a b "Cyclist, Viz, and Fortean Times acquired by Metropolis Group". Metropolis International (Press release). 20 December 2021. 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". The comic was started in Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1979 [5] 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. 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. In 1985, a deal was signed with Virgin Books to publish the comic nationally every two months, starting with the 13th issue, dated August 1985. In 1987, the Virgin director responsible for Viz, John Brown, set up his own publishing company, John Brown Publishing, to handle Viz. Sales exceeded a million by the end of 1989, [10] making Viz for a time one of the biggest-selling magazines in the country. Inevitably, a number of imitations of Viz were launched, but these never matched the original in popularity, and rarely in quality. [12]

Convince friends that you have a high powered job in the City by leaving for work at 6am every morning, arriving home at 10 at night, never keeping social appointments and dropping down dead at the age of 36 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"). A one-off TV programme Viz – The Documentary was shown on Britain's Channel 4 in 1990, spoofing serious investigative TV shows like Panorama or Dispatches while telling the story of Viz.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. [29] 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 [ who?] to be more descriptive than insulting. [ citation needed] However, after several runs of the strip, Viz agreed to change her name to " Tasha Slappa". In December 2011, Viz produced three animated shorts for Channel 4's Comedy Blaps with Baby Cow, voiced by Steve Coogan, Sarah Millican, Simon Greenall and Gavin Webster. [24] Pyton was a similar comic from Norway which was quite popular in the Nordic countries in the 1990s; the Finnish translation of the Pyton comic continued as the comic Myrkky until 2009.

The comic was reprimanded by the United Nations after featuring a strip called "The Thieving Gypsy Bastards". [28] 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. [ citation needed]Don't invite drug addicts to your house on Boxing Day. They may find the offer of cold turkey embarrassing or offensive The case was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum (donated to Comic Relief); but many Viz readers believed that the comic had given permission for their use, leading to Top Tips submissions such as: This article may contain indiscriminate, excessive, or irrelevant examples. Please improve the article by adding more descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for further suggestions. ( March 2022) VHS releases of each series went on sale during the same months of broadcast. Chris Donald revealed in his book Rude Kids – The Unfeasibly True Story of Viz that the magazine's publishers had pencilled in Student Grant as the next animated release but this never came to fruition. He went on to say that he was pleased that the project did not go ahead as he felt the quality of the previous releases was disappointing. A computer game using Viz characters was produced in 1991 by Virgin Interactive. The game sold well; however, the critical response was mostly negative.