Friday 1 March 2013

Tom Thug - on the scrapheap


Back in 1987 the fortnightly Oink! comic celebrated its first anniversary with issue 26, but how do you get nostalgic about a comic that's only a year old? I decided I'd go back a bit further, several decades in fact, and feature cameo appearances by a load of characters from classic comics of the previous 90 years.

This was published by IPC, but several years later the rights to IPC's characters were divided between them and Egmont. Not to mention Dan Dare being sold off elsewhere. Consequently these characters can never appear together in a comic again. 

The above scan is from Oink! No.26. Here's a close up taken from my original artwork. See how many characters you can identify:


Thankfully Tom's fears of ending up on the scrapheap of forgotten characters wouldn't come true for a long time after this was published. His strip ran for ten years, and another three years as a reprint, ending with the final issue of Buster at the very end of 1999.

(Click on the images to see them larger.)

5 comments:

John Smith said...

I can spot:
Robot Archie
Eagle Eye
Grimly Fiendish
Frankie-stein
Bad Penny
The Cloak
Gus Gorilla
Weary Willie
Tired Tim
Dan Dare
Harris Tweed

Peter Gray said...

little Jim Jolly's and his magic brolly...Reg Parlett..
Deed a day danny

the cat with bow drawn by Roy Wilson and Reg Parlett and appeared in the Tiddleywink family Jingles

useful the comic art book of Reg Parlett;0)

Lew Stringer said...

Well spotted, John and Peter. There's a few others as well; Dash Decent, Tiger Tim, Captain Wally, Captain Hurricane, Mowser, Marmy and his Ma, Deadly Headley, and The Steel Claw.

Tiniebras said...

Wayne Brayne? I cousin of Loose Brayne I assume?

Lew Stringer said...

Anything's possible! They're all part of the Lewniverse. :-)