Pete's Pimple could be Yours! (UPDATE: NOW SOLD!)

UPDATE: ITEM NOW SOLD! Thanks for looking.

This is my ORIGINAL ART for the Pete and his Pimple strip that was published in an issue of OINK! comic in 1987. The artwork is drawn in black ink embellished with a grey wash and grey pencil. Drawn on Bristol board and then affixed to a sheet of cartridge paper underneath with Spray Mount, although the art can be easily removed from the backing sheet if required. (Personally I'd keep it fixed to the backing sheet as it's survived perfectly well for over 30 years like that.) 

I signed it in the last panel. See photos for more detail. 

Size 37cm wide by 32cm high. 

The art will be securely packaged between strong card for posting and wrapped in parcel paper. 

This item will only run until December 15th to try to avoid Christmas post delays so buy soon if you want it. Thanks. 

See listing here:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ORIGINAL-ART-PETE-AND-HIS-PIMPLE-from-OINK-comic-1987-Lew-Stringer-SIGNED/202849939157

Yes, that's Loose Brayne, Brickmam making an unannounced cameo!

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Tom Thug original art for sale

The "original art" category on eBay is a strange beast. For some unfathomable reason a lot of sellers don't understand what it means and they'll list comics and prints there. The clue is really in the description isn't it? Original. Art. NOT "comics I bought from a shop" or "limited print". 

Rest assured that when I put my pages up for auction they ARE my original artworks; the actual unique hand drawn pen and ink drawings that were used to do the printed version you see in the comics. 

I currently have one of my pieces on eBay. It's the original Tom Thug artwork, in ink and water colour, that was used to print a free postcard given with Oink! comic in 1987. The first (but not last) time my artwork was used for a free gift. It's hand lettered too, as it's from the days before computer fonts were created.

You can find out more about it, and see more photos of the piece, here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TOM-THUG-ORIGINAL-ARTWORK-FROM-OINK-COMIC-by-Lew-Stringer/202702794669

My thanks in advance if you're going to bid on the piece, and good luck! The auction ends on Sunday 16th June. 

Original art sale!

I'm selling off some of my original artwork from Oink! comic and this week there are two Tom Thug half-pagers up for auction on eBay. These are the original strips I drew back in 1987 and are still in very nice condition. Black ink on Bristol board. 

You can find out more about them, and see more photos of the pages, at my eBay store here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html

All bids appreciated! Good luck! 

For Halloween... MONSTER MASH!

I've showed this before but for the benefit of newer readers, here it is again!

One of the enjoyable things about working for Oink! comic back in the 1980s was the opportunity to do numerous one-off or short run strips as well as regular characters. Monster Mash appeared in Oink! No.13, the Halloween issue for 1986, and was a collaboration between editor Mark Rogers and myself.

Mark had originally sent me an idea for a story called The School Dinner Monster and asked if I had any ideas to add to it. I added a few bits and bobs to the plot and dialogue, and thought the title Monster Mash was catchier. I gave the name 'Pigzilla' to the giant robot pig, although Mark changed that to the much more inspired Pigswilla.

As Oink! was printed on quality paper (as opposed to the newsprint of its companion comics Buster, Whizzer & Chips etc) I knew we could be a bit more adventurous with the rendering of the artwork so I thought a grey wash would give it more depth. I was really pleased with how the strip turned out and it remains one of my favourite pieces all these years later. The artwork is a bit rough in places but I'm still happy with it.

I felt that with Monster Mash and some of the other material that myself and other contributors did for Oink! that we were stepping outside the usual conventions of British humour comics and moving away from the standard schoolkid-with-gimmick that had dominated IPC's comics since 1969. And we were all having great fun doing it. This comedy-adventure, comic horror stuff was what comics should have been doing more of in my opinion.

As it turned out, it seemed most readers still preferred the more traditional schoolkid strips, and Oink! folded after just two and a half years. Then again, Whizzer & Chips folded a few years later, and that was the most traditional "safe" comic in IPC's stable. Perhaps it was just a sign that readers were being distracted by video games.

Happy Halloween!

Artwork now Copyright © 2018 Rebellion Publishing Limited. 

Convention memories of 1987

Thirty years ago this week, over the weekend of 5th/6th September 1987, a few of us appeared on a comics panel at UKCAC'87, the United Kingdom Comics Art Convention that was held annually in London. 

From left to right: moderator Theo Clarke, me (in Oink! T-shirt), Ed McHenry (swigging pop), David Leach, Davy Francis (hidden behind David Leach), Jeremy Banx. 

We were there to promote Oink! comic, which was in the middle of its two and a half year run by that stage and firing on all cylinders. It was the first time that most of us had met and I still keep in touch with David Leach to this day. A great friend. 

We shared the panel with editors/creators from Viz, (off picture here) and the theme of the panel was to try and set up some sort of rivalry but none of us were really into that. We were all on the same side; making comics we enjoyed. 

Does it seem like 30 years ago? Yes, definitely. A lot has happened in life since then and 1987 feels like a lifetime ago. They were good days; most of us were relatively new to the business and full of enthusiasm and ideas. Thankfully, Oink! happened at just the right time as an outlet for those ideas. There's been nothing quite like it since, and that's a shame. However, the enthusiasm and ideas are still there. Long live comics! 

PSYCHO GRAN returns today!

As regular followers of modern comics know, there are more opportunities for creators and publishers to reach their audience these days rather than relying on the expense and hassle of newsstand distribution. One avenue is digital comics, enabling readers to access comics immediately without a so much as a trip to the shops. Today, the much anticipated second issue of David Leach's Psycho Gran went live for anyone across the world to download to their device. 

Psycho Gran originated in Oink! comic 30 years ago when David was at the start of his comics career, but these stories are of a more recent vintage and are fine examples of a cartoonist at the top of his game. The strips originally appeared in Aces Weekly over the last few years and are now collected into one convenient package. 

Who is Psycho Gran? We never know her back story and we don't need to. She's an unstoppable force of vengeance with seemingly unlimited powers to enact short but sweet justice on those that deserve it, from burglars to pushy cyclists. In real life, Psycho Gran would make the world a better place. She certainly makes the world of comics a better place. 

Published by Titan Comics, Psycho Gran No.2 is available to download NOW from Comixology and Amazon. Here are the links. Don't disappoint her by not buying it.

To buy from ComiXology, click HERE.

To buy from Amazon, click HERE.

Bacon Bits

Last week's copy of Big Issue North featured a three page article by Dan Whitehead on the legendary Oink! comic. It covered the history of the much-loved publication and contained comments by editors Tony Husband and Patrick Gallagher plus TV's Charlie Brooker (who was just 15 when he contributed his hilarious strips to Oink!). Dan was a reader of it himself as a boy so it's great to know that the comic helped inspire him to pursue a creative career. Oink! - Long gone but never forgotten!   

Help those less fortunate by buying the Big Issue from a street vendor. Weekly, £2.50. (£1.25 goes to the vendor. Please buy from badged vendors only.)

OINK! 30 piggin' years!

I've been so busy recently I'd forgotten it was the 30th anniversary of Oink! comic last Tuesday! I'm still busy, so I'm afraid this tribute will be brief but I felt I had to celebrate it somehow as not only is Oink! fondly remembered by so many readers but it was such an important comic for my comics career. 

Oink! arrived in newsagents on Saturday 26th April 1986 in the form of a full size 32 page preview issue bagged with that week's issues of Whizzer and Chips, Buster, and Eagle and Tiger. The comic had been in the planning stages for two years and most of the content of the preview issue was from the dummy issue. 

Whizzer and Chips cover by Tom Paterson.

Here's a few pages from the Oink! Preview Issue. I haven't time to scan them so I've just taken photos for now. I'll replace them with scans at a later date. Click on images to see them at full size.

Page 2 by Ian Jackson.

Cowpat County by Davy Francis.

BURP! by Banx.

Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins by Tony Husband.

The Revenge Squad by Tom Paterson.

Street Hogs by Malcolm Douglas.

Back page of the OINK! preview issue, by Tony Husband.

Oink! was unique. A wilder comic by mostly new creators that broke away from the rigid formula of other IPC titles. The contents were never set in stone; although it retained a few regular characters it also featured loads of one-off strips and short run strips. The remit was to keep it fresh, and most importantly, funny! Readers who were kids back then have confirmed that it certainly succeeded on that score. (There's even an Oink! Blog dedicated to the comic. An essential read for every pig-pal: http://the-oink-blog.blogspot.co.uk/)

Oink! ran for 68 issues over two and a half years before merging into Buster. Maybe it would have lasted longer if WH Smith hadn't meddled by shifting it away from other comics because they felt it was unsuitable for children. (Bear in mind this was before there was an older-readers comics section in Smiths, so Oink! was shoved into different places every week, beside magazines devoted to nursing, caravans, or whatever.) 

Oink! was a joy to work for. We had so much freedom on the comic (within reason of course) and for those of us who were relatively new to the industry then it gave us the opportunity to develop and experiment. A couple of years ago, on my other blog, I explained my involvement with the comic so I'm cutting and pasting that here....

One day in 1984, while visiting Bob Paynter, the Group Editor of the IPC humour comics, up at Kings Reach Tower on London's South Bank, he told me of a new comic that was in development. This was to be something different, more anarchic and unpredictable than Whizzer and Chips, Whoopee, and the rest. It was the brainchild of cartoonists and writers based in Manchester and although they'd already presented Bob with a rough dummy issue, Bob wanted to bring in more artists for variety. 

The comic was then called Rrassp! as I recall, although it would soon evolve into Oink! as the project got under way. Bob Paynter told me he saw the venture as an ideal opportunity for people who were either stylistically different to IPC's usual look, or were keen to become comic artists and not yet ready for the company's other publications. IPC were going to invest in a dummy issue of the new comic, and would be putting a lot of money into a launch if it went ahead. Therefore Bob didn't want any time wasters, and was only inviting people who were genuinely interested in drawing for them. I was already producing cartoons for Marvel UK and had 'ghosted' a lot of children's books for Mike Higgs, so this was a great opportunity to do something for IPC, who were the main British comics publisher at the time.

Bob asked me if I had any ideas that might be suitable. I mentioned a "dim skinhead bully character" I'd been developing, which he seemed to like. (Bullies are always useful in slapstick strips.) "Perhaps his dad could be pushing him to be a bully to follow the family tradition, to inherit his boots" suggested Bob. I liked that twist to it, and, filled with enthusiasm, went home to develop it further.

The name 'Tom Thug - What a Mug' came to my mind because I knew IPC liked puns on existing concepts and it sounded a bit like Tom Thumb. Here's my initial rough sketches of the character from 30 years ago that no one has seen before. Brand new characters often take a while to get right and Tom looked more like Frankenstein's monster in this concept than a school bully!

Anyway, after a few more sketches, I eventually gave Tom a rounder look and something I felt comfortable submitting. The routine was that Bob only wanted to see the strip in a pencil stage at this point, and if it was good enough he'd ask for it to be completed. Here's the actual artwork I sent him... 

Bob liked the idea but sent me a rewritten script for a new version. Initially I was a little disappointed that some of the energy seemed to have been taken out of it, but in retrospect Bob's rewrite was a much tighter script and was a better build-up to the punchline. Here's the new version, scanned from my original art...

That's the version which appeared in the 'dummy' issue and was printed in the Oink! Preview issue that was bagged with several IPC titles. Yes, it took about 18 months or more for IPC to do their market research, tweak the comic, and finally give it the green light!

Tom Thug became one of Oink's regulars from the outset, with me on scripts and art every issue (with some rewritten by the editor, the late Mark Rogers). When Oink! merged into Buster in late 1988, Tom Thug had proved popular enough to transfer over, and then became one of Buster's most popular strips.

I will always remember Oink! with fondness, not only for the opportunities it gave me, but because it was such a great comic! I used to look forward to seeing what everyone else had done that week and we were all having such a good time on it. The editors Tony Husband, Patrick Gallagher, and the late Mark Rodgers were great to work for and creative people in their own right. Happy 30th anniversary Oink! You were piggin' brilliant!

OINK! No.1, published May 3rd 1986.

Go Psycho!

If you're at the London Super Comic Con today seek out David Leach who will be selling copies of his latest publication, Psycho Gran VS. The full colour print comic features great new artwork by David Leach pitching ex-Oink! star Psycho Gran against some well known faces in an orgy of comic violence. There's also a 10 page gallery of artwork by guest artists including Mike Perkins, Davy Francis, Rian Hughes and myself. 

You may find David at the Aces Weekly table, where you can also subscribe to the award-winning Aces Weekly of course! 

Here's the page I did for it. I haven't received the printed comic yet so I'm looking forward to seeing everyone else's contributions.

Grab a Gran! PSYCHO GRAN!

The pensioner of peril is back this week as Psycho Gran returns to the latest issue of Aces Weekly! David Leach once again revives his classic Oink! character for an all-new story in Aces Weekly Volume 19 No.5, which went live last night.

If you haven't tried this award-winning digital comics anthology before it's never too late to start! Each volume of seven weekly issues costs just £6.99 and all volumes are always available on the site to read. Works on your PC, Mac, laptop or tablet. As well as David Leach there's a great range of other top comics talent involved too! Check it out today:
http://www.acesweekly.co.uk/home

Oink! It was piggin' brilliant

Over two years ago, Phil Boyce set out to review every issue of eighties sensation Oink! comic on the anniversary of its publication date. Today, he reaches the final issue with an affectionate appraisal of its contents. Is this the end of The Oink! Blog then? Not at all. Wait and see what Phil has planned next. You can read his latest review here:
http://the-oink-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/68-final-pork-chop.html

I must admit I haven't re-read Oink! since it was published, so even as a regular contributor I've had fond memories stirred by Phil's reviews of each issue. At the time, those of us working on the comic knew it was good, but perhaps we were too close to it to realize just how good it was. Revisiting it from a modern-day perspective has given me a fresh appreciation of the work of my colleagues and the editors. It really was a unique, thought-provoking, and (most importantly) funny comic that shied away from formula to produce some memorable strips.

David Leach tells it like it is

Comic artist, writer, animation artist, colourist, editor, David Leach has had quite a career and he's been interviewed by Alex Fitch about it on Resonance FM. There's a podcast of the interview now available for you to listen to here:
http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/archives/12472 

I've known David for nearly 30 years since we were contributors to Oink! comic and I count him as one of my closest friends in the comics industry. (I went to his wedding many years ago too.) So I'm pleased to see him receive some recognition on Resonance FM. The interview reveals him to be as straight talking and enthusiastic as ever - and it's funny too, so have a listen.   

Original Thugs!

A last minute mention that my auction of original Tom Thug pages from Oink! and Buster ends this evening. If you're interested, please visit my eBay page here:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

All bids are appreciated. Thanks in advance, and good luck! 

Piggin' History!

Many of us who started our comics career in the 1980s were spoilt in a way because we had the ultra-brilliant Oink! to work on. Oink! was a humour comic like no other. It's often unfairly and inaccurately described as a "junior Viz", and publishers IPC may have initially wanted something like that, but Oink! was unique and had its own style (or 'sly-le' as they might have put it). Some of us were quite raw in our abilities when we started but Oink! gave us chance to develop and experiment.

Unlike other humour comics of the time, Oink! had no formula, no house style. The art styles were varied, the content was ever-shifting, the attitude was more irreverent, the humour was cheekier. So different it unsettled the establishment, and WH Smith moved it away from the children's comics section in a bizarre attempt to prevent its intended audience from seeing it! That undoubtedly cost the comic a lot of potential sales, but many of its loyal readers stuck with it, as evidenced by the anecdotes and recollections on the Oink! Facebook group. 

One of those loyal readers, Phil Boyce, even set up an Oink! Blog, and now he intends to publish a book telling the story of the much-missed comic. Here's what he had to say:

"It's Oink!'s 30th anniversary in two years and I'm officially announcing a brand new book to mark the occasion.  It's planned to tell the whole story, from initial conception right through to the Round the Bend TV series and then on to the modern day.  The story of the comic was already a fascinating one, but there's much more to tell believe me!  Alongside this the book will contain a good, hefty amount of the very best in strips and features from the comic and what is surely the greatest team ever put together for one - as the front page of The Oink! Book 1988 stated, they were "Britain's Best!".

While this blog is very much my own personal journey through Oink! from the perspective of a fan, the book is going to be the creators' tale - their take on our very favourite comic."

This is very exciting news indeed for ex-contributors to the comic and for its fans. For more information, read the rest of Phil's post on The Oink! Blog here:

http://the-oink-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/working-on-title.html

Phil has only just announced his plans so there's a long way to go yet but keep checking his blog for developments. I'll also post more news here of course, as the book comes together. 

The Case of the Kidnapped Celebrities

Oink! was an excellent comic. For the readers it offered a refreshing change from the relatively rigid formula of other comics of the time, and was wildly unpredictable. For those of us who were lucky enough to contribute to it, the comic gave us the opportunity to develop our abilities and at the same time have a great deal of fun with its flexible format of varying themes and one-off stories. 

One of those one-off strips was The Case of the Kidnapped Celebrities which I scripted and Mike Higgs illustrated. I'd been a big fan of Mike's The Cloak in Pow! in the late sixties, and was fortunate to become his assistant for a year or so in the 1980s. Mike had left children's comics for a while because he'd refused to conform to the restrictive formula of the IPC weeklies of the 1970s. He'd been constantly busy though, producing numerous children's books, commercial illustrations, and his Moonbird newspaper strip for his local paper and abroad. 

Mike liked Oink! because it was fresher than its contemporaries. I felt it was high time Mike's talents were seen in British comics again so I suggested to him that we could collaborate for the comic. We worked on a few strips that were published, and I think Mike did a few of his own things for it too. (This later led to him drawing Thundercap for Buster in the 1990s.) 

Anyway, here's one of the strips we did. The Case of the Kidnapped Celebrities was good fun to write, and Mike did a fantastic job on the artwork in his own distinctive style. Even Mike's lettering is great!

This strip is from Oink! No.34, dated 8th to 21st August 1987. If you'd like to see a few other pages from this issue, head over to Phil Boyce's fantastic Oink! Blog now!  

Psycho Gran returns in her own comic

One of the stars of 1980s cult comic Oink! makes her welcome return this week in her own title. David Leach's Psycho Gran No.1 will be available to buy as a digital comic from Titan Comics on the ComiXology app as from tomorrow (March 26th), - a day now known as Gran-day! 

I'm really pleased to see this happening as David's style of comedy has always amused me and over the years his artwork has continued to develop and reach new heights. Psycho Gran is too good a character to keep down, - and she just wouldn't allow it anyway. 

The cover to PSYCHO GRAN No.1.

Here's the official press release:

PSYCHO GRAN ISSUE #1

First published in the British kid's comic, Oink! Back in 1986 Psycho Gran is the psychotically demented brain-child of cartoonist and comic book editor, David Leach – winner of Channel Four's Come Dine With Me, editor and writer of the Wallace and Gromit newspaper strip and the Adventure Time comic magazine and editor of Roman Dirge's Lenore. David is also the co-creator of cult 1990's strip The Driver for the British cult comic, Toxic!.
Psycho Gran (or Psycho Besta as she's known in Norway) is a five-foot high, mauve-haired, bespectacled psychotic granny with a pan-dimensional, sentient handbag called Percy, a flying dog called Archie and a pathological loathing of rudeness. Join her for an all-new 29 page, full-colour journey into a surrealist slap-stick world of rampaging kaiju (that’s giant monsters to you!), neo-Nazis skin-heads, bag snatchers, death-row inmates, explosive diarrhea, those annoying SOBs who will insist on using their bloody mobile phones in cinemas and innocent people just minding their own buisness.
She puts the Old into Old Skool! 

On sale date: March 26th. Available here: 

http://www.comixology.com/Titan/comics-publisher/92-0

“Dark humour cartoons used to be a strong part of British comics, now sadly long gone, apart from a few adult comics and great strips like Psycho-Gran. I have particularly fond memories of David's "The Driver" and "Dinner Ladies From Hell" and his Psycho-Gran is in the same hilarious mould. It's an excellent representation of the British black comedy we need so much more of.”

– Pat Mills, creator of 2000AD, Action, Battle writer and creator of Sláine, Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law, Charley's War and the ABC Warriors.

“While old comedy comic characters wither in the creaking care home of bad stewardship, David Leach's, old but un-withered, bad, batty, toothless, ruthless, fearless, frightening, horrible, hilarious, Psycho Gran marches on in her surgical stockings, getting stronger by the day. Bless him!”

– David Lloyd, artist and co-creator of V For Vendetta.

"Um, how about ‘...David Leach's Psycho Gran is a satisfying blend of top-notch draughtsmanship and gruesome silliness...’ Or something like that? A bit short, I know, but I put the dot-dot-dots in to make it look like it's come from a longer review. “ 

– Davey Jones, Former Viz Editor.

"David Leach takes comic violence to the next level with the powerful and genuinely funny imagery of Psycho Gran. The most Gran-tastic comic book you'll ever read!" –

– Lew Stringer, creator of Combat Colin and regular Viz and Beano artist extraordinaire.

“Psycho Gran is unique and genuinely disturbing, and so is her creator.” – Peter Hogan writer of Resident Alien and Tom Strong 

“I grew up with Pyscho Gran as an inspiration for not only how to draw comics, but how to live my life. She was drawn in a style I'd never seen before in children's comics, and the humour was so dark and so BRUTAL, it affected me in ways no other comic had.  A real eye-opener for what children's comics could, and should, be.”– Jamie Smart, creator of Bear, Corporate Skull and Desperate Dan and Dandy relaunch artist.

“Terror has a new face…. and a purple rinse …With Psycho Gran, David Leach forges a new genre of Octogenarian ultra-violence, surreal and disturbing but a right ‘bloody’ laugh. Harry Brown it’s time to collect your pension” 

– Stuart Jennett artist and writer of Chronos Commandos.

Make it a date, - Psycho Gran No.1 - on sale from your Internet on Wednesday!

http://www.comixology.com/Titan/comics-publisher/92-0

David Leach at work.

OTHER RELATED INFO

The Psycho Gran FACEBOOK page went live on Feb 10 2014 and already has 156 likes.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Psycho-Gran/139243379562556

The FACEBOOK Oink! page has 684 members

https://www.facebook.com/groups/OinkComic/

Psycho Gran appears in the Digital comics, Aces Weekly which was recently voted Best Digital Comic of 2013.

She has appeared Norway in the NEMI magazine where she is known as Psycho Besta.

After a 25-year absence she returned in the Japanese Tsunami appeal book, Spirit of Hope in 2011.