

A couple of mini-strips before we round off this week’s review and Ed McHenry’s Wally of the West continues to entertain. This week it’s not Wally himself that’s acting on the silly side, he’s actually the innocent victim of someone else’s ridiculousness. Then Marc Riley’s Doctor Mooney He’s Completely Looney has two scriptwriters this week, Marc himself and Michael Peek. It’s silly, gross-out humour and one which made me chuckle because I’m still a big child.

That’s us at the rear end of another issue. Just time to ensure the young readers reserved their copies at their local newsagent’s with co-editor Patrick Gallagher’s usual weekly nonsense in the Great Moments in History coupon. To paraphrase it, I’m hoping the blog is still to all of your tastes and in case you missed it (somehow) make sure you check out the extra review we had this past week for the OiNK! Holiday Special #2! When you’re all caught up make sure you’re back here next week on Friday 7th April 2023 for #58 and have a Happy Easter (even though the next issue will be out by then).

HOLiDAY SPECiAL 2 < > iSSUE 58

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OiNK! #53: FiT TO BURST

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Comic covers don’t come much more creative than this. Lew Stringer’s latest OiNK cover is definitely one of my favourites, right up there with those from #6 and #43 by Ian Jackson. The OiNK logo being pushed off the page was all Lew’s idea, who pencilled out a rough of the whole cover for approval by the comic’s editors. After it was approved he then drew the Pete part of the design, leaving the logo for Patrick.

Co-editor Patrick Gallagher was the famous logo’s original creator and told me he thought Lew’s cover was a “swell” idea, pun very obviously intended, and that it was a doddle for him to rejig the letters and complete this eye-catching front page, a highlight of the issue for sure and really makes the issue stand out in the collection. Just as well the inside is as good then. The first interior highlight comes from Davy Francis and Greedy Gorb, along with a special guest star.

Although he goes unnamed, that’s Doctor Madstarkraving (“He’s Bonkers”) who has appeared in his own strip a couple of times (#27 being one example) with more to come later in the run. Showing how uncontrollable his appetite is, Gorb shoots himself in the foot by eating the doc’s inventions when they could’ve fed him even more food! I particularly like the name of the shop, a little dig at how other comics seemed to have sweet shops on every street corner, a hang up from their more traditional (read: old-fashioned) days that OiNK liked to rib.

Speaking of old-fashioned tales, James Bond author Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang wasn’t a film I loved as much as my friends seemed to. However, I certainly knew enough of its story that the following spoof by ‘Ian Phlegming’ (Simon Thorp) was very funny indeed. It starts off silly and quickly escalates, culminating in an over-the-top ending that couldn’t be further away from the original saccharin tale. Then again, that’s the whole idea.

Spoofs were something unique to OiNK in the children’s comic market at the time, yet in the case of Twitty Twitty Bang Bang this wasn’t the only thing that set it apart. While comics such as Beano and Buster did have text adventure serials in their early days, it wasn’t something humour comics had any more, or any children’s comics outside of the nursery and very young children’s market. Later on in this year (1988) other comics such as The Real Ghostbusters and Thundercats would bring back the prose story, but for the time being pages like this really stood out.

Simon’s other contribution to the issue has plenty of panels of text packed with gags, this time as part of a full-page illustration in his usual entertaining style, with a rather more dreary colour palette than usual which is all part of the joke. This time of the year family holidays would be planned and paid for; I remember the TV listings magazines being full of them the first few months of the year. These were just ripe for a makeover, selling trips to the Porkshire Riviera’s Outlet-By-The-Sea.

While it’s not a GBH Madvertisement their presence is still very much felt with their Spamtins Holiday Camp and Multi-storey Caravan Park. Growing up in the 80s and 90s I really found the caption for the Top Class Variety Acts very funny, even as a fan of the person at the butt of the joke. In the image itself there are so many funny little details, such as the quick sand, the periscope, a pair of socks that seem to have survived beyond their owner and the rigid man who I don’t think is sunbathing anymore.

This wasn’t the only time Simon would try to entice us away to sunnier climbs. Watch out for his special cruise ship cutaway later in the year. That particular contribution will definitely be featured in the highlights to come. This issue’s highlights are particularly good too, beginning with Invisible Charlie (who appeared in three issues) and Davy Francis’ trademark background gags. (Check out the posters in this example.)

“Baby George! The Beastie Babies! And Paul Extremely Young!

Tiny Tots TV, Vaughan Brunt

On the Grunts page a reader must’ve had the fright of their lives on their high street, Tiny Tots TV suggests some more baby based television hits after the success of Muppet Babies and Frank Sidebottom has two colourful pages this week. One is a competition, the other is his recurring Frank Sidebottom and his Fantastic Showbiz Gossip column which incudes his diary and, while he slips in a couple of joke entries, it’s an interesting look into the busy life of the man behind the mask, Chris Sievey.

Invisible Charlie by Davy Francis
Grunts compiled by Patrick Gallagher
Tiny Tots TV written by Vaughan Brunt, drawn by Mike Green
Frank Sidebottom by Chris Sievey

The life of a superstar, eh?

There are a ton of mini-strips in here, including two full pages of them. Over these two pages alone we have the return of Uncle Pigg and Mary Lighthouse to strip form, Zootown, Harry the Head, Doctor Mooney He’s Completely Looney, a GBH Madvertisement, a one-off strip by Charlie Brooker called A Day in the Life of a Typical Schoolboy and the first strip of a perennial favourite, Wally of the West. Oh, plus the weekly funny newsagent coupon.

I want to show you a few of these in quick succession and it’s been difficult to decide which ones to pick out from this brilliant selection. I’ll begin with Charlie’s Typical Schoolboy, simply because it’s so daft.

GBH returns with a tiny madvert with big prices. Their special modelling clay promises plenty of “steaming” fun from the offset, so I’m sure you can draw your own correct conclusions as to what the product actually is. There are so many jokes following on from the theme of that ‘clay’, including the variety of colour schemes and even a special free gift and another dig at radio DJ Gary Davies (also see Outlet-By-The-Sea).

I’m not sure who wrote it but the couple of tiny illustrations are by Steve Gibson, so given past examples in the weeklies of his work with Charlie on quizzes and the like I’m going to assume Brooker wrote this one too.

My eyes lit up and I’m sure I had a great big grin across my face when I saw our next mini-strip, the first appearance of Ed McHenry’s Wally of the West. The character would appear in 12 OiNKs altogether, sometimes more than once in an issue and was a main staple during this final year of the comic. Often accompanied by his long-suffering friend Fungus, the strips were a series of short gags about a very dimwitted cowboy set in the American Wild West of the past.

The jokes revolved around his stupidity which might not sound that original but Wally had two things going for him. The first was the setting which gave it a unique feel and opened it up to new ideas. The second was the most important though, Ed himself. Creator of many quizzes and one-off strips, Ed was now beginning to move into his own serials having also recently created Igor and the Doctor which was an exciting prospect for any fans of his work so far in OiNK.

Back in 1988 Beano reached its 50th anniversary, after The Dandy had the previous year and the first combined celebratory book had been released in 1987. I actually received that book myself for that Christmas, when I also got the first OiNK! Book, although I do think the Dandy/Beano tome was originally for my brother but he’d grown out of comics by the time Santa came to town (as a lot of us mistakenly do at some point before correcting course again). In fact, at the same time I was reading DC Thomson’s book my other annual was making lots of jokes at its expense!

This wasn’t going to stop anytime soon by the looks of this week’s newsagent reservation coupon by Patrick Gallagher.

I’ve one more little mini-strip I want to show you but I’ll finish with it after I round up this review. From the brilliant front cover which showed right there on the shelf OiNK didn’t follow any of the traditional comic rules, to its huge array of mini-strips and strong one-offs, this is by far the best of the weekly editions so far! In fact, it could easily be one of the best issues of the whole run up to this point. I remember being very excited at getting OiNK every single week from issue 50 onwards as a child and that remains true today.

Even though I know there are only nine weeklies left until we have to wait much longer between issues I’m still just as excited at the prospect of those to come as I was 35 years ago. To wrap up this excellent issue we even get a tiny little Uncle Pigg and Mary Lighthouse strip, something we haven’t seen in the regular comic in a long time. They used to introduce every issue, or would pop up in multi-page strips now and again but for a long time now have been relegated to the Grunts page so it’s nice to see Ian Jackson bring them to life again. This time they’re not written by Mark Rodgers as they usual are, but Kev F Sutherland instead. Thanks for bringing them back, Kev.

OiNK #54’s review will be here on Saturday 11th March 2023.

iSSUE 52 < > iSSUE 54

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OiNK! #43: CHRiSTMAS, STUFFED!

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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

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