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DAVY FRANCiS’ SHOEBOX: PART ONE

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OiNK’s Davy Francis (Cowpat County, Greedy Gorb, Doctor Madstarkraving) and I both live in Belfast and I’ve been lucky enough to meet up with him on a few occasions now, whether that’s over a coffee or a Greggs. Always a great laugh, on one of those days he very generously sent me home with a heavy shoebox full of a random selection of magazines which Davy or friends of his had contributed various comic strips to.

Instantly I thought this would make for a great post on the OiNK Blog. A selection of new gags from Davy? What’s not to love, right? However, not only did I discover so much good material by him that I’d need more than one post just for those, there was also plenty from other OiNK cartoonists! So in the end there was only one solution, a series of posts about Davy’s Shoebox.

There are some publications with multiple issues and they’ll get their own instalments in this series, but I’m kicking things off with a bit of variety first and the selection of other random titles. We begin with Red Dwarf Smegazine from Fleetway. Davy appeared in two of the issues in the box including this very final issue, #9 of volume two.

Alongside articles and interviews the magazine had a selection of strips, some adapted episodes while others were new adventures for guest characters such as Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley. Lasting for 23 issues altogether, the last issue is double-length to include conclusions of all the strips and any already-written features. As such, Davy’s Cred Dwarf strip gets twice as much space as in previous issues, hence why I’ve chosen to highlight this last instalment.

Written by Steve Noble (who I can’t find any other credits for) and lettered by Woodrow Pheonix (The Sumo Family, Ecco the Dolphin, Sugar Buzz!), it’s set inside the Total Immersion Red Dwarf Videogame from the Back to Reality episode (a fan favourite), hence why the regular characters look the way they do. Here, the end of the story is all just a long walk to a Christmas pun and the final panel does sum things up somewhat, doesn’t it?

Davy wasn’t the only OiNK alumni in the pages of the Smegazine. Kev F Sutherland (Peter Porter Post Office Sorter, Rotten Rhymes, Meanwhile…) contributed his art to the Androids spoof soap opera and in the final issue a Madvertisement of sorts, Dwarf Eager, coloured by Lucy Allen. There’s something very ‘GBH’ (OiNK’s spoof mail order company) about this and Kev has certainly packed plenty into this little half-page. It’s the final strip of the magazine’s run.

Not to be confused with the clothes shop of the same name, DV8 was an independent newspaper that folded up to fit on the magazine shelves (like the previously-covered Speakeasy). Focussing on Belfast’s cultural scene it included a lot of comics gag pages and even a photo strip from the team behind the Hole in the Wall Gang. It was released monthly between 1992 and 1996. The editorial team received paramilitary threats when an issue released after the IRA ceasefire had a union flag in Irish colours on the cover. It folded soon after.

This was the first on-sale issue after a free preview. A lot of the pages contain cartoon strips from one artist and just a few pages in we’re treated to Davy’s. As you can instantly see from the very first panel this is much more adult-orientated output from Davy, although it’s still very much the same sense of humour we all grew up with in OiNK, just for a different audience.

It’s very ‘Northern Ireland’ too. I did chuckle at the “Didn’t feel a thing”! Across the way Davy’s good friend and fellow Uncle Pigg employee, Ed McHenry (Wally of the West, Igor and the Doctor, OiNK puzzle pages) gets his own space to shine and right in the middle are two little individual panels that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the pages of OiNK, especially the one with the sheep. Ed’s other strips are more adult but I wanted to show these off on their own because it felt like I was reading new OiNK material.

The final publication I want to pull from this time is in a similar format, at least physically.

Created by several cartoonists fed up of how they were being treated by the industry, Duck Soup was another independent newspaper-like magazine that very much feels like the funnies section we used to get in newspapers, only here it’s all funnies! It’s a rather strange reading experience given the large format and the physical feel of it, while the reading experience is very much that of a comic. It’s definitely unique, that’s for sure.

It was distributed nationally but WHSmith only took it on for a six week trial then cancelled all their orders when they deemed the content unsuitable, again deciding what the rest of us were allowed to read and find funny (this was a year before they’d throw a hissy fit over OiNK). What a shame they’re no longer on the high street, eh? Sadly, this resulted in the magazine folding after six issues because, despite its popularity, without Smith’s distribution they just couldn’t break even.

Davy doesn’t actually feature in this issue of Duck Soup but some of his OiNK pals do and that’s why he’s kept it safe in this box. Up first is Ed again and on his first page Girth stood out because I recognised him from the very last issue of OiNK, published over two years later. Not only that, but upon refreshing my memory with that issue I see he was actually named Girth there too. He was a one-off in OiNK so this was a nice surprise.

Later, Ed brings us more substantial strips including Norbert Wibble Schoolboy Detective, who also appeared in DV8. It’s just plain daft and I was smirking away to myself as the captions took over more and more of each panel, then laughed when I read those final points! While the next character I want to highlight may not have gone on to appear in OiNK like Girth did, he still feels very familiar.

Jeremy Banx’s (Burp, Mr. Big Nose, Butcher Watch) Norman Spittall has a strikingly familiar appearance and in these random life moments feels somewhat like a precursor to Mr. Big Nose, although they were very much different characters. Norman got his own book and animated series called The Many Deaths of Norman Spittall in 1997, so luck definitely didn’t improve after Duck Soup! I’ll have to grab a copy of the book sometime if these examples are anything to go by.

The much-missed Tony Husband (OiNK co-creator/editor, Horace ‘Ugly Face’ Watkins, writer of too much OiNK goodness to mention) also pops up which was a lovely, somewhat emotional surprise. Tony’s work in OiNK often didn’t shy away from pointing out the wrongs of the world to its young readers and how Tony felt about certain topics, particularly those involving animals. Here, he combines this with his hatred for war. In fact, the mid-80s fear of the threat of nuclear war is at the forefront of many of the cartoons throughout this issue from many of the contributors.

It’s quite striking how similar some of this is to comments we can read online today, particularly the similarity between Frank the frog and a certain type of person found of socials. It’s also striking how this could easily have been printed today and it’d be just as relevant. That would be a depressing thought if it weren’t for Tony’s ability to make us laugh at ourselves.

The middle pages are of the same higher grade as the cover and open out into a spoof of The Sun (surely already a spoof newspaper). On the back of this are more cartoons, some of which are by Pete Dredge (Master T, Dimbo, Young Arfur in Buster) under the banner War Cry. This pull-out of sorts is packed full of such gags, bringing some levity to a time when adults weren’t as blissfully unaware of the Cold War as I was as a child.

This has been a fun start to delving into this box of treats, hasn’t it? Next time, we’ll be concentrating on the many issues of Electric Soup in it (they must’ve run out of ducks). I’d never heard of the publication before and according to the covers it’s “Scotland’s Adult Humour Comic”, so expect to move further away from the kind of stuff we’d find in OiNK. However, I’m sure it’ll still be ‘very Davy Francis’. That’ll be in a couple of months’ time.

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THE OiNK SCRAPBOOK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wouldn’t it be great to know more…?

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CHATTiNG WITH TONY HUSBAND

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I never got to meet Tony Husband before his passing in October 2023. I’d always wanted to, but we can all have good intentions to do something but never get around to it, never considering one day it could be too late. I did get to speak to him on the phone a couple of times though. On these occasions I’d sent a message to Tony asking something specific about OiNK and instead of writing back he took the time to call me and we’d chat at length about the comic.

After all these years he was still so enthusiastic about it, so eager to share stories about its making, taking every chance he could to praise those who worked on it. Some of the information Tony gave me on those calls has already found its way into posts throughout OiNK’s read through. As for everything else we chatted about I’ve now decided to sum it all up and remember what a generous man Tony was with his time.

“The rock and roll madness,” was how Tony remembered OiNK. “Mark (Rodgers, fellow editor) was the glue, he was the drummer.” He  continued, “Bob Paynter loved working with us three, there were no egos working on the comic. Basically it was rock and roll, our offices were in the same building as Happy Mondays, Dave Hassle, the Hacienda DJ was next door, downstairs were Marc (Riley) and Frank (Sidebottom). It was like being in a band.”

He described the OiNK team as “all fantastic people”, and that there were “so many ideas we could’ve had an extra comic every week.” He lavished praise on the team, describing how much he loved getting to work with mates from Punch and Private Eye, trying out different styles of strips and content for the comic. “Lew (Stringer) is one of the great comics artists in the country still,” he said. “Jeremy (Banx) was fabulous and we just let his head go wherever it led.”

Tony felt OiNK lasted
the right amount of time

Tony also told me some of the funny stories that occurred during OiNK’s time, such as when he and (fellow editor) Patrick Gallagher were invited to London to appear on a breakfast TV show. They thought they were heading down to promote OiNK because it was appealing to a new demographic of young readers. But the first question foisted upon them (in relation to a Madvertisement in the preview issue) asked if they felt joking about smashing up friends’ bicycles was the “right message to send”, spectacularly missing the point of the humour in favour of some sensationalism.

According to Tony it was worth the sudden shock and typical faux-offence from the presenters for five minutes because his and Patrick’s expenses were all paid for, including travel and a night in a 5-star hotel! But that’s not the end of the story. On the return train Tony brought out onto the table a few small bottles of booze he’d sneaked out from his hotel room’s courtesy bar, thinking they’d have a tipple on the way home, only for Patrick to empty out a plastic bag full of every single bottle from his room! By the time they hit Manchester they could barely walk off the train.

I’ve previously covered how Tony met Patrick through Mark and he elaborated on this, telling me they’d meet over several drinks between local pubs and their own flats, the immediate chemistry setting into motion what would eventually become OiNK. Graham Exton was also in those early ‘meetings’ and at one stage IPC‘s Group Editor of Humour Bob Paynter wanted to meet with the team to discuss the possibility of the comic. He wanted to do it somewhere secret to stop word getting out. The solution was to meet at Manchester airport, but it ended up being on the same day that, according to Tony, “all the cartoonists in the world” arrived on their way to Tenerife for a cartoon convention and they all recognised Tony!

Another tale Tony couldn’t help laughing along with as he told it happened not long after publisher IPC Magazines had had to deal with that famous complaint to the Press Council. After it was settled Tony received a phone call from Youth Group Managing Director John Sanders telling him, “this latest story has gone too far, we’ll have to close OiNK!” Only it wasn’t John. Patrick had got one of his mates who did accents to impersonate him! Then, the following week Tony phoned Patrick to tell him something in the comic had upset a family and John’s legal team was on it, but there were concerns they could end up in court. All nonsense of course!

The Manchester music links to OiNK couldn’t have been any clearer when you take a closer look at the comic. For example, the inclusion of contributors such as Frank and Marc (who had previously been in The Fall), or Tony’s own punk band strip, The Slugs (drawn by Les ‘Lezz’ Barton). Tony also brought in Jon Langford of The Mekons to draw some strips and full-page images and the band starred in a couple of photo stories. Then Jon’s other band, The 3 Johns also featured in OiNK on the page of Janice Pong’s (Tony’s) interview with lead singer of The Cult, Ian Astbury. In the review of that issue you’ll find out what Tony told me of that experience.

As for OiNK’s demise, Tony admitted the change to a weekly comic wasn’t their decision and it was a real strain. “Fortnightly was when it was best”, he said and I have to agree. He also wasn’t pleased with another change when Robert Maxwell’s Fleetway Publications took over as publisher: “The weekly was on shit paper.” He also explained that W.H. Smith’s nonsense with top-shelving OiNK didn’t help but once Maxwell took over, “the accountants moved in and killed it.” This was in comparison to IPC. “iPC loved the attention OiNK got in the press,” he said. “Especially the celebrity attention.”

At one point he received a phone call from Yorkshire TV who wanted to do a TV version of OiNK, but Fleetway insisted the three men pay any OiNK artists working on the show out of what they were personally paid by the TV network, all while Fleetway reaped the rewards. OiNK may have been independently produced and the contents largely remained creator-owned, but Fleetway still owned the entity called ‘OiNK’. So in the end they refused the deal and after the comic’s cancelation they took Yorkshire TV up on their offer directly, creating the award-winning (and very OiNK-like) Round the Bend.

Tony said he thought of a certain Neil Young lyric when he reminisced about OiNK. The song My My Hey Hey includes the line, “Better to burn out than fade away” and thinking back Tony felt OiNK lasted the right amount of time. While it wasn’t their decision to cancel it, he truly believed if it had carried on indefinitely it may have become tired and lost its edge; the time was right to move on and have OiNK go out while it was still on top form.

The last time I spoke to Tony he was still hard at work. He had his own music studio, he was cartooning for Private Eye and could often be seen on Countryfile on BBC One. Several years before he had also released a new book and he was still travelling around meeting and talking to others about it. Take Care Son is the tale of how dementia slowly took Tony’s dad from his family and friends. The title is a reference to the last words his dad said to him before he passed and the story is framed within a touching, moving chat between the two men.

One final little tale Tony told me to finish on. Over the years since OiNK finished he’d meet fans who would tell him how important it had been to them and he’d give away signed issues here and there, until he’d none left. In the end, much to his surprise, his wife bought the whole collection on eBay for around £300 for him! From creating it, to buying it all back from a reader.

I may never have met him in person but it didn’t feel that way on the phone. Tony was so enthusiastic, so open, so friendly and was so genuinely caring it felt like I’d known him all my life and we were having a friendly, very funny catch up on both occasions. I guess in a kind of way that’s exactly what I was doing. OiNK was such a huge part of my life (and still is) that I felt I knew Tony personally from the moment I picked up the phone.

That’s just the kind of person he was. A genuine soul. One who is greatly missed.

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?: HORACE (UGLY FACE) WATKiNS

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Two years ago now we lost one of the greats. I don’t just mean one of the great OiNK cartoonists, or even one of the greatest humour cartoonists of all. I mean we also lost a great human being, OiNK co-creator Tony Husband; a wonderful man whose personal ethos would often form the basis of his cartoons. In the pages of OiNK this was felt most clearly with Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins.

Beginning with gags revolving around others’ reactions to his appearance, the stories soon became filled with teachable moments for the young readers about never judging someone by their looks and the importance of being kind. Of course, these were always wrapped up with great comedic timing, out-there plots and plenty of silliness. As a result Horace endeared himself to us and became one of those OiNK stars that fans on social media often asked for updates on.

Tony was more than happy to oblige the now-adult pig pals, drawing up sketches of Horace’s life after his slapstick-filled childhood and football star teen years. The first time I saw him since the pages of OiNK was when the original version of this blog hit its one-year anniversary. Back then I wasn’t even aware Tony was following the blog, so you can imagine my surprise when this plopped through my letterbox back in 2015. What a lovely gesture.

It was also nice of Horace and Mandy, Uncle Pigg, Kid Gangster and even Mary Lighthouse to reunite for me too.

By the 2020s Horace had long retired from football and was working as an optician. It was later revealed (we’ll get to that next) he’d set up his practice in Los Angeles and was making a mint from providing better vision to the rich and famous. Although perhaps this cartoon shows he’d have been better off letting some of his patients keep their eyesight as it was. But that’s Horace for you, putting everyone else first.

As with the rest of these images, Tony posted them to the OiNK Facebook group and I thought you might like to see them if you haven’t already. Tony even went so far as to write up a little Zoom call he had with Horace around the time that particular app was taking off during the Covid pandemic. As you’ll read for yourselves Horace is very much an adult now, his time within the world of children’s comics having long since past. The shock of that change just adds to the ludicrousness of this.

Well that’s a shame about Mandy, isn’t it? But isn’t that always the case when a TV show finishes and we get a reunion years later, or a sequel to a favourite movie? In those examples of course it’s usually because one of the two actors doesn’t want to come back. Instead, Tony just decided it’d be funnier if they’d had some awkward break up and hinted that she’s now a drug dealer. Add in the unfortunate nickname for his new partner the fact Tony went so completely in the opposite direction of a children’s comic is just so funny.

As for Mandy, Tony gave us a little bit of an update on her too. It would seem she became a bit of an anti-masker during Covid, although not for the silly conspiratorial reasons people gave at the time.

Before you get upset that Mandy went and had plastic surgery after the life-affirming messages at the heart of hers and Horace’s romance in the pages of OiNK, it looks like he’s only gone and done it too! Our last update on Mr. Watkins shows us he looks quite a bit different today, with all of that Hollywood money being used in the typical Hollywood way. Although, at least in his case he’s still recognisable and his chosen t-shirt has also got one last message for the child in all of us.

The main thing, of course, is that he’s happy. That’s the important thing. After essentially seeing him grow up in OiNK it felt like we knew this scrappily illustrated character and the sometimes cruel world he inhabited. We cheered him on and he prepared us for some of life’s lessons along the way. He’ll always have a special place in my comics-loving heart and I’m very grateful to Tony for giving us this chance to catch up with Horace and Mandy and have a few final chuckles with them.

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PORCiNE PROMOS: OiNK’S MERCH ADS

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Right from the off OiNK was different in every way, even with its fan club. Older readers of this blog will have had (or will have known someone who had) the famous Gnasher furry badge as a child from Beano’s fan club. But OiNK went one better. Not only could we proudly display a piggy pink badge of Uncle Pigg (at a time when boys weren’t meant to like anything pink), we could own a lucky butcher’s foot too!

Throw in some funny stickers, a letter from the editor and a lucky number with which you could win a prize if it was selected in the comic, and the Pig Pack was born! Advertised from the very start in the free preview issue, it cost only £1.00 plus a whopping 12p for postage. Now don’t you feel old? Well, prepare for that feeling to return several times throughout this post as we take a look at the adverts for OiNK’s unique range of merchandise.

In the 80s our licenced (eg. Transformers) and action comics (eg. 2000AD) contained adverts for a plethora of related items to spend our parents’ money on, but humour comics didn’t really. Some had fan clubs or competitions for themed t-shirts, posters etc., but OiNK was determined to be unique. We weren’t limited to the usual stuff and, despite not actually joining the Pig Pack, by buying the comic and some merch I still felt I was in a special club! For the actual club, the comic would theme adverts to match the issues, such as the Skeleton Crew disastrously taking over the comic, or for issues based around crime, Hogmanay, Valentine’s and time travel.

I personally owned two pieces of merchandise back in the 80s and I’ve been lucky enough to obtain them again as an adult. Regular readers will know of the fate of my original OiNK mug (left behind when I was fired from a job at 19) and my OiNK 45 record (left under a skylight window on a hot day!) and how I came to acquire them again (through the very kind Helen Jones for the mug and eBay for the record).

The mug was first advertised in only my second issue as a child (#15) but I didn’t order one for myself until much, much later in the run, just before the comic turned monthly. I remember receiving it and suddenly the logo was different to the comic’s, although I always preferred the original one from the cup and I cherished it for years.

Above is the original mug advert, followed by the one that first appeared in #22, the Magic & Fantasy Issue, although it was also used in following issues. The one on the bottom-left was a one-off inside the second Holiday Special and finally Charlie Brooker’s Transmogrifying Tracey was the star (kinda) of the final advert style created and the one I believe I ordered from.

While the mug was available for the rest of OiNK’s run, the record only had a limited pressing and only available for a short time. There was a little mention at the bottom of a Grunts letters page in #36 telling us of a musical treat to come and on page three of #37 a little hype was built up. I actually own the original art of this thanks to it being part of a page Davy Francis gave me several years back.

This was a lovely additional treat when Davy handed me his classic ‘Neely Dunn’ Cowpat County strip (which you can read in #37’s review). Assembled by co-editor Patrick Gallagher, you can see those musical notes were just marker pen over the top of a photograph and how it was all assembled via various pieces of paper glued together.

The first advert, below, certainly grabbed my attention because I can remember pestering my parents with it! This was as different a piece of comics merchandise as you were ever likely to get and I just had to have it! This was the kind of thing you’d only have seen in OiNK, thanks to the musical talents of Marc Riley (Snatcher Sam), Chris Sievey (Frank Sidebottom) and co-editor and writer Tony Husband.

The same advert would appear the next issue in black and white with a different photograph, then two smaller ads followed before they disappeared from the comic forever. You can find out all about this exciting piece of merch in its own blog post, where you can listen to all three of the songs and even check out the recommended dance moves!

Two OiNK goodies I particularly coveted as a kid but never ordered for whatever reason were items of clothing. The t-shirt appeared very early in the run and would be available for purchase all the way to the end. Just like the club membership and the mug it also received a variety of adverts. Below is the original as it appeared in #8, as well as those from the War Special (#20) and the All-Electric Issue (#23). Bringing up the rear is the one from the final months of the comic and clearly Uncle Pigg wasn’t beyond using emotional bribery to make a buck.

With the gift of hindsight I see there were adult sizes and I curse myself! Not that I would’ve wanted to order an adult size back then, and I doubt my parents would’ve wanted to splash out for two different sizes for me to wear at different points in my life. I may not be able to walk the streets of Belfast proudly sporting that smile-inducing logo but thanks to a fellow pig pal I do finally have the version I wanted as a child, albeit to frame and hang on my wall. You can check that out in a post from Christmas Day 2025.

The t-shirt, pig pack and mug could be seen as the three main pieces of merchandise, seeing as how they were advertised more than any other. They’d often appear alongside each other and I’m sure the page below will be very familiar to any pig pal reading this. (Note the addition of a piggy pink comb now, too!) This was printed in almost every issue over the course of several months in 1987, during what I call the Golden Age of OiNK when it was at its height for me personally.

The second piece of apparel had the best tagline in a clothing advert ever in my opinion. “Get sweaty! Get shirty! Get this sweaty shirty!” is one of those OiNK lines that fans quote to each other today when reminiscing about their favourite comic (alongside, “And the dolphin’s name was Keith” and the OiNK Song chorus, among others). At over a tenner, in comparison to the rest of the items it was expensive for the 80s.

The first time I got to see what the OiNK sweatshirt actually looked like (since our ads were drawn rather than photographed, with the exception of the Pig Pack above) was during Christmas last year when I invited other fans to show off what they still owned. It’s a… unique fashion item. This full-page advert for it first appeared in #42, the Fantastic Fashion Issue funnily enough!

Despite the logo change with the first monthly issue the following year, the sweatshirt, t-shirt and mug would continue to be advertised as-is (the second advert above replacing the original for the sweaty-shirty), with no new merch for the new logo ever appearing. In fact, the final piece of merchandise we’d see popped (no pun intended) up in the final weekly just before the new look would make its logo redundant.

I never saw the bubblegum in my local sweet shop and, just like the sweatshirt, didn’t even see a photograph until that same post from last Christmas in which Patrick himself held up a surviving empty box. I can’t help but wonder, what if OiNK had remained as the popular fortnightly comic from its heyday and had continued on for more years to come. What other merchandise would we have seen Uncle Pigg churn out to fill his coffers?

The fact the Round the Bend TV series was originally planned as an OiNK show fills the imagination with what could’ve been. That was a quality, award-winning series and if it had been tied in with our comic as intended maybe this post would’ve ended up being twice as long! As it stands, there are still plenty of items I’m trying to get my trotters on, but for now I’ll just have to look at these adverts and dream.

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OiNK! HOLiDAY SPECiAL 1989: HAMMING IT UP

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Ham Dare, Pig of the Future makes the cover of OiNK for the first time and it’s only taken for the comic’s cancellation for it to happen! I’d always assumed he’d made the cover each time he returned to the pages of OiNK since his stories were such big events, so it was a surprise to find out this was the only time. The OiNK Holiday Special 1989 is the third spring/summer edition and was promised to us way back in October the previous year when Uncle Pigg made that fateful announcement in the final issue.

It’s been a long time coming but it’s finally here (in fact work began on it so far in advance of its publication, as per usual for special and annuals, we’re treated to the lovely original logo), although it’s a bit of a strange one and feels much more like the next monthly issue than a holiday special. Not only did the monthlies have the same amount of pages as the specials, this one is clearly made up of content that went unused after the comic was cancelled rather than brand new material. So there are no themed summer holiday stories and one Rotten Rhyme even mentions Christmas approaching. As an adult some other things stand out by their very absence.

“Slap my snout and call me Porky – there’s something dashed odd going on around here…”

Ham Dare (Lew Stringer)

With Tom Thug and Pete and his Pimple having made the leap over to Buster they’re nowhere to be seen here, although thankfully their creator Lew Stringer is still on hand to write the wonderful Ham Dare story. Although, OiNK favourites not contributiung this time out include Ian Jackson, Jeremy Banx and David Leach among others, so there’s no Burp, Hadrian Vile or Psycho Gran. But let’s not dwell, let’s concentrate on what is here and start off with that headline act.

Dynasty of the Dinosaurs was originally written by Lew and drawn by the incredibly talented J.T. Dogg for OiNK way back when it was a weekly, believe it or not. The monthlies may have been twice the size but there were three less issues in an average month so there must have been a lot of leftover material from the weekly comic. As such, Ham Dare is presented in its original five individual chapters, each with their own very unique cliffhanger.

The story follows on from the one in The OiNK! Book 1988 over a year ago and sees our hero and his (and I quote) “chubby sidekick” Pigby go through some sort of space disruption and apparently land on another planet, a planet inhabited by English-speaking dinosaurs in tight flight suits. It’s already way out there and has all those knowing nods this wonderful Dan Dare spoof revels in, but then we get to that final panel above and the plot of this serial reveals itself.

Ham sums up the mystery in one handy speech bubble, complete with a typical Pigby response and then hilariously gets away with one of his trademark silly ideas. Although, this time it actually makes some kind of sense. Or maybe I’ve just been reading OiNK for too long. The main dino dude is called Bad Rep and he explains that Earth is known throughout the universe as the most evil planet in existence.

Then this very funny spoof suddenly poses an ethical question

Of course the Meekon has to be behind everything and as he hovers in his frying pan he does what all good baddies (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) do in classic action strips and explains the whole plot to our heroes. I remember being absorbed by all of this as an 11-year-old, having learned about the extinction of the dinosaurs at school and seeing it all turned on its head in typical OiNK fashion. As an adult it’s just as entertaining.

In the penultimate chapter Pigby’s umbrella makes for a quick escape as well as a couple of puns and we get to see how Earthlings are seen across the galaxy. But it’s not just the T-rex causing problems, Ham and Rigby come up against Triceratops and others, who Ham thinks aren’t a threat because they were vegetarian dinosaurs… before he gets a clobberin’. Then this very funny spoof suddenly poses an ethical question.

This reminds me of the Fourth Doctor posing a similar one when he was given the chance to wipe out the Daleks before they were even created. It leads nicely on to the final double-page spread and a moment that struck me as a kid and which, as with the best moments of OiNK, has stayed with me in my head ever since. These are usually comedic moments but in this case it’s something more profound.

Beginning with a nice reference to Dan Dare’s creator and original artist in the title caption, we get more silliness and an overly-easy resolution by Ham as always (who remains cool as a cucumber throughout) before we see something he doesn’t; we see the results of him putting everything back the way it was. It’s this moment involving a dinosaur mother and her child that provided a surprisingly tender moment and pulled on the heartstrings of readers. Knowing it was coming this time around doesn’t make it any less so either.

In an interview with Dan Dare fan magazine Spaceship Away, Lew said about this scene, “Having mainly written and drawn basic slapstick comedy before I welcomed the opportunity to write something with a bit more depth. People have said to me they found the dinosaur extinction scene to be quite harrowing when they were kids. I remember the emotions I felt writing that part so I’m glad it came across in the story. Apologies for causing any kids distress when they read it though!”

I asked Lew myself about this moment and he explained it was actually very OiNK-like. “One of the qualities of OiNK was that it allowed us to do something like that at times,” he says. “I think it’s more effective for a humour comic to include an unexpected emotional moment (as Tony did sometimes with his Horace strip). We knew the readers were intelligent enough to appreciate it.” We certainly did, Lew. An example of Tony doing just that is coming up too.

“Wondering what your favourite OiNK chums have been doing since OiNK stopped appearing last November?”

Uncle Pigg

In the middle of the issue is a seven-page piece I assumed would’ve been created by co-editor Patrick Gallagher but he assures me it wasn’t. Unfortunately, he doesn’t recall who it was. Whoever it was takes the opportunity to bring us up-to-date on some of our favourite characters’ lives since OiNK was cancelled. Alongside the examples below the Torture Twins have also been employed in schools as a replacement for the cane, Mary Lighthouse is happy editing all of our kids’ TV shows until they’re unrecognisable and Cowpat County has been concreted over and turned into the ‘Patworld’ theme park!

As a child I loved seeing some old faves all together again but now it’s clear these are recycled panels from previous strips, even the picture of Uncle Pigg is from a newsagent reservation coupon. A strip by Patrick follows this in which our porcine editor makes an appeal to his readers for financial aid, telling us of all the woes that’s befallen him and his staff since OiNK ended, most horrifying of all being those that now had to work for Buster comic!

In the end it’s all a con and as the readers throw their money to help Uncle Pigg he summons his private helicopter to whisk him back off to those tropical islands he told us about when he signed off in #68. I have to say that while it’s funny (and as a kid I hoped the bit about having “an appeal every year” meant there’d be yearly specials forever) for young me it seemed out of character. While he loved his money Uncle Pigg always put his readers first and here he was grifting them instead. Nowadays though, it’s just silly fun and I suppose it’s in keeping with the likes of GBH. Speaking of which…

They may not have been a one-hit wonder but Bros did seem to be here one second and then gone the next. I remember some friends being obsessed and I even bought the (terrible) Marvel UK special! Here, GBH took advantage of the teen crazes of the time and then the comic tested fans to see if they were as obsessed as they’d made themselves out to be (with a brill Wilkie mini-strip underneath). I love the ‘Gros’ logo spoof of the real one and I wonder if, had OiNK continued, would the band have been a regular target. Looks that way.

Rick Astley is still going strong though, which I was pleasantly surprised to find out a couple of years back when he popped up on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. Can’t keep a good 80s icon down.

The next page is by an artist who makes his sole contribution in this issue and that’s a shame because if this is anything to go by I’d loved to have seen more from him. José Luis Prats Cruz is a cartoonist from Southern Spain and has continued to work in the industry ever since, although his work has eluded me until now. Signing as’Ozeluí‘, if you search online you’ll find most of his cartoons have no speech just like this instant OiNK classic. You can check out his most recent work on his Instagram account. What a shame he never got to create anything else for us pig pals.

In the final issue a strip called The Pigpen of Fear presents The Spine-Tingling Tale of The House at No.13 Veryscary Avenue was billed as the first in a new series by Davey Jones. It didn’t feel odd to have it billed as such, even when no more would be coming, because OiNK was always doing things like that. Well, as it turns out it was intended to be a series after all. Not only that, but the second strip is one of my very favourite OiNK strips of all time.

The Pop-Up Toaster of Doom sees Jim and Peggy Watkins meet their comeuppance when they cross the wrong shop keeper. Complete with the scary pig character as the narrator, it’s a perfect spoof of TV shows such as Tales From the Crypt. Right from the off it pokes fun at the conventions of such shows, like the name of the shopkeeper being so obvious, and of course since this is by Davey there are a ton of background jokes to spot too.

The main gag here is that there’s nothing sinister or evil happening at all but it’s still dressed up as a horror story. Everything is completely ordinary. Even the shop itself is a red herring and in the end the horrible outcome for the couple is that they’ll just take the toaster back to the shop. It’s ingenious ludicrousness by Davey as per usual and one that had me roaring as a kid. It’s one of those occasions when it makes me laugh even more so as an adult too.

It’s the funniest strip in the issue and one of the funniest OiNK produced. Unfortunately, just like the monthlies there are reprints here too, five pages in total. In fact, the final three pages of the comic are ones we’ve seen before, which ends things on a bit of a downer for regular readers. But just before those is a new four-page Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins strip which finally concludes his long-running story with the happy ending he always deserved. It’s his and Mandy‘s wedding day!

Horace may have evolved completely from those early joke strips to an ongoing serial about the difficulties he faced thanks to his looks, but co-editor Tony Husband never forgot it was meant to be daft too. Horace’s ongoing football soap opera was wonderfully random and he faced everything from a stalker to a radioactive monster (in fact, they were both the same person). However, his strips taught us much along the way about never judging others based on their looks and that we shouldn’t let others who judge us unfairly hold us back. Yes, OiNK was a daft comic but Horace’s strip sat comfortably alongside the non-smoking, anti-bullying and anti-bigotry messages to teach its young readers the right lessons in life, without us ever being aware that’s what they were doing.

Three months was a long time to wait for new OiNK material, however the next issue wouldn’t be released for another six! The Holiday Special 1989 may have been an additional monthly issue of OiNK rather than a summery feast, but it was no less fun to take another bite of that pork pie. I never saw any adverts for the OiNK Winter Special because I wasn’t collecting any of the comics it would’ve appeared in so it was a wonderful surprise when it popped up in November 1989. I can’t wait to read it for the first time since! That next crackling issue will be here on Saturday 2nd November 2024.

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Obituaries

REMEMBERiNG TONY HUSBAND

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Thanks to Davy Francis for this brilliant caricature of Tony

I never met Tony Husband in person but I did have the opportunity to speak with him on the phone a few times over the years and online. He was always so enthusiastic about OiNK and everyone who had worked on it. His passion for the comic was infectious, his love for all of its contributors clear as day and he was always so open to chatting and reminiscing.

Tony loved people, adored animals of all kinds and cared deeply for our planet. He often reflected these aspects of his character in his cartoons, not only in OiNK but across the spectrum of his output since becoming a full-time cartoonist in 1984, including publications such as Private Eye, Punch, Playboy and The Spectator amongst others. He also released his own critically-acclaimed books, including the highly regarded Take Care, Son: The Story of my Dad and his dementia.

For me he was best known as the creator of Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins in OiNK, the comic he co-created with Mark Rodgers and Patrick Gallagher. Starting off as a strip in which we’d giggle at the situations he found himself in, it matured over time, developing into an ongoing serial covering Horace’s trials and tribulations as he tried to live a normal life, often while being treated as an outsider. It contained a strong message to never judge anyone based on their looks and delivered this with plenty of laughs, the best way to teach life lessons to children.

In the end Horace became a successful footballer and met the woman of his dreams, with him and Mandy marrying after one last adventure in a Holiday Special after OiNK’s cancellation. Tony’s humour was key in my development as a kid and his messages (always delivered in a way that never felt like important messages) had a profound effect on me. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that.

This particular cover brings back happy memories too. Later in OiNK’s run my cousin gave me a few of his back issues that I’d missed and while sitting next to my late nanny at his house she saw this cover, looked at me and giggled like a little schoolgirl. She knew my mum (her daughter) would tut and shake her head, but my nanny found it so funny. I miss her greatly and this is one of my earliest, happiest memories of her. This cover brings a smile to my face for that reason every time I see it, all thanks to Tony.

Of course many know Tony for his cartoons in Private Eye and the like, his quick gags always raising a chortle. When OiNK went weekly for a few months in 1988 a whole page was given over to Tony to bring us that same kind of humour. With a completely different scenario every issue, a quick gag played out in a large format every seven days. I loved them as a kid, they were just so silly. As an adult reading OiNK for the blog, these were just bliss for sixteen weeks.

Tony wasn’t just known for his own OiNK pages, he also wrote the scripts for some absolute fan favourites drawn by a mixture of brilliant cartoonists. The Spectacles of Doom was an incredible serial that spoofed fantasy films of the 80s and was drawn by Andy Roper, The Slugs saw Tony bring his love of punk music to the comic with suitably raucous art from Les ‘Lezz’ Barton and for Tom’s Toe he ingeniously brought in John Geering to parody his own work from other, more traditional comics.

It’s sad to realise everyone involved in these strips is no longer with us. However, Tony’s unique sense of humour, so prevalent in each one, ensures the laughs are never too far away. A deliciously dark side of his humour could also come to the forefront upon occasion, such as when Ian Knox drew Tony’s Crablad, the ending of which was certainly delicious.

In the first musically themed issue Tony interviewed the lead singer of one of his favourite bands, The Cult after he found out they were fans of his work and of OiNK, something which Tony told me about with such joy in his voice; it was a special moment for him, to be sure. Tony also said he had a surreal moment after the interview when Ian Astbury asked him about some missing OiNK merchandise he’d ordered, which Tony then chased up for him. It was a crazy time.

Tony would team up frequently with Chas Sinclair for many a random strip, however he also created serial The Wonder Pig, whose lead character name would have a different spelling in every outing. Chas’s style was the perfect fit for Tony’s loveable, heroic, yet completely daft pig. Most memorable of all their collaborations was Tony’s take on Wuthering Heights, which had one of the most random and thus completely laugh-out-loud funny moments in all of OiNK for me.

Tony won many awards over his career including the prestigious Pont Award and during OiNK’s lifetime the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain’s Strip Cartoonist of the Year Award, which the comic proudly told us all about. Just right. He also co-wrote The Psycho Rap for the flexidisc and OiNK 45 record, so all of you pig pals who can’t get “Don’t eat pigs, ‘Cause they’re made from hhhaaammm, Eat that Nast-y Butch-er Man” out of your heads all these years later have Tony to thank/blame.

Above are some photos Tony shared (taken by Ian Tilton) of the time they teamed up with Spitting Image to hand out the OiNK Awards to various rubberised celebrities (and the occasional real one). That’s friend of the comic John Peel with him, and a photo taken for early promotional material showing who was responsible for editing the new comic.

After OiNK finished Tony, alongside Mark and Patrick, moved on to create the award-winning Round the Bend TV series for CiTV with the Spitting Image team. I’ve very fond memories of that show. I didn’t know who was writing it, I never looked at the credits at that age, but it spoke to me in a way other children’s comedy shows didn’t, it really made me laugh! I really should’ve clicked who was behind it.

For the first anniversary of the previous OiNK Blog I received a surprise parcel in the post. It was this marvellous birthday card from Tony! I couldn’t believe it when it arrived, I’d no idea Tony had drawn it or that he was even paying that much attention to the blog until I saw this. That was Tony, always thinking of others but never making a big deal out of it. It was just his nature, to be kind and thoughtful.

I wish I’d had the opportunity to meet him and I can’t quite believe he’s actually gone, taken far too early. Tony was such a huge, formative part of my life and his work, his humour and his humanity will continue to be an inspiration to myself and countless others for the rest of our lives.

On that note, I think it’s only fitting to let Tony himself round things off as the sun sets on an incredible life and an incredible person.

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OiNK! #66: PRODiGiOUS PORK

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This has been the best monthly issue of OiNK yet and feels like it’s really beginning to hit its stride in its new form. Such a shame there are only two more issues to go! Let’s concentrate on the one right in front of me for now though because it’s a riot. Horace (Ugly-Face) Watkins gets cover status thanks to co-editor Tony Husband, although just like last month I can’t help but feel there should’ve been a different cover star. Horace takes up three pages in a brilliant strip inside but the return of Pigswilla has nine! We’ll get to him in a sec.

On the second page is another artist’s profile, seemingly left over from the recent Holiday Special which contained ten of them. Lew Stringer’s can be found in this issue for some reason and I’ve added it to the ‘Cartoonists’ Profiles’ post with the rest of them as it’s just too good to miss. This is definitely an issue fans of Lew’s won’t want to miss out on with his strips taking up 13 pages, over a quarter of the whole comic! I’ve included them all here as highlights because they’re hands down the very best this issue has to offer, beginning with the return of everyone’s favourite giant robotic pig. 

According to Lew this particular Pigswilla strip was originally conceived as a weekly serial but, unlike The Street-Hogs last month, The Perils of Pigswilla had slight tweaks made to it (such as chapter length and the amount of comic violence) to help it work better as one complete strip for the new OiNK. I certainly agreed with Lew when he told me he was very pleased with how it turned out. Certainly, after previous strips of the character’s were double-page spreads, it’s great to see him get the kind of space his frame deserved.

It’s split into three parts of various lengths and kicks off with the British public in awe of their mechanical hero after his most recent victory against some banana people. So far, so normal. But the butchers of the world aren’t happy at all; sales of pork have plummeted in a world where pigs have been given equal footing in society as humans, a topical note that The Street-Hogs strip last issue kicked off with. They’ve only one option: to destroy the perception of Pigswilla in the public eye. How will this reverse the trends they’re unhappy with? Well, to answer this Lew takes a jab at something which is unfortunately still very much prevalent today.

Initially I thought the death of the professor may not have been in the original weekly serial version of this strip, what with that version of OiNK being aimed at a younger audience, but then I remembered Jeremy Banx’s Hieronymous Van Hellsong from those issues! Plus I remember this being very funny to the younger version of me as well. I love the chaos of the hypnotising panel, it reminds me of the Spirograph toy from the 80s. For the first time we also see the new OiNK logo depicted in one of the strips, confirming this was created for the monthlies.

It’s all hugely enjoyable and then I let out a roar of laughter when I saw the TV interviewee, his demeanour, appearance and especially his t-shirt. Showing how fickle the public can be and how easily they can be scaremongered by those with ulterior motives (the butchers in this case) we even see pigs’ homes being bricked to chants of “Sage and onion”. Yes it’s funny but it’s also making a point and very much poking deserved fun at people like that. It’s satire suitable for kids and I think I can say with certainty things like this (and Lew’s previous dig at bigots in a Pete and his Pimple strip) had a very positive impact on me at that age. It’s even funnier to me today of course.

Part one ends with this shocking moment of Pigswilla being blasted by the army and apparently taken offline. He’s got one friend though, his creator Professor Compton Codger’s lab technician Jenny Mercury (always loved the names Lew gave his characters). She climbs inside his giant noggin and begins to tape him back together, taking over the handy manual controls just as the butchers use their dark magical powers to create their own giant robot, formed from the spleens “of a thousand hogs” and scrap metal for yet another Pigswilla enemy.

The butcher robot goes from one pig owner’s house to another, collecting them to chop up later with us humans cheering it on(!) when, with Jenny’s help, the huge swine comes back to life, albeit with one key difference. Never passing up the chance to get some rhyming lyrics into a strip, Lew has made one of the after-effects of Pigswilla’s near complete shutdown a case of accidental rapping! Just when you thought it surely couldn’t be possible to add another level of absurdity to the proceedings. I also like how we can see out of Pigswilla’s eyes in the last panel of this chapter.

There’s come cracking (crackling?) dialogue as the fight continues and Pigswilla looks ever more defeated. Even a cow gets in on the act. Pigswilla and Jenny work together and eventually overcome his apparent death by tricking the butchers into taking a swing near an electricity pylon with obvious results. We then get a great big chunky written panel explaining how things were all okay in the end, finishing with Pigswilla dancing through the streets but thankfully without the rapping fixed.

That wordy panel is funny for another reason. Maybe I’m looking too deeply into it, but personally the absurdity of how simply things are reversed in the public’s opinion just highlights how absurd it was that they turned against him in the first place, again mirroring the real world. Even today people still fall for it every time! It’s all brilliant stuff and my very favourite strip from the monthlies. The only negative I can think of is the fact he didn’t get the cover to go along with this (although an intended weekly cover was used as the Next Issue promo).

One of the funniest OiNK strips ever and one I’ve been particularly looking forward to revisiting

We’ll come back to Lew in a moment but first let’s have a little interlude for what I described in the ‘Coming Up: OiNK! #66’ post as one of the funniest OiNK strips ever and one I’ve been particularly looking forward to revisiting. While it’s not from his Meanwhile… series it’s just as unique a strip from Kev F Sutherland as you’d expect. I love Kev’s art style, especially in this double-page spread with its great sense of place, the chaotic labs and superb use of shadow, and of course it’s hilarious.

The Three Scientists is one of those OiNK strips which has replayed itself in my head several times over the years, particularly when I’ve been watching Doctor Who and there’s been some neat twist in a plot involving time travel. This is always guaranteed to bring a smile to my face. Back in 1988 it had me creased up with laughter. Its elaborate set up all leading to a quick, simple, perfect gag is classic Kev. Enjoy this one.

Two quick highlights before we return to the Lewniverse and these may be two completely different entries in this issue of OiNK and by completely different contributors but they have a bit of a linked theme. First up is co-editor Tony Husband’s cover star, Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins. In pursuit of a regular, relaxing holiday with no football fans or weird occurrences, they’ve ended up meeting Dracula! Horace’s unique way of dispatching the vampire is just as funny today and leads nicely into the next highlight.

GBHDP is the new political party from OiNK’s in-house mail order gangsters and among the ridiculousness one particular section stood out to me. In recent years there’s been a clamouring among certain types of people, including readers of that aforementioned tabloid, for the return to older so-called ‘Victorian values’. This brilliant madvertisement from Simon Thorp shows this isn’t just a recent thing.

Horace Watkins by Tony Husband
GBHDP by Simon Thorp

In fact, the GBHDP party goes so far as to end their madvert with the slogan, “GBHDP – Together we can make Britain GRATE again.” Even 32 years later that says it all, doesn’t it?

Moving on and it’s clear Tom Thug’s strips are being aimed at the slightly older target audience with what occurs here, although I don’t remember it flying over my head or being in any way less enjoyable when I was still a few months away from my 11th birthday. History is made right here folks, because we have a first for a children’s humour comics character when Tom actually leaves school and moves out into the adult world.

“I’m gonna sign me cross fer a pocketfulla dosh!”

Tom Thug

This would only be a temporary situation of course. When OiNK merges into Buster in a few months the strip turns back time for more misadventures in school, but for now we get to see him actually sign on and, as you’d expect of him, he thinks it’s a way of getting as much money as he wants for nothing. Well, he is a pillock after all. The last gag may have been lost on me as a child. It’s a topical gag, not something OiNK did much of until these later issues. I probably grinned and laughed at his predicament without realising its topicality.

So yes, we’ve a couple of issues to go to see how Tom fairs in the big, bad world and I’m sure he’ll be even less successful (if that’s possible) than he was when he thought he could lord it over the smaller kids in school. At the bottom is a rare writing credit for someone other than Lew, who told me, “I think Mark wanted Tom to get older and sign on and suggested the basic idea of that but everything else was up to me.” A shame we won’t get to see much of this part of Tom’s life but I look forward to it regardless.

Finishing off his hat trick for this issue, Lew’s Pete and his Pimple gets three pages when a reader suggests blasting Pete into space to save the rest of us from being covered in exploding pus. There are so many great gags straight out of the gate with this strip; the caption giving away why the tanks are drawn that way, XL5’s cameo, the life support and more. It’s not an exaggeration to say there’s a real good giggle to be found in every panel of the first page, and is that a familiar guest star from Pigswilla? As for the rest, it just gets better and better as Pete gets Lost in Space.

I love the design of the aliens and seeing the caricatures of the cast of the 60s show takes me back to childhood Sunday lunchtimes with repeats on Channel 4. The fact one of them is labelled ‘The Boring Macho One’ is spot on (no pun intended) because he’s actually the only one I can’t remember! With some fun digs at the simplicity of 60s sci-fi and the usual description of a UFO being taken literally this is one of Pete’s best. There’s also a censored panel here too!

Lew originally drew Pete urinating on the robot

If you look closely at the first panel on the third page of the strip you may see a shape beside the “old junk”, almost like a very faint silhouette. As it turns out that’s exactly what it is. Lew originally drew Pete urinating on the robot rather than hiding him behind it and you can just about make out how he was standing, looking down at little splashes. It’s been edited, but not very well.

According to Lew’s personal blog, “My original art was censored in one panel! I’d shown Pete (with his back to us) having a wee against the robot but that was too much for [Fleetway]. They stuck a piece of paper over him and changed the tail of the word balloon so it looked like Pete was hidden behind the robot… BUT the paste-over was opaque and with a bit of Photoshop enhancement you can see Pete’s silhouette…”. Here’s the image as Lew presented it to show what he meant. Thanks to Lew for letting me share this.

It wasn’t the first time one of Lew’s strips was edited, although in a previous Tom Thug the edit made things worse!

There are just the five pages of reprints this time. One is the Johnny the Jet strip from #8 and the others are made up of the final two OiNK Superstar Posters, printed double-sided. Well, one ‘Megastar Poster’ and one simply named ‘Poster’. The latter was deemed a suitably bland title for Mary Lighthouse’s which was also taken from #8, while #6’s Uncle Pigg poster by Ian Jackson was renamed for a bit more grandeur. Naturally. This is actually the poster of him I’ve used in my home office since it meant I could use it without losing any strips on the back.

Without question this has been the best monthly issue so far and really feels like it’s hit its stride. The same thing happened with the weeklies and I get the impression that it could’ve really worked in this format if it hadn’t been cancelled. Of course, OiNK was still at its best in its 32-page fortnightly guise (first 44 issues) with its themes, all of its characters intact and aimed at the original target audience while still suitable (and read by) older fans too. But as a different, older version of the same comic this issue really works.

After all of the lengthy strips I just wanted to round things off with a couple of slices of miniature Ed McHenry nonsense. Ed’s Wally of the West debuted in OiNK much later in the run than I remember and now his mini-strips raise a laugh in every single issue. But Ed wasn’t content with just his regular characters, he’d also create lots of little random one-offs to be sprinkled throughout the 48 pages. Here are his best two from this issue.

With Ed rounding things off nicely for this month we’re back to waiting only four weeks until #67 of OiNK, the penultimate regular issue. We may be nearing the end but there’s still so much for this comic to give. This year really has flown in for me and I think part of the reason for that is OiNK. With those weeklies I flew through the winter and spring, and the summer has been one large Holiday Special after another. The next one will be reviewed here on Sunday 17th September 2023. September. Already!

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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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