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British adult comic magazine

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.

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 (30p to students) 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' (episode 4 'The Young Guns') which first aired in March/April 1984 and was repeated on BBC1. A further special edition was issued in May 1985 as issue 12a. 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 (IFG), 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 and Christina Martin. Viz and several Dennis Publishing titles including Cyclist, Expert Reviews, and Fortean Times are 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.

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 (thus making him "daft"). 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 to an extent in "Student Grant"), and right wing ones such as "Baxter Basics", "Major Misunderstanding", "Victorian Dad" and numerous strips involving tabloid columnists Garry Bushell ("Garry Bushell the Bear") and Richard Littlejohn ("Richard Littlecock" and "Robin Hood 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 (but ended up with a torrent of swearing). 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 (as the headmaster of "Pop School", as "Sir Jimmy Savile, the Owl" and in "Jimmy Savile's Haunted Head"), Johnny Vaughan, Adam Ant, Jimmy Hill, Noddy Holder, Boy George, Freddie Garrity, Steve McFadden, Morrissey (constantly finding daffodils stuck into the seat of his trousers, parodying his appearances on Top of the Pops), 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 (and over) £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 (Harold and Fred – they make ladies dead! ).

The comic also prints regular satirical pastiches of typical tabloid and local media news stories. One issue featured a small write up of a wedding. However, in true Viz style, the wedding featured a lecherous groom marrying his pregnant (and significantly underaged) girlfriend, eyeing up her younger sister while being called a "cradle snatching cunt" by her father (with the resulting fight prompting the bride's mother to cry out "less it, for fuck's sake" before the police arrived). Another such story revolved around a man who won an inconsequential amount of money on the pools, and began living an inordinately lavish lifestyle ("I bought the wife a new cover for her ironing board" being one such example of his largesse), which collapsed when the money inevitably ran out, much to his chagrin ("I wish I'd never set eyes on the money"). Other stories include ludicrous "kiss and tell" and similar stories by people who are portrayed as mentally disturbed, often with highly bizarre elements; examples include allegations by a man who claimed that, on holiday touring in his caravan, he found a campsite run by Elvis Presley who, when plied with drink, admitted to the Kennedy assassination; another from a retired toilet attendant who described the nature of faeces from various little known celebrities and an elderly woman who blames anti social behaviour in her area on bored Newsnight presenters, as well as a mental home patient who claimed to have had sex with a number of children's TV puppets. Another regular feature is a column by 'Tony Parsehole', a parody of columnist Tony Parsons who frequently writes obituaries about recently deceased celebrities filled entirely with metaphor and empty sentiment which stops abruptly once the required word count is reached (with a note that the invoice is included). Additionally, there were the usual stories revolving around celebrities, some in the "tell all" vein (such as a customs agent who claimed he found drugs in Pamela Anderson's "plastic tits"). If one of a select band of frequently referenced stars is mentioned during these stories, they will be named humorously. Among others, Lemmy Kilmister will invariably be referred to as "Lemmy out of Motörhead", Bono as "Bonio" and Sting as "Sting (real name Gordon Sting)", mixing the singer's birth and stage names. One particularly memorable piece of tabloid esque wordplay parody, involving a fictional plot to assassinate Paul McCartney by a disgruntled former roadie, read 'Top Pop Mop Top Pot Shot Plot Flops', or with a gonad focused violent encounter with a deranged Mr. T and a 1970s playground toy, 'Crackers Baracus turns Macca's knackers into clackers'. Photos in Viz news stories are often crudely edited and altered, much to the detriment of the subjects involved (teeth blacked out, facial features shrunken/enlarged, and so on). In the case of the aforementioned Lemmy, for one photo the editors simply took a picture of a man wearing a baseball cap and drew a crude approximation of Lemmy's facial hair and warts on his face (as well as writing "Motörhead" on the cap). Photos will frequently be captioned only with the name of the subject and a comma followed by "yesterday", e. g. "A train, yesterday". Following the format common in tabloid newspapers, paragraphs within written articles include 'cross heads' which, in normal journalism, serve to indicate the theme of the following sections. In Viz however, while these words often start out being relevant to the story, they quickly stray for comedic value and therefore have little or no relevance to the following text. The words will often follow a theme, such as TV cops' names or types of curry, and will sometimes spell out a sentence, rarely relevant, if read separately from the story.

This section features letters both written by the editors and sent in by readers often with ridiculous names, usually in the form of obviously fictitious anecdotes (one reader claimed that by defecating on the high seas, he was able to expel a single unbroken "monster" turd; however, nobody wanted to grant him research funds for further attempts) or various observations, such as the "children say the funniest things" type (one issue featured numerous variations of a reader's young son making a reference to masturbation during bathtime, such as "playing with [his] pork sword"; in this case, when the reader entered the bathroom, she discovered her son had indeed fashioned a sword out of pork sausages). Since Viz claims to offer £5 for the best letter published in a particular issue, many letters end with the inquiry, "Do I win £5?" Many make observations about celebrities (especially those who have recently died; one letter printed after the deaths of Gianni Versace and Princess Diana remarked on both their violent deaths and friendship with Elton John, stating "I tell you what. If I was George Michael right about now, I'd be shitting myself") or current events (a 2000 issue remarked "The Government spent £850 million on the Millennium Bug, and the only thing that crashes is Q [Desmond Llewelyn] out of the Bond films"). Most employ deliberate misunderstandings for comic effect (e. g. "These so called speed bumps are a joke. If anything they slow you down" or "I went to one of these so called Gentlemen's clubs and was shocked to see it was full of Women. To make matters worse many of them were wearing very little clothing", or the letter whose writer mentioned seeing a TV listing for the film The Greatest Story Ever Told and stating their doubt that it would top the story told by their friend about a night spent "with a couple of strippers, a bottle of tequila, and some cocaine"). Often letters feature simple yet absurd statements ("I'm heading off to the pub in a few minutes and wondered if any of your readers fancied joining me for a pint" or "They say size doesn't matter – if that's true, why can't I get these shoes on? "), or improbable situations such as a letter writer responding directly to the letter that preceded theirs in the very same column and issue. A bizarre series of letters from a J Cursiter of Bristol recounted his hobby of watching passers by from "a series of cunningly disguised hides". It is unclear whether Cursiter is a reader of the comic or a creation of the editors. Often letters are printed that criticise Viz, accusing it of "not being as funny as it used to be", condemning it as being offensive or of complaining about the frequent price rises. These are often published and sometimes even framed in a small section titled "Why I Love My Viz! ", blatantly mocking The Sun newspaper's habit of printing (positive) comments in little frames titled "Why I Love My Sun!" There are often invitations for readers to submit pictures, such as the request for examples of "Insincere Smiles", whereby people sent in pictures cut from newspapers and brochures of celebrities and politicians caught smiling in a manner which looks utterly insincere and forced (Tony Blair featured at least twice). A similar series was of men who were wearing absurdly ill fitting wigs. There's also "Up The Arse Corner", where photographs are submitted of people whose pose, and/or facial expression, could be misconstrued as being in the midst of an act of buggery; a notable example of this was when a letter requested a picture of Ghostbusters actor Ernie Hudson leaning over to sign autographs in front of a cardboard standee of himself, with the writer requesting the picture of "Winston Zeddemore bumming himself". Letterbocks also formerly featured correspondence from, and has brought fame to, the late Abdul Latif, Lord of Harpole, proprietor of the (real) Curry Capital restaurant (formerly the Rupali), Bigg Market. His Lordship often promoted his restaurant with spoof competitions and offers. One, genuine, offer involved getting a 20% discount on orders at his restaurant by bringing in a copy of the current Viz ad for it and pointing at his picture excitedly. In December 2006, he appeared in a seasonal broadcast to rival the Queen's Christmas message.

A semi regular feature in Letterbocks is the "Lame to Fame" column, where writers can send in "claims to fame" where they explain their connection to well known celebrities. The connections are distant or commonplace; for example: "I once had a drink with a bloke who had caught Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon's dog after it had escaped from his big house", and "My sister once shagged Ringo out of The Bootleg Beatles."

Viz has had many different spoof adverts for various items, such as ornaments, dolls, sheds, china plates and novelty chess sets. These poke fun at the genuine adverts for such items in magazines found in the colour supplements of Sunday newspapers. Those found in Viz are absurd, such as a breakfast plate depicting Princess Diana's face in the middle of a fried egg, "No. 22 Shit Street" (which was a diorama of a dilapidated council house complete with rabid dog, youthful vandals and a "gently rusting" washing machine in the front yard), and "Little Ted West", a teddy bear dressed to look like serial killer Fred West. Viz has manufactured some of these items and sold them, including a china plate depicting "The Life of Christ In Cats", featuring pictures of a cat in various stages of Jesus's life, and the "Elvis Presley Dambusters Clock Plate of Tutankhamun", a clock featuring Elvis in the style of Tutankhamun's death mask in addition to Avro Lancaster bomber planes. Many of these adverts had a form with a tick box at the end, with outrageous binding statements in small print that invariably led the purchaser to usury, such as "I enclose £49.50 in an infinite series of escalating payments". Another staple of Viz advertisement parody are the adverts for public and government services which one would normally not expect to find advertised; for example, one ad consisted of the words "Raped? Burgled? Run over? Why not call the police", placed next to a picture of a grinning policeman. Another ad exhorted male readers to join the British Army, because "all the birds are gagging for squaddies" (with the fine print on the reply coupon indicating to the respondent that spending "33 years hiding behind some garden wall in Belfast should just about see [him] right" when it comes to the ladies). The 'PC Brigade' were also featured as if they were the fire brigade, stating they attended emergencies such as 'collapsed turbans' or freeing gypsies from railings while leaving British people stuck tight. They also carried the slogan 'Fueling middle England's persecution complex since 1958'. A long running joke has been small adverts for bizarre sheds ("TV Sheds", "Shed Bikes", "Shed Snakes", etc.). Testament to the quality of these is invariably provided by a Mrs. B. of Essex. Adverts for loan companies have been parodied frequently since approximately 2000, usually with an absurd twist, such as ones aimed at vagrants, offering loans of between 5 and 10 pence for a cup of tea. Roger Mellie has frequently starred in such spoof advertisements, both in separate sections in Viz and also his own strip. Mellie is portrayed as someone who is willing to endorse any product whatsoever for money or gifts. Scatological humour also featured heavily in the ads; one ad featured "Clag Gone", which consisted of a stationary bicycle with no seat. Instead, the rider simply placed his naked bottom onto the "Clag Gone"'s wire brush wheel, which then cleaned away "winnits", "tag nuts" and "dangleberries". Another ad featured a tourist package where eggs were served in great quantities; a happy tourist was featured saying "I'm egg bound for Jamaica!". Genuine competitions have been run by Viz, with proper prizes. One of the earliest was a competition to win 'a ton of money' a pointed satire of tabloid newspapers promising huge cash prizes to boost circulation, the prize was in fact a tonne of one and two pence pieces, equivalent to a few hundred pounds sterling. Recently, they were giving away a plasma screen television provided by the producers of Freddy vs. Jason. Viz poked fun at the movie, describing it as "shite" in the competition description, and described the runners up prizes of DVDs of the film as "frankly worthless", which led to the producers refusing to hand over the prize, for insulting their film. Another spin off was "Roger's Profanisaurus", a thesaurus of (often freshly coined) rude words, phrases and sexual slang submitted by readers. It has been published as several books, the 2002 print of which has a foreword by Terry Jones. This also often features genuine regional slang. Roger's Profanisaurus has become a popular downloadable app for Apple's iPhone. In November 1987, a free mini issue of Viz was given away with issue 23 of computer magazine Your Sinclair. This was done in response to Your Sinclair's competitor, CRASH, giving away a mini copy of Oink! comic with their issue 42.

Occasionally photo strips are included. These parody the format of supernatural and true love British comics which were popular with young girl readers in the 1970s and 1980s, such as "Chiller" and "Jackie", as well as the "real life dilemma" photo strips often found in the advice columns of tabloid newspapers. For example, a young woman is convinced that the spirit of her dead husband has possessed the family dog, and after some soul searching, begins a sexual relationship with the dog. A running joke in these stories is that they often feature a car accident in which one of the characters is run down. In every case, the same man is driving the car, and always responds with the same line: "Sorry mate, I didn't see him/her!" The locations for the photo stories are recognisable as the suburbs of Newcastle upon Tyne where the Viz team are based. On occasion, this is explicitly recognised: the one off strip Whitley Baywatch, a spoof of the popular American TV show Baywatch, is based in the North East coastal resort of Whitley Bay. But other stories purporting to be set in London, or without a set location, are often also identifiably near to the Viz editorial offices in Jesmond. In "He just loved to dance" (no. 103), for example, Komal's Tandoori restaurant in West Jesmond is visible. In "Four minutes to fall in love" (no. 107), the Gateshead Millennium Bridge provides a backdrop to the dénouement. An occasionally recurring actor in these strips is Arthur 2 Stroke, now acknowledged as the "Guru of Viz" by Chris Donald founder editor. Arthur, former lead singer of the band The Chart Commandos, still continues to perform with "Big Black Bomb" and is still considered to be an innovating force on the Newcastle music scene. One such photo strip was called "I Believe in Father Christmas", where an adult man believes in Father Christmas. His wife, named Virginia, attempts to convince him otherwise. He visits a department store Father Christmas, just like a child, although he asks for a CD from either Dire Straits or Phil Collins. On Christmas night, the man goes downstairs to the living room, as he hears a noise and figures Father Christmas must have come. However, he is surprised to see that an armed robber has broken into his house, who promptly shoots him and flees. His wife, in shock, tends to her husband as he is badly hurt, and he tells her he was wrong to believe in Father Christmas like some small child. However, the wife tearfully says that Father Christmas did indeed come, and left presents for them. The strip ends with the husband saying to his wife "Yes Virginia, there is a Father Christmas". In his book Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz, the comic's creator Chris Donald claimed that the first legal action ever taken against Viz was initiated by a man who objected to the use of a picture of his house (taken from an estate agent's catalogue) in one of these photo strips, and that the British tabloid newspaper Sunday Mirror tried to provoke media outrage over another photo strip which, if taken out of context, could be misconstrued as making light of the problem of illegal drugs being offered to children. Actor Sean Bean made a one off appearance in 1996 titled "I've Bean to Paradise" where the main character, unhappy with his long term relationship, attempts to seek out for more physically attractive women by undergoing a makeover as a lookalike of the actor (played by himself) and passing himself off as the actor with references to his past screen roles.

The comic was reprimanded by the United Nations after featuring a strip called "The Thieving Gypsy Bastards". UK tabloid newspaper The Sun ran a story suggesting that the principal Roma man who initiated the complaints against Viz ("Don't call us thieving gypsies, says thieving gypsy") had been found guilty of handling stolen property at Preston Crown Court. He had, but in truth the man in question had been supportive of the comic in his correspondence with them and had not made any complaint against the strip. In the same issue Viz ran a short strip called "The Nice, Honest Gypsies", featuring a kindly Gypsy woman selling pegs door to door and helpfully returning forgotten change. The strip "Wanker Watson", a parody of the children's comic character Winker Watson, led to litigation by D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd, the owners of the Winker character. This was after they had issued several warnings previously about infringement of copyright in earlier parody strips, which Viz had ignored. In retaliation, Viz featured a new character called 'D. C. Thompson The Humourless Scottish Git'. However, coinciding with DC Thomson’s legal action, and unaware of it, Dandy editor Maurice Heggie published a good humoured strip in response, "The Jocks and The Geordies", a revival of an old strip from The Dandy, in which the Geordies (clearly representing Viz) competed with the Jocks (clearly representing Thomson) in a competition to design funny cartoon characters. The Geordies' miserable efforts bore sharp similarity to actual Viz characters, such as 'The Boy with Big Pants' which was a reference to Felix and his Amazing Underpants. This served to deflate the situation. (Chris Donald's book Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz, notes the good humoured nature of the latter stages of this episode). Sports clothing manufacturer Kappa insisted that the comic drop the name of one of its characters, "Kappa Slappa", as it had no permission to use the brand name. Kappa also believed that the character in question insulted its customer base. "Slappa" was an obnoxious, uneducated, highly unattractive and sexually promiscuous 14 year old living on a Tyneside council estate, always wearing a Kappa shellsuit. The characterisation was said to be more descriptive than insulting. However, after several runs of the strip, Viz agreed to change her name to "Tasha Slappa". In his book Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz, Chris Donald mentions that he was interviewed by police after giving the go ahead to publish a Top Tip which could have been interpreted as an incitement to carry out a bomb plot. Donald claims that he then accidentally included the offending statement in that year's Viz annual The Sausage Sandwich. It was covered with a sticker reading "PUBLISHERS. Ensure that your editors have read the proofs of your books before printing a quarter of a million of them. J. Brown, London".