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PETE AND HIS PIMPLE (OINK! 1986-88, BUSTER 1988-89).
Starting out as a small two-panel extra strip at the foot of an early Tom Thug strip, Pete graduated to his own page with
Oink! No.15. Pete Throb was a typical adolescent plagued with acne...REALLY bad acne...mainly in the form of a huge spherical
pimple on the end of his nose! The massive zit would often flare up at the most embarrassing moments, such as when Pete was
chatting up the girl of his desires, Lovely Lucy. Worse, the pimple would sometimes explode, covering all and sundry in its
contents!
The strip's popularity led to Pete having his own pull-out comic special in OINK! No.41, where Pete and his "Plooky
Pals" battled the Zitbusters from Planet Yampy!
The intention was comedy-pathos with this strip, and readers were sympathetic to Pete's plight (although I suspect they
were laughing *at* him too). Inspired by the "Dare-A-Day-Davy" strips I read as a child, I eventually turned it
into a reader participation strip, inviting kids to send in their ideas for a cure to help poor Pete! I would then integrate
the ideas into a story. Their responses were numerous, and often very inventive.
Pete and His Pimple was a popular strip with Oink! readers, but when the comic merged into Buster it fared less successfully,
- mainly because the strip had to be toned down for Buster's younger readers, so no more explosions of pus!
The strip was later reprinted for a while in early issues of Sweden's HERMAN HEDNING comic in 1997.
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