If you want to see an eye-opening exhibition of surreal contemporary art, here
is a show that far supercedes the Turner Prize. One piece tells the story,
in words and pictures, of the Outcast of the Pony Ballet School, at
the end of which it is revealed that Phil Mitchell of EastEnders is
really a princess. Another depicts The suffering of the Christ, as
Jesus experiences a series of cartoon accidents on his walk to the Cross,
involving a food blender, a rake and a Frank Spencer-style roller-skating
crash through a sheet of plate glass. Welcome to the world of Viz.
The potty-mouthed comic masterpiece that describes itself as “the s*****est
magazine in Britain and possibly the world” is 30 years old this month. The
anniversary is celebrated in a new exhibition of original artwork at the
Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury, West London. The show surveys the evolution of Viz
through hand-drawn covers, full-page cartoons and multi-panel strips from
the very first — photocopied — issue to recent editions.
Defying all expectations, the Viz cast of daft, eccentric and blatantly
obscene characters is still going strong: the Fat Slags and Sid the Sexist,
Biffa Bacon, Spoilt Bastard, Johnny Fartpants, the Pathetic Sharks, Mrs
Brady Old Lady, Black Bag the faithful border bin-liner, Roger Mellie the
Man on the Telly, Finbarr Saunders and his double entendres, Buster Gonad
and his unfeasibly large testicles and many more.
Why has it survived? Speaking from Viz HQ in Newcastle, Simon “Thorpy”
Thorp, one of the artist-editors, says: “I suppose because there is nothing
else like it.”
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, some have responded to the 30th birthday by asking
whether Viz has outlived its useful life — as if a dirty-talking
comic needed to have a “useful” life in the first place. But others come to
praise Viz, not to bury it. It changed publishing and comedy culture
in Britain. And its intelligence and artfulness still put it way above the
mass of today’s self-consciously offensive comedy to which it was the
unwitting midwife.
It was November 1979 when a 19-year-old DHSS clerk from Newcastle, Chris
Donald, along with his schoolmate John Brownlow and 15-year-old brother
Simon, published 150 copies of their anarchic comic/fanzine in a “Bumper
Monster Christmas Edition” (ie, 12 pages) priced 20p — 30p to students — and
swiftly sold the lot in a local pub. The sporadic publication built up a
local following until, in 1985, they signed a deal with Virgin to publish
nationally every two months. Two years later Virgin’s publishing executive
John Brown set up on his own and took the Viz crew with him. By the
early 1990s they were selling more than a million copies.
Donald quit the magazine he had founded in 1999, his brother Simon and writing
partner Alex Collier left in 2003. The three Viz mainstays now are
Thorp, Graham Dury and Davey Jones — unlike the founders, all are graduates
and none are Geordies. The magazine is published ten times a year by Felix
Dennis and sells 80,000-odd an issue, far fewer than at its heady peak but
still healthy in the turmoil of the magazine world today.
In any case the value of Viz cannot be measured in sales alone.
Inspired by punk, Viz was an ordure-packed hand grenade tossed into
staid British culture. Until it arrived there was nothing to fill the gap
between old-fashioned kids’ comics and soft porn. Private Eye
and Punch seemed like comics for old men. The satirical writer Ed Barrett
remembers the “genuine shock” of being introduced to Viz
in the Eighties: “It was the first funny new thing I had seen for years”. At
once schoolboy-daft and gratuitously offensive and obscene, it exuded an
earthy rudeness that drew on all sorts of comic traditions from Hogarth to
saucy seaside postcards, packaged in well-executed send-ups of traditional
comics such as Beano and Dandy.
In the 1990s Viz inspired the launch of the new “lads’ mag” Loaded,
edited by James Brown — who had sold copies of Viz in Leeds and
later briefly owned it — and helped to usher in a new age of irreverence.
Much of what we now take for granted — such as the celebrity “news” stories
that are staples of the satirical websites — was pioneered in Viz.
The magazine’s mock letters pages — “the page you write and it’s always
s***e” — and Top Tips feature are still among the
sharpest-written things in the English language.
But the cartoons remain at the heart of Viz. The work exhibited at the
Cartoon Museum confirms that those who see only cheap scatology and sexual
perversion are missing the effort that goes into the tightly packed ideas
and detailed artwork. The museum has blown up one Thorp classic featuring
more than 150 Viz characters for a competition to see who can name
the most. Then there is Thorp the art graduate’s striking take on Van Eyk’s The
Arnolfini Marriage (1434), in which the famous couple are depicted as
the drunkard Eight Ace — “the thirsty family man” — and his benighted wife,
black eyes and all.
The principals work in the apparently monastic atmosphere of the Viz
office. “We haven’t had an editor for ten years,” says Thorp; the
artist-editors decide everything collectively, although Viz does not
look as if it is designed by a committee. While the layout is now done on
computers, in terms of drawing “if anything we’ve taken a step backwards in
time, we use nib pens now, Victorian technology, where we used to use modern
rotary pens”, according to Thorp. Panicking about future stocks of the
precious nibs, they bought a lifetime’s supply for £2,000. “It was about the
size of a shoebox so you looked in there and thought: ‘Well, there’s your
life’.”
Today too many leading stand-ups or TV panellists seem convinced that simply
being insulting about soft targets is enough. But what sets Viz apart
from the rest is its comic intelligence. Viz does jokes without any
real agenda. It will be offensive and obscene if the artists think it is
funny. But, while it is entirely possible to be extremely offensive and very
funny, one does not necessarily lead to the other. As Thorp says: “It’s got
to be funny first — and then if you have the sharp intake of breath that’s
probably all right. But if you have the sharp intake of breath first, you
probably need to funny it up a bit more.”
The working-class caricatures such as Sid the Sexist and the Fat Slags have
often caused controversy, although they always seem to me to have a warmth
that sets them apart from the moral snobbery of most chav-bashing. On one
infamous occasion Viz was taken to task by the United Nations for an
insensitive strip entitled The Thieving Gypsy Bastards (strangely not
in the exhibition). In 2001 it was widely denounced over a cartoon called Harold
and Fred – They Make Ladies Dead, in which the mass murderers
Harold Shipman and Fred West were neighbours competing to try to kill an old
lady. In response Simon Donald argued that “the funny thing about Harold
and Fred is not the murders or murderers themselves but the clash
between the comic format and the darkness of the subject.” An echo of the
Ancient Roman Cicero’s suggestion that “an indecency decently put is the
thing we laugh at hardest”.
It is Viz’s proud boast that you will learn nothing from reading it.
Yet the exhibition is a reminder that Viz has made acute jokes about
the hypocrisies of both the old left and right through characters such as
Millie Tant or Baxter Basics. Its observations have moved with the times —
the Modern Parents strip, for example. has evolved into a scathing
mickey-take of the eco-pieties of deep green poseurs — while retaining its
fundamental fart-gag outlook on life.
But my favourites have always been the Bottom Inspectors, uniformed prodnoses
with the power to strip-search and imprison members of the public for
wearing women’s underwear or having piles or “third-degree skid marks”. It
is a pointed and very funny reference to the increased police powers to pry
(with echoes of the paedophile panics in which innocent parents were accused
of abusing their children by real-life bottom inspectors). I was the editor
of Living Marxism magazine from the late 1980s, and recall wanting to
run articles as challenging as the Bottom Inspectors. The late Auberon
Waugh, a great Viz fan, compared the Bottom Inspectors to Orwell’s
attack on Stalinism. These days they are sometimes drawn by an artist from
the Beano.
As its grand exhibition opens, what future for the mighty Viz, which
the prickly Mark. E Smith of the Fall claimed had lost its edge back in
1986? It is ageing and so, it seems, are its readers; the publisher’s view
is that the same people buy it, just less often, now that both the frequency
and price have increased. The hardback annual “best of” collection always
does well — the new edition, The Council Gritter, is just out
along with the Magna Fartlet, a pocket-sized collection of “10,000
rude words and phrases to suit every occasion”.
So can it defy the cynics for another 30 years? “I hope so,” Thorp says.
“There’s nothing else we can really do. We can’t do any proper work.”
30 Years of Viz is at the Cartoon Museum, WC1 (020-7580 8155; www.cartoonmuseum.org),
until Jan 24
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