I am a little out of my depth with this one as i am a tad to young too remember Oink! But seeing its logo does spur on memories from hanging out with my older cousin and looking through his book shelf. So if like me you need a little bit of an education, at least before you  jump into this one then allow me to assist. Oink! was a British comic book magazine for children which was published from 3 May 1986 to 22 October 1988. It set out to be purposely be a lot like Viz, though child friendly. It also drew inspiration from 2000 AD and Mad Magazine, which really makes this a unique beast.

Just doing some cursory research on this one has me utterly fascinated. The children’s comic strip almost instantly earner the wrath of conservative groups and certain retailers refused to stock it, or in the case of WHSmith put it on the top shelf, stopping children from grabbing it. And that kind of saddens me because this book seems like an original idea, one that deserved better than it got. When the book began it was a fortnightly publication,  eventually it became weekly release, before changing to monthly. In the end Oink! after 68 issues ended its run in November 1988.

after it ended some of the strips lived on in other books and series creators  Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers ended up with a Tv deal that gave us one of my old favorites – Round the Bend.

So if this topic fascinates you as much as it has fascinated me then I insist that you sit back with Andy and Oink! expert blogger, Phil Boyce as they delve deep into something that far to many of us have forgotten.

As always do not forget to check out Andy’s links below.

Patreon

Amazon – where you can grab some books by Andy himself

Twitter

Spotify

Instagram

Anchor

Homepage