Preview: VIZ No.284

The new issue of Viz is out now, with another 52 pages packed with fun for all ages, - as long as you're over 18 and don't mind a bit of swearing and smut. 

Viz has always been more than just sweary humour of course. It's the nation's premier satirical comic, - a tradition that dates back to the Victorian comics such as Funny Folks and Ally Sloper's Half Holiday. That's why a lot of Viz's imitators failed. They copied the rudeness, but not the clever social satire. 

This issue sees regular favourites Sid the Sexist, Drunken Bakers, Fat Slags and more, plus many other strips and parodies. Here's a little sample...

GILBERT RATCHET by Davey Jones.

NASH GORDON by Tom Paterson.

ROBIN HOOD by Simon Ecob.

I'm very pleased to say that I'm back in this issue, with an all-new Felix and his Amazing Underpants page. Plot and artwork by me, script by Graham Dury and Simon Thorp, in which Felix gets involved in Brexit-related shenanigans. 

I first worked for Viz about 30 years ago, and became a regular in the 1990s until a few years ago, so it's great to be back. I don't know how regularly I'll be contributing as each idea is judged on a case by case basis, but I'm working on another script right now so fingers crossed! 

Later this year, Viz notches up its 40th anniversary, so give one of Britain's longest-running comics your support and buy the latest edition this week! £3.70 for 52 pages, available from newsagents and supermarkets across the UK.

The Christmas BEEZER (1989)

In 1981, The Beezer had shrunk from a 16 page tabloid to a 24 page A4 comic (same size as The Beano) and in doing so had lost some of its charm. Nevertheless, it was still a good comic, as this Christmas issue from 1989 demonstrates.

The cover is by Robert Nixon, an excellent artist who had worked for DC Thomson in the 1960s, jumped over to IPC in the 1970s, and returned to Thomsons again in the 1980s. It was a time when some much sought-after artists such as Bob Nixon would work exclusively for one comics company or another.

Here's a handful of festive strips from inside. Firstly, Colonel Blink, drawn by the often under-rated George Martin...

A nicely designed Baby Crockett spread by Bill Ritchie...

Another Bill Ritchie page, Pam and Scratcher...

A wonderfully seasonal Pop, Dick, and Harry page by Brian Walker...

The bizarre Phoot and Mouse by Tom Paterson...

...and on the back page, Sting by Bob Dewar...

Another Christmas comic soon! Which year will the Blimey-Timey Machine end up in next? Hang on for the ride and find out!

The Christmas BUSTER (1984)

By 1984, Buster was still printed on increasingly flimsy newsprint but it contained some good stuff. This festive cover by veteran artist Reg Parlett is simple but effective. I wonder how many Christmas strips Reg drew in his long career that stretched to about 60 years?

Inside, The Leopard from Lime Street continued to be one of the most popular British superheroes around. I think the art was by Mike White by this time...

School Fun had merged into Buster months before, and appeared as a separate pull-out section, akin to Chips in Whizzer. The School Fun Section only had 12 pages though, (leaving Buster with 20) so it wasn't an equal 50/50 split like Whizzer and Chips. Artwork on School Team was usually by Vic Neill but this is a fill-in by Doug Jensen. (Thanks to Andy Boal for his observations.)

School Belle was another strip that had joined the comic from School Fun. Art by Tom Paterson...

A festive Faceache page by Ken Reid, even scrunging at Christmas. 

Good Guy that issue had a smashing festive decorative border. Terry Bave going the extra mile there...

On the back page, Buster's Diary, with Reg Parlett again on the artwork, and the story ending with the traditional slap-up feed!

Another Christmas comic tomorrow. Or maybe even two! Stay tuned!

Comic oddities: FUN AND GAMES (1997)

In March 1997 a company called Nexus Media ventured into the traditional British humour comics market with a fortnightly called Fun and Games. It was a twist on the 'two-in-one' format originated by Whizzer and Chips in that Fun and Games were separate titles. In this instance, Fun was a 24 page A4 size comic and Games was a 24 page half-size A5 mag wrapped around the parent comic. (See photos). 

It may come as no surprise that the editor of Fun and Games was Bob Paynter, who had been the original editor of Whizzer and Chips (and the group editor of the IPC humour comics). The cover artist of Fun was Tom Paterson, a familiar name to readers of UK humour comics.

Another great UK comics stalwart was Terry Bave who provided the artwork for pages 2 and 3 of Fun, with a new strip, Big Baby across a spread announcing the prizes on offer. 

On the back page was a brand new Tom Paterson strip; The Invisible Family. Excellent stuff, unfortunately interrupted by a 'PRIZE CHANCE' blurb pasted into one panel. These were tenuous links to puzzles in the Games magazine.

The rest of Fun were reprints of old humour strips licensed from Fleetway. Again, marred by big PRIZE blurbs added to the pages. 

Some of the reprints were resized and redesigned to turn a single pager into a double pager, as with this Wear 'Em Out Wilf strip.

Some strips appear to be taken from annuals, and split across two weeks. For example this Frankie Stein story seems to end abruptly, with a tagline added telling the reader they'll have to wait until issue 2 for the outcome.  

As you may have noticed, for some reason the reprints had their original logos removed and replaced by bland typeset ones. It didn't exactly benefit a comic that already looked like it was done on the cheap. 

Overall, Fun and Games was an interesting experiment that perhaps could have succeeded on a higher budget with material designed for the purpose rather than reprints with 'PRIZE' blurbs added. I've no idea how long it lasted as I only bought issue 1, but I don't recall seeing it around for long. If anyone knows the number of issues it ran for, please let me know and I'll update this post. 

Tom Paterson arrives in the Christmas Viz

Veteran humour artist Tom Paterson makes his very welcome first appearance to the pages of Viz in the Christmas issue that goes on sale today. 

Tom, a highly respected cartoonist who has worked in the comics industry for 40 years, is well known for his hilarious artwork on strips such as Sweeny Toddler for Whoopee! and Calamity James for The Beano. Now he's turned his hand to the adult comic market to produce Jasper the Gasper for Viz.

If the name sounds familiar it's because it's a spoof of the classic Ken Reid strip, Jasper the Grasper from Wham! But where Ken's character was a grasping Victorian miser, Tom's Jasper is gasping for a fag. Don't worry if you're not familiar with Ken Reid's 1965 strip; Tom's character is brilliant in its own right.

The excellent strip runs to two packed pages, with Tom using a similar style to that which he developed in the 1990s for Buster's Watford Gapp, King of the Rap.

The latest Viz also features many other strips by creators such as Paul Palmer, Davey Jones, Simon Thorp and myself. Out now. £3.20 with a free 2014 calendar. 

Cover by Simon Thorp

This week in 1989: BUSTER

Here's a few pages from the issue of Buster that was on sale this very week in 1989, kicking off with a cover by Tom Paterson. Note the '32 pages' blurb. This was Fleetway's advantage over DC Thomson at the time, when Beano and Dandy still only had 24 pages. 

The Buster strip continued on the back page...

Inside, something a bit different than my two regular pages. Instead of Tom Thug's Skooldayz and Pete and his Pimple being separate strips both characters co-starred in a two page story. Incidentally, the villa shown in panel 7 is based on a tatty dive I stayed at in Kavos the previous year. As for the little character shown coming out of the door, that's one of The Vampire Brats, - a strip I drew that would replace Pete's Pimple a few weeks later.

Jack Oliver was one of the best writer/artists to have graced British comics and he produced a lot of material for Buster over the years. Curiously, when he did Vid Kid it was under his pseudonym as, er, Sue Denim! Nice work. Not so sure about the garish limited colour overlays Fleetway were using back then!

Mike Higgs was a hero of mine when he was writing/drawing The Cloak in Pow! back in 1967 and it was a privilege to work as his assistant for a while in the mid 1980s. By 1989 he'd returned to weekly comics to draw Thundercap and it was great to be in the same comic as him. That was something I could never have imagined happening when I was eight years old reading The Cloak!

That same week saw the publication of the Buster Holiday Special. Here's the cover by Mark Bennigton...

The special had 64 pages, many of which were sadly filled with reprint due to budget cutbacks. To compensate for this, editor Allen Cummings had some characters team up to fit in all the favourites. Being aware of this is why I'd had Tom & Pete in one strip in the weekly and now their holiday adventure continued in the special...

Other team-ups in the Holiday Special included Ricky Rainbow and Chalky drawn by Bob Hill...

Melvyn's Mirror and Nipper drawn by Vic Neill...

...and Mighty Mouth and Weedy Willy drawn by Terry Bave...

(Have to say, it's a shame the other artists didn't design a special team-up logo for their pages but the strips are still great and I bet readers must have been pleasantly surprised by various characters meeting each other.) 

I hope you've enjoyed this trip back to 1989. I must admit the 1980s still seem very recent to me, which is one reason I don't cover that decade very often, but if you'd like to see more from that time let me know.

Pete's Pimple in Buster... before the merger

Remember the blog post I did a while back about how Tom Thug once appeared in Whizzer and Chips to promote Oink? Well, I've just found an issue of Buster I'd forgotten about which guest-starred Pete and his Pimple as part of the same promotion. 

Buster issue dated 26th March 1988 featured a half page Pete and his Pimple strip I was commissioned to do, which makes this my first Buster strip. (How could I have forgotten?) Not only did they let a then-relative-newcomer like me loose in the pages of this fine, well established comic but I even got to co-star Buster himself in the story, - although as you can see, I didn't show him a lot of respect! 

As most comic readers of the time know, the promotion sadly had little effect on Oink's falling sales (no thanks to WH Smith top-shelving it well away from other comics) and Oink! actually merged into Buster later that same year, bringing Pete and his Pimple into the comic on a regular basis. 

Art by Tom Paterson. Colours by John Burns.

Interestingly, although I was able to do a full on gross strip for the advert above, editor Allen Cummings didn't want any pimple pus bursts seen in the regular Pete and his Pimple strip when it became a fixture in Buster. I think it took the edge off the strip but I completely agreed with Allen's point as such gross humour was fine for Oink! but not suited to the tone of Buster. 

As it turned out, Pete only had a run of six months or so in Buster. Whilst Oink's older readers had voted it one of their favourites, Buster's younger audience didn't really go for it. (Well, what seven year old can relate to zits?) 

On the other hand, Tom Thug, which had also transferred from Oink, shot up the Buster popularity charts. I guess kids of all ages always like to see the bully become the butt of the jokes, and long may it be so.

It's Judge Sweeny Toddler!

Back in 1985 IPC indulged in a rare moment of self-parody in the comics departments when the cover of their humour weekly Whoopee! spoofed 2000AD. For one week only the popular bad baby strip Sweeny Toddler became Judge Sweeny Toddler in a homage to Judge Dredd. Even the logo for that issue was redesigned to mimic the then-current 2000AD masthead.

Script by Graham Exton, artwork by Tom Paterson. Anyone found not laughing will be sentenced to 30 days in an iso-cube.