Have you ever found out something about your childhood many years later and wondered how you never noticed even though it was so glaringly obvious? In the case of this blog it could be how I never clicked that the TV show Round the Bend was created by OiNK’s editors! As for the Ring Raiders it’s something small but even more obvious, the colour of the canopies on all of those planes I collected. Welcome to the fourth part of my look at every single page of the Ring Raiders Style Guide sent out to licensees in 1989. We’ve covered the introductions and details of the range, the characters and t ..read more

Me and my mum – October 2011 A few weeks ago I lost my mum. It was cancer, as it always seems to be these days. I was with her on Christmas Eve 2019 when she was given her diagnosis, when the doctor told her he couldn’t give her any timeframe other than to say it could be six-to-twelve months or it could be years. She passed away over four years later and lived her best life in that time, surrounded by friends and family, always so giving to everyone she loved. Christmas 1980Summer 1984 I can still remember my mum rolling her eyes at some of the things she’d see in my OiNK comics and laughing ..read more

The first time K.I.T.T. (programmed for human preservation) faced off against the evil prototype K.A.R.R. (programmed for self-preservation) in season one of Knight Rider the paradox of “What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?” was brought up. As a huge fan of the show, when I opened this sixth issue of Marvel UK’s Death’s Head its inclusion as the opening of the editorial made me smile. The militia group Sudden Impact are promoted as equals to the Peacekeeping Agent, so while their cliffhanger last time felt lacking it’s made up for here. They’re a clichéd lot thou ..read more

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, although it’s a bit of a strange one ..read more

As the weather begins to change for the better it reminds me this time of year was when the Holiday Specials started to appear on the comic shelves. As the OiNK Blog is all about reading those classic comics in real time we’ve enjoyed some great special editions around March and April over the past few years, and 2024 is no exception. In fact, it’s extra special because for the first time in three months we welcome back our “prime porky publication” with the OiNK Holiday Special 1989! Regular readers may remember how the last issue of our favourite comic came with a free preview issue of Wildc ..read more

Between the original publication dates of the previous issue of Doctor Who Magazine covered on the blog (#137, as part of the Death’s Head‘s read through) and this one I’d finally discovered the TV series for myself. I’d grown up in a house where older siblings would have watched Tom Baker in the role so I was always aware of it and certain aspects such as the Daleks, the TARDIS etc., but it wasn’t until I saw those aforementioned meanies splashed across media outlets in 1988 that I decided to give it a go for myself. I’ve watched ever since. I’ll get back to that below when I take a look at ..read more

Pete’s Pup was the antithesis of all those funny pet strips in comics when I was growing up. Even Gnasher had nothing on the gigantic, destructive, flea-ridden and yet completely loveable (for the readers at least, not his owner’s dad) dog of some far-fetched, unknown breed that made us laugh so much. In my memory he’d been a regular character despite only appearing in early issues, their strips staying with me for decades. Jim Needle’s scratchy art perfectly brought this monstrous good boy to life. Jim was a superb cartoonist who was known for contributing to local newspapers and publication ..read more

We reach the halfway point of this five-part series of posts detailing every single page of the Ring Raiders licensee folder, a style guide for the whole franchise. The introductions are out of the way, you should all be up to speed with the intentions behind this new toy range and familiar with the background story and all of its far-reaching potential, and last month we saw the leaders of the eight Ring Raiders Wings and their respective high-tech airplanes. Now it’s time for the flip side of the coin, it’s time to meet the baddies. In the story the Skull Squadron formed first, the Raiders ..read more

This month’s strip may have an extra page. It may end on a splash page of the whole team pledging they’ll never stop fighting injustice. The cover may be a special painted one by Geoff Senior (Steel does look a bit like an alien panther, although if he were it’d fit his personality). The story may be called End of the Road. However, there’s no editorial mention that this is the final issue of Dragon’s Claws. While the story makes it pretty clear this is the end, how clear would it have been to a much, much younger me at the time, I do not know. The comic was devised as an ongoing title and th ..read more

This striking John Higgins (Transformers, Batman: The Killing Joke, Before Watchmen) cover welcomes us to the fifth issue and, after reading it, the midway point of Marvel UK’s Death’s Head. When I collected together this run of comics I noticed a lot of crossovers with other Marvel characters on the covers, especially in the later issues. No, I never read anything inside (just counted the pages to make sure it was all there), but the covers do reveal a lot of who is to come. I remember thinking it seemed there were an awful lot of what would normally be seen as ‘event’ stories, perhaps to ra ..read more