VIZ
VIZ is a popular British adult comic magazine. It was started in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1979 by Chris Donald and his brother Simon. What began as a few pages, photocopied and sold to friends, became a publishing phenomenon. The comic's style parodies the strait-laced British comics of the post-war period, notably The Beano and The Dandy.
The comic features rude and tasteless gags and characters like:
- Sid the Sexist - a young man with no sexual experience who boasts of his success with women
- Roger Mellie ("The Man on the Telly") - a foul-mouthed and violent TV presenter
- Spoilt Bastard - a fat, ungrateful boy who manipulates his weak-willed mother
- Biffa Bacon - a boy and his family, all of whom are violent psychopaths
- The Fat Slags - two young women with huge appetites for sex and chips
- Johnny Fartpants - a boy endowed with extreme flatulence
- Norbert Colon - an old miser
- The Modern Parents - and their long-suffering children
- Mr Logic - ("such is my name, therefore one may infer that this strip is in some way about me") a serious young man with no sympathy for other humans
- Finbarr Saunders and his double entendres - a boy with a good ear for homophones (he's homophonic - Fnarr fnarr)
- Farmer Palmer - a paranoid farmer whose catch phrase is "Get orf moi laaaand!"
- Buster Gonad and his unfeasibly large testicles.
- Eight Ace - an alcoholic who drinks 'Ace' beer (eight cans for £1.49)
- Black Bag - a black bin liner which lives the exciting life of a sheepdog
- Mrs Brady the Old Lady - spends all her time exaggerating her age and complaining about the young people of today and how things were different in her day
- Billy the Fish - half man, half fish, he is a star footballer despite being drawn with no legs (he does apparently own a pair of football boots, but it is not clear why)
- Jack Black - a young amateur detective who gets people "busted" for minor technical transgressions.
- S.W.A.N.T a crack paramilitary police team with "Special Weapons and No Tactics" which parodies american SWAT teams.
- Cockney Wanker - a swaggering Londoner who speaks in rhyming slang.
Most of the stories take place in the ficticious town of Fulchester. Fulchester, was originally the setting of the British TV programme Crown Court before the name was adopted by the VIZ team. Billy the Fish played for Fulchester United F.C. 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.
In addition to comic characters, VIZ also includes spoof newspaper articles, advertisements, and letters pages. Another spinoff was "Roger's Profanisaurus", a thesaurus of (often made up) rude words, phrases and sexual slang.
The comic was acquired by John Brown Publishing (JBP) in 1983. At one time the bi-monthly comic reached sales in excess of 1 million before entering into a steady decline since the mid 1990s to around 200,000 (2001). In June 2001 the comic was acquired as part of a £6.4 million deal by I Feel Good Holdings, a company belonging to the ex-Loaded editor James Brown.
See also: British comics
