"You should be ashamed of yourself"
...is the response of someone close-ish to me when they discovered that I occasionally write something for VizComic
It made me chortle a little, which is appropriate. Because, almost by accident, Viz is the greatest satirical magazine the country has produced for decades. Yes, it has its scatological moments, and no, it's never Political with a capital P.
It's as scathing as ever as it holds up a mirror to societal vignettes. Rather than an overarching manifesto, it shows the grubbier sides of life (sometimes). The work of Barney Farmer & Lee Healey produces the ever-dark Drunken Bakers, shot through with desperation and regrets of the past; or how about Whoops Aisle Apocalypse, where a main character is obsessed with supermarket markdowns, and the strip generally ends in a mass brawl amongst shoppers fighting over £1.20 chicken strips. (That character also looks a lot like Geoffrey from Rainbow, for some reason. Barney didn't confirm or deny it when I asked him).
Elsewhere there's Foodie Bollocks, skewering snobs of scran delightfully;
My favourite of all time, though, is Davey Jones. A surrealist par excellence, whose work deserves to be up there with Vic and Bob, the Pythons, and Spike Milligan. From Vibrating Bum-Faced Goats to a deliciously depressing strip about the ghost of Bruce Forsyth living inside a crumbling castle in the shape of his own head, via Gilbert Ratchet and Tinribs - the man is an absolute genius.
So many iconic strips, too: Terry Fuckwitt is an incredible, constantly perplexing, wonderfully-delivered ongoing slice of Escher-esque mad logic. Through the looking glass, upside down, intra-dimensionally - somewhere it makes sense.
The tropes of 'kid has a special power' are lovingly reworked, too: the long-running Tommy 'Banana' Johnson, with variations on a theme, is the exemplar of that. Viz doesn't reject its past; it celebrates it, embraces it, gives it LSD, and lets it loose.
That's what people get wrong so often about it. It's not just fart jokes, though of course there's plenty of those, too.
What I like the most about Viz, and writing for Viz from time to time, is that basically if something makes Graham and Simon laugh, then it'll get in the comic. Doesn't matter who wrote it, their status, or any crap like that. The main and only requirement? Is it funny or not.
So, no, I'm not ashamed, not least cause I'm in the company of David Bowie (who loved Viz), Peter Cook (who voiced some of the cartoons), Harry Enfield (likewise), and the vast majority of the UK's gigging comedians who subscribe to the comic.
Delighted to say that my latest piece 'Everything's a Competition' is in the Christmas 2024 issue of Viz. Go buy it, you won't regret it.
My back might be fucked, my knee misbehaving too. But my brain's still kind of working, somewhere underneath.
Yabadabadoo! Viz is ace. Long may it reign.
My favourite of all time, though, is Davey Jones. A surrealist par excellence, whose work deserves to be up there with Vic and Bob, the Pythons, and Spike Milligan. From Vibrating Bum-Faced Goats to a deliciously depressing strip about the ghost of Bruce Forsyth living inside a crumbling castle in the shape of his own head, via Gilbert Ratchet and Tinribs - the man is an absolute genius.
So many iconic strips, too: Terry Fuckwitt is an incredible, constantly perplexing, wonderfully-delivered ongoing slice of Escher-esque mad logic. Through the looking glass, upside down, intra-dimensionally - somewhere it makes sense.
The tropes of 'kid has a special power' are lovingly reworked, too: the long-running Tommy 'Banana' Johnson, with variations on a theme, is the exemplar of that. Viz doesn't reject its past; it celebrates it, embraces it, gives it LSD, and lets it loose.
That's what people get wrong so often about it. It's not just fart jokes, though of course there's plenty of those, too.
What I like the most about Viz, and writing for Viz from time to time, is that basically if something makes Graham and Simon laugh, then it'll get in the comic. Doesn't matter who wrote it, their status, or any crap like that. The main and only requirement? Is it funny or not.
So, no, I'm not ashamed, not least cause I'm in the company of David Bowie (who loved Viz), Peter Cook (who voiced some of the cartoons), Harry Enfield (likewise), and the vast majority of the UK's gigging comedians who subscribe to the comic.
Delighted to say that my latest piece 'Everything's a Competition' is in the Christmas 2024 issue of Viz. Go buy it, you won't regret it.
My back might be fucked, my knee misbehaving too. But my brain's still kind of working, somewhere underneath.
Yabadabadoo! Viz is ace. Long may it reign.
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