Viz (comics)
Viz is a British adult comic magazine founded in 1979 by Chris Donald. It parodies British comics of the post-war period, notably The Beano and The Dandy, but with extensive profanity, toilet humour, black comedy, surreal humour and generally sexual or violent storylines. It also sends up tabloid newspapers, with mockeries of articles and letters pages. It features parody competitions and advertisements for overpriced 'limited edition' tat, as well as obsessions with half-forgotten kitsch celebrities from the 1960s to the 1980s, such as Shakin' Stevens and Rodney Bewes. Occasionally, it satirises current affairs and politicians, but it has no particular political standpoint.
Its success in the early 1990s led to the appearance of numerous rivals copying the format Viz pioneered; none of them managed to attain its popularity. Circulation peaked at 1.2 million in the early 1990s, making it the third-most popular magazine in the UK, but ABC-audited sales have since dropped, to an average of 48,588 per issue in 2018. The 300th issue was published in October 2020.
History
The comic was started in Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1979 by Chris Donald, who produced the comic from his bedroom in his parents' Jesmond home with help from his brother Simon and friend Jim Brownlow. Donald himself cannot remember exactly where the name of the magazine comes from. The most he can remember is: at the time, he needed to come up with a proper name for it, and he considered the word "Viz" a very easy word to write/remember, as it consisted of three letters which are easily made with straight lines.It came about at around the time, and in the spirit of, the punk fanzines, and used alternative methods of distribution, such as the prominent DIY record label and shop Falling A Records, which was an early champion of the comic. The first 12-page issue was produced as a fanzine for a local record label 'Anti-Pop records' run by Arthur 2 Stroke and Andy 'Pop' Inman, and went on sale for 20p in the Gosforth Hotel, which hosted 'Anti-Pop' punk gigs, and the run of 150 copies had sold out within hours. The second issue was published three months later in March 1980, with the next ten issues being published at irregular intervals until November 1984. Issue ten from May 1983 was the first to feature the current Viz logo. The 'best' of Viz Comics issues one to four was published in November 1983 as issue 10½. After a few years of steady sales, mostly in the North East of England, circulation had grown to around 5,000 by December 1984. This may have been boosted by the appearance in the BBC2 documentary series 'Sparks' which first aired in March/April 1984 and was repeated on BBC1. A further special edition was issued in May 1985 as issue 12a.
What had begun as a few pages, photocopied and sold to friends, became a publishing phenomenon. To meet the demand, and to make up for Brownlow's diminishing interest in contributing, freelance artist Graham Dury was hired and worked alongside Chris Donald.
As the magazine's popularity grew, the bedroom became too small and production moved to a nearby Jesmond office. Donald also hired another freelance artist, Simon Thorp, whose work had impressed him. For over a decade, these four would be the nucleus of Viz.
In 1985, a deal was signed with Virgin Books to publish the comic nationally every two months, starting with the 13th issue, dated August 1985. In 1987, the Virgin director responsible for Viz, John Brown, set up his own publishing company, John Brown Publishing, to handle Viz. Sales exceeded a million by the end of 1989, making Viz for a time one of the biggest-selling magazines in the country. Inevitably, a number of imitations of Viz were launched, but these never matched the original in popularity, and rarely in quality.
Sales steadily declined from the mid-1990s to around 200,000 in 2001, by which time Chris Donald had resigned as editor and passed control to an "editorial cabinet" comprising his brother Simon, Dury, Thorp and new recruits Davey Jones and Alex Collier. In June 2001, the comic was acquired as part of a £6.4 million deal by I Feel Good, a company belonging to ex-Loaded editor James Brown, and increased in frequency to ten times a year. In 2003, it changed hands again when IFG were bought out by Dennis Publishing. Soon after, Simon Donald quit his role as co-editor, in an attempt to develop a career in television. In July 2018, Dennis Publishing were bought by Exponent, a British private equity firm.
Much of the non-cartoon material such as the newspaper spoofs are written by the editorial team – Graham Dury, Simon Thorp and Davey Jones – with contributions from Robin Halstead, Jason Hazeley, Joel Morris and Alex Morris, the authors of The Framley Examiner, and by James MacDougall, Christina Martin and Paul Roberts.
Viz and several Dennis Publishing titles including Cyclist, Expert Reviews, and Fortean Times were retained by Exponent when the company and most of its titles were sold to competitor Future plc in 2021 and by then operating as Viz Holdings Ltd, part of Broadleaf Group.
Metropolis International acquired several titles from Broadleaf Group in December 2021, including Viz.
Notable strips
Many Viz characters have featured in long-running strips, becoming well known in their own right, including spin-off cartoons. Characters often have rhyming or humorous taglines, such as Roger Mellie, the Man on the Telly; Nobby's Piles; Johnny Fartpants; Buster Gonad; Sid the Sexist; Sweary Mary or Finbarr Saunders and his Double Entendres. Others are based on stereotypes of British culture, mostly via working class characters, such as Biffa Bacon, Cockney Wanker and The Fat Slags. Some are aimed upwards, parodying the upper-middle classes and elites, such as the pseudo-leftist but privileged 'Student Grant', 'Nanny No Dumps' and the hypocritical Tory MP 'Baxter Basics', named after John Major's "Back to Basics" speech. In addition to this, the comic also contains plenty of 'in jokes' referring to people and places in and around Newcastle upon Tyne.Many strips appear only once. These very often have extremely surreal or bizarre storylines, and often feature celebrities. For example: "Paul Daniels's Jet-Ski Journey to the Centre of Elvis", and "Arse Farm – Young Pete and Jenny Nostradamus were spending the holidays with their Uncle Jed, who farmed arses deep in the heart of the Sussex countryside...". The latter type often follows the style of Enid Blyton and other popular children's adventure stories of the 1950s. Several strips were single-panel, one-off puns, such as "Daft Bugger", which featured two bored, uninterested men engaged in the act of buggery; the buggerer then states that he has forgotten his car keys.
The one-off strips often have ludicrously alliterative and/or rhyming titles, for example: "Reverend Milo's Lino Rhino", "Max's Laxative Saxophone Taxi', and "Scottie Trotter's Tottie Alottment". Some strips are built entirely around absurd puns, such as "Noah's Arse" and "Feet and Two Reg".
Most of the stories take place in the fictitious town of Fulchester. Originally the setting of the British TV programme Crown Court, the name was adopted by the Viz team. Billy the Fish plays for Fulchester United F.C. There is innuendo in the name: the Internet domain fuck.co.uk was at one time held by fans of Viz who claimed to be promoting the Fulchester Underwater Canoeing Klubb. A significant number of strips, most of which centre on child characters, are set in Barnton.
One of the most pun-based strips was "George Bestial", about famous footballer George Best committing bestiality. The strip was discontinued after the death of Best, but has since reappeared.
Viz also lampoons political ideas – both left-wing ideals, in strips such as "The Modern Parents", and right-wing ones such as "Baxter Basics", "Major Misunderstanding", "Victorian Dad" and numerous strips involving tabloid columnists Garry Bushell and Richard Littlejohn, portraying them as obsessed with homosexuality, political correctness and non-existent left-wing conspiracies to the exclusion of all else. Holocaust denier David Irving featured as Dick Dastardly in the Wacky Races spoof, "Wacky Racists".
In keeping with the comic's irreverent and deliberately non-conformist style, the Duke of Edinburgh was portrayed as a culturally insensitive, dim-witted xenophobe in a strip "HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and his Jocular Larks", about the Duke making outrageously ill-informed comments to a young Chinese victim of the collapse of a residential block.
Occasionally, celebrities are granted the 'honour' of strips all to themselves. Billy Connolly has had more than one about him trying to ingratiate himself with the Queen and Bob Hope had a strip featuring the comedian trying to think up amusing last words to utter on his deathbed. The singer Elton John has also appeared frequently in recent issues as a double-dealing Del Boy-type character attempting to pull off small-time criminal scams such as tobacco smuggling, benefit fraud and cheating on fruit machines. Most recently, he was seen posing as a window cleaner and conning customers to pay him, before being mistaken for a Peeping Tom and given a thorough hiding. The strips always end with Elton being beaten at his own game by one or more of his musical contemporaries from the 1970s and 1980s. Other celebs to have been featured in their own strips include Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand, Esther Rantzen, Stephen Fry, Noel Edmonds, Jimmy Savile, Johnny Vaughan, Adam Ant, Jimmy Hill, Noddy Holder, Boy George, Freddie Garrity, Steve McFadden, Morrissey, Busted, Eminem, Big Daddy, Danny Baker and plenty more.
In 2002, British comedian Johnny Vegas sold the exclusive rights to his wedding photographs to Viz for £1, in a flippant dig at celebrity couples who sold the rights to their wedding photos to glossy magazines such as OK! for anything up to £1 million.
Serial killers Fred West and Harold Shipman have also featured in a strip as rival neighbours trying to kill the old woman next door and foiling each other's plans.