Sunday 23 November 2014

Pete and His Pimple: the comic!


Back in 1987 I was commissioned by Oink! comic to produce a special 8 page Pete and His Pimple comic that would be a pull-out section in Oink! No.41. Because of the pagination of the comic, and the limitations of printing back then it meant that the cover would be in black and white unfortunately, - but the centre pages would be in full colour. However, I used this to my advantage because it meant the story began in black and white but then wham! there's the impact of a colour spread for the fight scene. 

I had a free hand in how the pull-out comic would look, so I thought I'd kick off with a gag cartoon on the cover, follow with a five page story, have a feature/daft puzzle section on page 7, and a spoof educational strip on the back page. I didn't want to draw the entire comic myself as I wanted it to be more like a proper UK comic, so I had Ed McHenry draw the puzzles, and asked my old pal Mike Higgs to draw the back page. 

As you can see, it's called Oink! Mini-Comic No.1. The intention was that other cartoonists would create following issues featuring their characters and the pull-out comics would be an occasional series. Sadly there were no more issues, but a few weeks later Oink! had a reduction in its page count so I would guess that was the reason. 

Anyway, if you want a trip down memory lane, or if you didn't see it way back when, Phil Boyce has posted the entire mini-comic on his fantastic Oink! Blog today. Take a look...

http://the-oink-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/petes-pimply-pull-out.html

2 comments:

PhilEdBoyce said...

Thanks very much Lew! Always a treat to see an issue featuring more of you work and this was certainly one such occasion! As you say, such a shame we didn't get to see more of the mini comics.

Lew Stringer said...

Yes, everything changed when IPC decided to turn it into a weekly and cut the page count. Pity. Still, we had fun.