DoodleBug

March 3, 2013, 3:12 pm

Up next from the teetering pile of smutty comics is this one, called DoodleBug. The last ever issue of it, from 1989, as it happens. I've decided to "do" these things in a roughly chronological order, but that plan'll definitely fall to pieces straight away as I find newer/older comics as I go along. Won't really make any difference in the long term, so it's MORE likely I'll be alternating between "good/readable" comics and "absurdly horrible" comics.

DoodleBug, you'll be (possibly) glad to know, is of the former:

It looks cheap because it is cheap, for DoodleBug is a self-published, mostly one-man-job comic - that man being Royston Robertson (currently working for Private Eye, amongst other things). So, despite looking about 2% more professional than the first issue of Viz even though there's a ten-year gap between them, at least there's an excuse for it.

The jolly home-made "charm" carries on throughout, beginning with the introduction from Dickie Davies:

And carrying on with scrappy arrangements of varying quality:

The better parts of DoodleBug are the full-page strips, beginning with Jesus - "He's a messiah!", by Royston himself:

Also from Royston is Douglas Tooting Witherspoon (MP)...

And Benjamin the Bear:

A lot of the "characters" are aware of this being the last issue of DoodleBug - and Benjamin the Bear's ending there is somehow a lot more satisfying than the Dandy's final issue!

The non-Royston contributions are naturally of varying quality. At one end of the "scale" is the pun-filled Robo-Cod, presented sideways for some reason, by Dick Mastodon (at least that's what it looks like his signature says):

At the bottom end is Jim Greer - He's A Complete Scottish Bastard (He Also Drinks A Lot Of Beer), uncredited possibly out of shame:

And somewhere in the middle is this odd thing - Uncle Fred and his Garden Shed by "Rab" someone-or-other:

The back cover's a nice little mess of credits, strips and back-issue ordering - take note that Mrs. Marrott and her Extremely Vulgar Parrot appears here at roughly the same time as the Viz classic, Bertie Blunt - His Parrot's a Cunt.

So there we go, DoodleBug - definitely not the worst "alternative" comic out there, and definitely not the best either. The lesson here? There's a lot worse, and also a lot better, on the way!

↧

Smut - It's all in the name

March 7, 2013, 4:30 pm

≫ Next: Charity gubbins

≪ Previous: DoodleBug

Well, THIS was a depressing post to put together. Anyone who's ever read Smut will know it's not exactly the pinnacle of comedy. Anyone who's read Smut recently will know that the Sun is a more tasteful read.

Created by misters Tom Fulep and Clive Ward sometime around 1990 (or possibly very late 1989?), it does everything that Viz does, only without any of the satire, wit, subtlety or all-round readability.

Regardless, it lasted for bloody ages, so someone must've liked it. And it DID have occasional good bits, courtesy of a few fairly "big" names, mostly - but more on that later.

Oh, don't carry on reading if you're at work. Or if you're under 18. Or if you've got any ounce of "political correctness" on your mind. Or if you're on dial-up (there's a lot of stuff here!). Or you could just disregard all those warnings, get off your high horse and enjoy some smutty fun, takes all sorts!

Violence, sex and foul language are the order of the day, mostly. With a BIG emphasis on violence. Smut's "main character" was the charming skinhead who went by the name of Everard Edbutt. Think Biffa Bacon only with all the surrealism and clever set-ups taken out. And some added superhuman strength too. He generally gets three pages in each issue:

Not appearing as frequently, but still full of gleeful violence, is Buster Bailey (Gets Beat Up Daily):

Another long-running strip is Rainbro (a Rainbow parody, obviously):

The whole "making-rude-things-out-of-kids-TV-shows" thing is a fairly popular running theme throughout all of these Viz knock-offs, as shall become more and more obvious as these posts go on.

Another popular theme is "the club bouncer" - surprisingly, something I could only find the one example of within the pages of Smut:

And then there's the "sadistic farmer", a role here filled by Farmer Piles:

Folk who tend to lie constantly are another staple of the "alternative comic". You've got Aldridge Pryor in Viz, The Bullshitters in... one of the other ones (I'll correct this when I remember which one they're in), and Smut has Gob-Shite Gordon, by Phil Neill:

The German people are often the target of jokes in these pages. First we have this example of Micky Munk & His Magic Spunk:

Then there's Helmut Kruper, the Ex-Stormtrooper:

Other recurring characters include...

The Bastard in the Black (a football referee who continues his job off the pitch):

Fireman Dan, who would later appear in the teenage-focused Acne - with the same strips, only with milder swearwords used:

Ignore Amos by Mervyn Johnston - I LIKE Mervyn's stuff, but find it hard telling his characters apart from one another. This one wouldn't feel out of place in Oink!:

Willie, by Bob Garland, about a boy in a Charlie Brown shirt and his filthy dog:

Willie was apparantly so popular that a large amount of strips were compiled into a seperate paperback:

Picture found on eBay

Worth noting is that world-renowned cartoonist Ufuk Uyanik was published for the first time in Smut, so that's one for the history books at least:

Danny & Death is a good one - about a lad named Danny, who's followed around by the Grim Reaper. In this two-part episode, Death has to go away for a bit, so Danny is instead followed around by the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse:

Lee Healey did loads of stuff for Smut, including the amazingly unfunny (yet popular) Sarky Marky:

And the amazingly funny (but somehow not as popular) Mr. Ian Patient:

Smut seemed to last forever - outliving nearly every other Viz knock-off that happened along by many years. Some slight re-designs happened over the years - from the cheap two-coloured covers of the early years pictured at the beginning of this post, to more colourful ones like this:

Pictured on the cover there is Lionel Lettuces & His Sexual Fetishes, about a skinny gentleman and his overweight cousin, and their various (mostly appliance-based) bedroom habits.

From issue 40, Smut got itself a glossy cover instead of the cheap paper one that it was used to:

In the bath there is Fat Idle Bastard, a 37-year-old slob who lives with his mum and hasn't worked a day in his life. They got almost twenty years worth of stories out of this premise.

That's the 50th issue, a good milestone for any publication. After this issue, the glossy covers disappeared and it was back to the cheap paper ones:

Those things sitting on the beach are The Skeggys - same theme as Fat Idle Bastard, only it's a whole family of them.

The hundredth issue! Smut was obviously doing something right. But who was buying it? This advert might indicate the kind of audience it was reaching out to:

"Be the envy of all your mates down the pub!" - it's almost sad. But Smut didn't even peter out after its centenary. Seen the issue number on this one, from 2004?

Issue ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TWO. It was being published every three weeks by this stage. Even today, Viz is only up to issue 223. The inside of this one's almost identical to the past decade's contents, only with more full-colour strips, and the odd few "new" characters (such as Twatman & Nobbin and the Ibizia Sluts). Oh, and also, "witty" articles such as this one:

I can't tell if they're being serious or not with this... It's fairly worrying. Issue 182's the latest one I have in my comics-box, but Wikipedia tells me that Smut was still around in 2007, re-branded as Twisted! Incorporating Smut.

Everything has an audience, and I wouldn't have nearly as many issues of Smut as I do if it weren't for its TRUE saving graces. First up is Nigel Maughan, who had a seemingly ubiquitous presence in the adult comic world. Granted, a lot of his strips were duplicated numerous times, but it got him paid and his stuff still makes me laugh. Here's a few bits by him:

The OTHER main reason for not chucking Smut on the Bonfire of Bad Taste is Nick Brennan. Mainly famous for the Beano's Crazy For Daisy, as well as several characters in the Dandy, Nick was incredibly prolific when it came to drawing daft-looking characters and mostly hilarious strips for Smut (and a fair few controversial ones too).

Special Agent McGee (He Who Dares Goes To Bed With No Tea) was the longest-running, about a pre-pubescent mercenary:

Almost as long-running was Born Again Billy:

And the strip that goes by the title Barry's Me Name, Gatecrashing's Me Game:

Then there's one-off pieces of insanity such as Vincent the Vampire Hunter:

Tea Chest DSV, "inspired" by the Spielberg thing remembered by 2% of anyone who's ever owned a television:

Ugly Kid Joe:

Destination Brain:

And DIY Murdering Nanny - printed less than a year after the Louise Woodward trial. There'd've been an uproar over this one if it was published in Viz, but being in Smut, it escaped the attention of anyone who might care about such things:

And there we go, that's a small sample of Smut, possibly the most successful of all those that tried to be Viz but completely missed the point. Definitely not the best of the lot, still, but it's saved by a few bits.

One more thing of note before moving onwards, is this thing from an early issue - self-parody? Probably not, but it could work as a poster for the entire "scene":

↧

Charity gubbins

March 12, 2013, 5:55 pm

≫ Next: Ah, Poot! is here

≪ Previous: Smut - It's all in the name

Just taking a short breather from the Viz knock-offs, just for a moment. That Smut thing was depressing, and I've spent most of today reading Ziggy, which has got me verging on the suicidal (you'll see what I mean when I eventually get around to covering that one).

The "breather" is for a reason other than reminding myself that good comics exist - for on this approaching Friday, it's Red Nose Day. Raising money for all sorts of good causes (and ignoring the salaries taken by BBC folk), it's mostly a "fun"-based charity. This year has the Beano getting involved, and to be frank, it looks horrendous. Jessie bleeding J, One Direction, Olly bloody Murs, Harry Hill and David Tennant all done in Nigel Parkinson's caricature style.

Yech! Is this REALLY how far imagination can take the Beano these days? Just sticking the obnoxious faces of Saturday evening's television into the otherwise wonderful worlds of Dennis, Minnie and the rest of them? Why not celebrating the medium itself and doing something special with regards to UK comics as a whole? Well, probably because hardly anybody cares about comics anymore, but still.

Let's go back 22 years instead, and take a look at something that seems like it's had a LOT of effort put into it - the Comic Relief Comic.

Comic Relief has several different faces to it - there's the BBC show, in which folk from all over television-town come together and make tits of themselves. There's Sport Relief, where sports personalities do similar. And now there's the Beano, but instead of bringing together a load of comics folk, they just got the X-Factor crowd instead.

In 1991, people DID buy and enjoy comics a lot more than they do now, and of course that means there was more of them around - hence we have this wonderful publication, bringing together DC Thomson's Beano and Dandy crew, along with Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, Dan Dare, Captain Britain, Superman, Batman, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Hunt Emerson, the Young Ones, Dr. Strange, Iron Man, the cast of Fawlty Towers, Edmund Blackadder, the Sleeze Brothers, and hundreds more. All framed around a central, somewhat bizarre Christmas Carol-esque story about red noses conspiring to turn the world population's faces into doorknobs or something.

Want to read the whole thing? Go ahead then, just click on the "Read more" button...

Blimey, all those names! Neil Gaiman, Jamie Hewlett, Mark Millar... Just try and think of someone who DIDN'T contribute.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on the Beano there? Do the kids really just want whatever ITV throws their way in the pages of their comics? I'll have to ask one of them next time I see one. Also, can anyone name EVERY character featured in these pages? The cover claims "zillions", I'm thinking around the 200-mark. Ish.

Meanwhile, the Comic Relief Comic cost £1.50 in 1991, with all the profit going to Comic Relief. In 2013 money that's... £5? Maybe? You know what to do etc.

BONUS BIT:

Go and read Ben Baker's 23 Best Bits of Comic Relief Comic.

↧

Ah, Poot! is here

March 27, 2013, 7:54 pm

≫ Next: Just saying, like.

≪ Previous: Charity gubbins

Bit of a delay in proceedings there, sorry about that. Accidentally got a "social life" for a few weeks, whoops. Anyway, enough of that sort of nonsense, here's another rude comic from a couple of decades ago. This time it's a GOOD one, and it's called Poot!

Birmingham-based, this one - done mostly by a couple of students from 1985 to 1990. Tim Westall and Jon Marks are their names. It's a bit of an odd one, is Poot!. Very silly, almost childish, but definitely a refreshing change from the violence and misogyny-fuelled Smut. As such, it stands out from most of the Viz clones in that it's still an enjoyable read today (as long as your senses are subscribed to a certain form of humour).

The fun begins by clicking below:

As I mentioned about four seconds ago, the main "talent" here is Tim Westall, whose anthromorphic characters for Poot! are ridiculously cute - just look again at that front cover above. Without a more discerning glance, you'd happily give that to a human child. Indeed, most of the antics of signature character Sven the Saxophone are fairly family-friendly. Here's Sven trying to improve his sound:

And if it's not a jolly jaunt such as that one, it's a ridiculous pun setup:

Nigel the Orange, meanwhile, whilst just as cute-looking, is a bit "naughtier"...

Made-up swear words and everything! Winston the Cuddly Christmas Pudding is Poot!'s third star. Just as odd as Sven and Nigel, just as cute as well, albeit with more frequent "adult" situations:

Although those "adult" situations are adapted into a cake-based way. Tim's characters seemingly had such appeal back then that it was even possible to buy stuffed toys of them for a while:

I'd love to see a picture of one of those!

Tim's other characters are all equally as discerningly cute, until you actually realise what it is you're reading. Take, for example, Timmy the Tampon:

Or Chubby Miller, the Comical Killer:

And Veronica the Vampire (with a special guest appearance from Timmy the Tampon, of course):

And Johnny Condom, here seen taking a "satirical swipe" at Gray Jolliffe's Wicked Willie:

So far, so vastly different to any of the other knock-offs - Poot!'s almost a genre all of its own. The rest of the comic's cast are slightly more in keeping with what you'd expect in an "alternative" comic, but with an overlying silliness that's (mostly) hard not to enjoy.

Jon Marks is the second most-frequent Pooter, with his characters being mostly "traditional" mischievous folk, only in a very WRONG sort of way. So we have the likes of Sacreligious Sue, who cleans up dog shit with the Turin Shroud:

Simon the Smackie and his skag-tastic dodges:

Norman the Neo-Cubist and his rival, Sammy the Surrealist:

Billy Batchstick and his Magic Matchstick, taking the "rhyming-character-name" trope and running all the way home with it:

Arnold the Anus, another of Poot!'s "star" characters:

Wholly compatible with Mr. Westall's characters as well:

Jon Marks' "main" character would be Young Fred Crombie, the Undead Zombie...

Alex Foulds has a few characters in there too, from Poot!'s resident superhero, Short Fat Ugly Bald Stupid Man:

To master detective Ed Case (a "spot-the-clues" adventure, of sorts):

Meanwhile, Phil Hedgehog did some "busy" pages for Poot!, mostly in the form of "guides" - here's his guide to nostalgia, for example:

And here's a fun activity maze thing, inspired by a memorable Life In Hell cartoon by Matt Groening:

Jim Whittaker did a fair few characters for Poot!, such as Desmond Hoo (thinks he's a Time Lord), the Cabbage Kid (he's been pretending to be a vegetable for the past ten years), and Michael Gorring (He's Different in Every Drorring!), which is just plain nuts - slightly reminiscent of the "comic jam" pages that used to finish each issue of Zap:

There's also plenty of single panel gag cartoons, mostly sent in by readers. These often share a page with "The Slurp Collection", which is just great:

Oh hey look, it's Lee Turnock!

Of course, it's not all good - nothing that relies on contributions so much can ever be. So here's a couple of Anthony Smith's identikit cartoons:

And then there's Kaptain Komic (not exactly sure who it's by), a fun enough idea that's ruined by a lazy "Ha ha! Drugs!" punchline:

By 1990, Poot! had a circulation of around 50,000 per issue, and it was all looking good until the distributor went bust, and that's where the story of this surprisingly fun little footnote of a comic ends...

BUT NOT REALLY.

In 2009, Poot! made a surprise comeback of sorts:

"Starting again", sort of, numbering the issues from the beginning again, only this time it's "Volume 2". This is how I first happened across Poot!, and the opening pages of this new issue are fairly helpful, introducing (or re-introducing) the cast:

Apart from some new strips starring Winston the Cuddly Christmas Pudding, the "new" Poot! is mostly re-prints, only in full colour. Compare this "original" Nigel the Orange adventure:

With the updated 2009 edition:

Nice.

The usage of "colour" also did wonders for Young Fred Crombie:

The Cabbage Kid:

Eddie the Embalmer:

And the Evil Robots In The Future:

The "proper" new content is obviously of varying quality. At the bottom end there's Poonarnia, which wouldn't've looked out of place in the Dandy during its dying days:

Whilst on the other side of the towel there's the series of articles looking at Poot! through the years - a fairly convincing bunch of parodies of the various forms of "alternative" publications that have popped up over the last century-and-a-half:

The second incarnation of Poot! lasted for seven issues until the distributors went tits up AGAIN. They've still got a Facebook thing, and the website's still getting updated, so perhaps Sven, Nigel, Winston and the rest of them will come back again one day. That'd be nice.

Meanwhile, this is useful - a chart of sorts that can be used to tick off all the issues of the original run, should this lot have got you interested enough to start looking for it "in the wild":

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Just saying, like.

April 8, 2013, 1:15 pm

≫ Next: Getting Ziggy With It

≪ Previous: Ah, Poot! is here

This isn't a political blog, nor is it all that much concerned with current affairs. But wouldn't it be great if she'd've been drowned in milk or sealed into a coal mine or something?

↧

Getting Ziggy With It

April 9, 2013, 4:25 pm

≫ Next: Adroit - "Clever or skillful in using the hands or mind", apparently.

≪ Previous: Just saying, like.

A general warning before going any further - Ziggy may well be the most "offensive" out of the whole lot of the Viz clones. Within its pages is humour based around AIDS, cot death, child abuse, the IRA, racism, mental illness, genocide... Pretty much any "taboo" subject you can think of, Ziggy went there and rubbed it in your face until you were unable to think about anything else for days afterward. Vile and obscene and - in the right frame of mind - hilarious (in a childish sort of way).

But there's bound to be some fun stuff in there too, so read on, if you're up for it.

Ziggy was around from 1990 to 1992 (ish), done mostly by one Stuart Blair, one of those people who seemed to enjoy seeing how far he could push someone before getting into trouble. This is mostly "achieved" through the news stories that make up around a third of each issue of Ziggy, with such headlines as:

-Jimmy Tarbuck Is A Gap-Toothed Cunt Shocker!

-Rippers Wife Is Evil Satanist Who Caused Waddle To Miss World Cup Penalty!

-Simon Bates Is An IRA Informant

-Street Star Gail Tilsley Is An Ugly Fucker Shocker

-Matthew Corbett Makes Sooty Wank Him Off

One such headline which I don't have access to, but is apparently what Ziggy got most of its exposure from was a story about Ann Diamond's cot death incident. Classy stuff.

Celebrity deaths, natural disasters and terrorist attacks provide most of the material for the "Sick Jokes" page that was another Ziggy regular, whilst the rest of the magazine resembled a sub-gutter level MAD Magazine, filled with fake adverts:

Ideas for party games:

Fairly-clever puzzles:

Is that by Charlie Brooker? Looks like, no credits though.

And odd little pieces, such as this detailing the events of the Discharge Olympics:

Apologies for the sloppy scanning on a lot of these pages, by the way - I really couldn't be bothered doing "justice" to this one.

What Ziggy excelled at was thinking up the most outrageous, insensitive things to say about anyone and everyone. A regular feature being 20 Things [someone] Has Never Denied. This is the Simon Bates entry in that series:

Another semi-regular feature is Telephon '90, in which numerous situations are proposed in the name of charity:

And then there's Wouldn't It Be Funny If, which is mostly just plain cruel:

Pictures of topless women seem to be splashed around Ziggy at random.

Of course, there's comic strips as well. Even a few that follow the formula of having a character's name rhyme with their defining characteristic, such as Billy Bannel (He Turns Into a Flannel):

Fetch, the World's Most Confused Dog wouldn't seem out of place in any other comic, save for the odd bit of swearing:

The ever-present Nigel Maughan's here too:

And here's Nick the Knicker-Sniffer, appearing in exactly the same way as he appears in Ziggy's "sister" title, Pulp, which will be looked at some other time:

Ninja Skoda Destruct by Rob Yuppies (?) has your Chinese stereotypes on a mission to destroy every Skoda they can find:

Note this: Even the Beano was still making "slitty-eyes" jokes in 1992.

This one looks like it was done by Charlie Brooker, but his name doesn't appear in the credits - who am I to tell?

Seemingly the only "regular" comic strip concerned the adventures of the prostitute known as Camille Hump, by Jackie Smith:

And of course, by law every "alternative" comic in the 1990s had to have at least one Rainbow parody:

The parodies continue with this duet of Fleetway skits:

A sudden cameo from the pen of Jim Petrie in the penultimate panel?

And this one having a stab at Oor Wullie:

One final feature that sets Ziggy apart from the rest of its ilk is the pin-up in the middle of each issue, which places a well-known face on a different body. These range from the deranged:

To the, frankly, highly disturbing:

And with that final image on your retinas, that's it from Ziggy. Now go and have a shower.

↧

Adroit - "Clever or skillful in using the hands or mind", apparently.

April 19, 2013, 1:23 pm

≫ Next: Naughty Nigel & The Imaginatively-Titled Comic

≪ Previous: Getting Ziggy With It

Summed up by fellow rude comic "connoisseur" Mr. Turnock thusly:

"Hell's teeth, I only ever saw this once, when I was on holiday in Lowestoft! I always used to check out local newsagent's shops when I went on holiday and the only thing I remember about this was its title, so the contents couldn't have been that memorable."

Well I've found an issue of it, and it's certainly... different?

Straight away, the cover's different to the usual Viz-a-like "bunch of characters standing around swearing at each other", so it's a start. Let's see what's inside, yes?

This issue in particular's from 1991, and is credited to Neil MacAlpine, Phil Lipservice, Richard Withers, "Smudge", and a bunch of guest artists, and is "based" in Middlesborough. It starts out in a way I haven't seen in many other titles of this ilk - with an anti-war political comment! The first page gives a brief history of Kuwait, explains how the Gulf War could've been avoided had Britain not been so greedy in its Empirical days, and expresses its disgust at Holland lowering the age of consent to twelve.

After that, Adroit seems to bounce all over the place. From student rag-mag level cartooning:

To standard/familiar Smut-style "nothing but swearing, violence and misogyny" rubbish:

And then there's the fairly interesting Bert the Black Knight and Art the Snake by Mike Walker, akin to something more likely to appear in Knockabout or Prime Cuts:

And from there it just gets stranger. We have scatological japes from Joe Hope's The Flies:

High quality monster doodlings from Gary Whitlock's Mutant United:

And a list-based article about how to identify peasants:

What's also "different" about Adroit is how text-heavy the whole thing is. There's no scans of these, as eye-strain's bad enough for most folk without having to read blurry words on a JPEG, but in summary there's:

-Children's Corner: The Jolly Nice Tale of Peter the Platypus, about a foul-mouthed, sexually charged platypus despairing about having to wade through acres of chicken shit.

-North-South Divide, a double-page autobiographical piece about the Adroit crew's experiences at a Christmas party held by Galaxy Publications in London, commenting on the "bigotted attitudes of ignorant Southerners". A fair few segments of this page are "censored due to legal advice". The epilogue of this piece states that "London is nothing more than a decrepit pile of filth that survives off the back of the North".

-Randy Decker, Private Eye is a lengthy parody of hard-boiled detective stories. Sample line: "I suppose I'll have to come clean". She managed to fool me again; I thought she'd already had a bath.

-Captain Rudolf, a strange tale and I honestly have no idea what's going on in this one. He's a randy sort, and that's about all I can figure out from it. The two pages of text are continued fifteen pages later in comic-strip form:

A cut-and-paste job - I'm certain I've seen that last panel in a Hellblazer book.

-Sam Rotary and his Transtemporal Y-Fronts, a time-travelling yarn in which the titular hero repeatedly tries to avoid meeting himself: "Immediately, my receriver was put back on the phone. I didn't want to be caught talking to myself, even if he was having a better time than I was."

-Escape, a short horror story concerning a "different form" of schizophrenia.

The majority of these text stories are in a serial-form, so I'll have to be on the lookout for more issues of Adroit to see how some of them begin/finish.

One more text-heavy item is My Life and Observations, by Bernard the Has Been Tabloid Reporter. Fairly amusing besides a "me too!" dig at Jeremy Beadle. This one shares pages with comics by Paul Hitchman and Gary Whitlock (again), so here it is:

Adroit's high/low point, depending on your sensibilities, is Skin Up by... Dr. Mind Gring, seemingly. Don't know who that is, but the strip's nuts in a surreal/pretentious way. Like I said, it depends on your sensibilities. Here it is, look out for that punchline:

And just to "conclude" things, here's Gary Whitlock again, with that old comic standard of a rhyming character name. This time it's Mr. Delusion - He jumps to conclusions:

"Mind Blowing Humour" is what was promised on the cover. Maybe not mind-blowing, but certainly memorable, and definitely a comic I'll be trying to find more issues of.

↧

Naughty Nigel & The Imaginatively-Titled Comic

May 2, 2013, 2:28 pm

≫ Next: Ray Harryhausen, RIP

≪ Previous: Adroit - "Clever or skillful in using the hands or mind", apparently.

Here's a fairly "unique" title - from the publishers of the Sunday Sport (when it was all about alien loveslime killing petunias or the Loch Ness Monster being a Nazi U-boat, rather than the softcore tabloid it is today). It's the Sunday Sport Adult Celebrity Comic!

The first issue there's from 1997, so it's fairly late to the party in terms of jumping on Viz's bandwagon, but it DOES include work from some VERY talented/famous comics-folk. Comics-folk you wouldn't usually expect to draw smutty stuff. Ignore the labels at the bottom of this post if you want a surprise. But then, if you're under eighteen or at work, maybe you should just read the labels anyway. This IS the Sport after all, so be warned...

Honestly? I was expecting the absolute worst of the worst when I first got this comic. Even worse than Smut. The comic's slapped-together title just reeks of laziness and "That'll do"-ness - the word "comic" is even written in comic sans! Oh how my expectations were disintegrated. On the very first page of the very first issue... Blimey, is that Steve Bright?

It's not signed, but if it isn't Brighty it's a highly-skilled ghost artist. I'm more leaning toward the "Yep, definitely him" side, as who else do we have here? Nigel Parkinson, that's who. And he draws the bulk of the stuff in here. Some of it's good, some of it's not nice at all, but it's all signed at least.

For a start, here's Road Rage Ron's two stories from the two issues that I have:

Not exactly a good story, but it LOOKS good, which is more than can be said for most of the other Viz wannabes. And Nigel carries on, with Fat Cats:

The Commuter:

Horny Bloke, which is more along the lines of what I was expecting from the Sunday Sport Adult Celebrity Comic (read: utter trash, although that's possibly a fair parody of most of the Sport's regular audience):

Piss Artist:

And its sequel, Piss Artists (plural!):

Here's Mr. Parkinson's four-page, full colour, Spice Girl-parody extravaganza, from the first issue:

Issue 2 has the similarly-structured Babe Watch, which just might be the worst comic I've ever read - it seems some speech bubbles got missed out during production, not that your average Sport reader would notice something like that:

Okay, I like the punch-line on that one.

Last bit of Parkinson's tomfoolery before moving on, is Punters, featuring a female judge behaving exactly as you'd expect one to:

That one's from the second issue - in the first issue Punters was drawn by... Nick Brennan!

Nick Brennan's other strip for the SSACC is the charmingly-titled Blonde Bint:

The titular heroine of that particular strip may look familiar to Beano readers:

No wonder Daisy's got no time for Ernest - she's too busy blackmailing celebrities!

Outside of all the Parkinson strips and porn adverts, there's plenty of other fairly good stuff on offer here. The ever-present Nigel Maughan, for instance:

Then there's the vile Father Upp, by someone called Nicko (can't figure out what his full name is). Even the higher-up folk at the Sport had the decency to censor whatever Father Upp's doing to that poor lass's ear:

We also have this odd little story - it's not signed but I KNOW I've seen this artist somewhere else before - anyone? It's called The Menace That Stalks Our Streets:

Next up is the disgusting Ben Bedwetter, who'd fit in happily with the characters of The Bog Paper. It's credited to someone called Jools, and again, I recognise the style but can't place it. Has a bit of a European/birthday card feel to it. But that's besides the point - Ben Bedwetter remains one of the ONLY comic characters to bring me near to physical sickness (yellow urine does that to me, it seems). Here's both of his adventures:

Elsewhere we have strips and features of varying quality - a football story, a Star Trek parody, a comic about the sexual adventures of Saddam and Gadaaffi, several pages of celebrity photos with "funny" speech bubbles attached. None of these were worth the time and effort that scanning them would involve, in all honesty.

Overall though, Sunday Sport Adult Celebrity Comic was a nice surprise, sort of. I'll leave you with one final strip, credited to George Nicholas and Norris Tantamount (I suspect these may be pseudonyms). It's that old favourite trope of Viz-a-likes, the "naughty children's toy" - Tripod Ted. It's more disturbing than anything else:

That'll do, Ted.

↧

Ray Harryhausen, RIP

May 7, 2013, 2:29 pm

≫ Next: Something appalling

≪ Previous: Naughty Nigel & The Imaginatively-Titled Comic

We're running out of heroes here...

↧

Something appalling

May 18, 2013, 4:30 am

≫ Next: Nasty little skank

≪ Previous: Ray Harryhausen, RIP

Here we have it now - POSSIBLY the absolute worst out of all the Viz knock-offs. There's still a couple of contenders in my possession, and there's bound to be about a hundred and twelve others that I don't yet know about, but for now, this one's pretty dreadful.

From that Scotland place, claiming to be "Scotland's very own adult comic" - no acknowledgement for the superd Electric Soup there (soon to be "covered" on this very blog).

In terms of "history", Jockstrap's a fairly late arrival to the rude comics party, being from around 1998-ish (no dates are given, but frequent mention is made of the World Cup in France - helps to pay attention to football sometimes). The paper's nice and shiny, but that's about the only praise this one'll be getting. No artists are credited either (if you could really call them that), and no jokes or structure is to be found either. Just so you know all that before carrying on...

Thematically, Jockstrap subscribes to the Smut school of humour: violence, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia, with a fair amount of football thrown in. Or sometimes there's no "theme" at all - just some shit drawings with a few swear words thrown about, such as this one:

Or these two:

Those three strips there are the best-drawn things in the whole of Jockstrap - "Mates" in particular could've been okay if anything actually HAPPENED, but there we go. At the complete opposite end of things, we have someone who can't even draw a gate closing properly:

Notice how absolutely nothing at all happened in that one there? That's pretty much representative of this whole depressing mess. The paper-based equivalent of sitting next to someone on a train who can't say a five-word sentence without three of those words being "fuck", whilst gobbing a big greenie on the floor at the beginning and end of each breath. Oh wait, hold on - here's one about child murder:

And here's your standard drunken fool/filthy letch characters:

And here's those football-themed bits, admittedly a fairly rare sight in this kind of publication:

Note how, Ray of the Rovers aside, NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENS in these comics. Will Wim Win, in particular, is more like some crap jokes that were overheard in a pub, and then translated into doodles.

Just this one more piece of tripe now before looking at the one thing that makes Jockstrap that TINY bit less forgettable:

And that one thing? Well, this being a Scottish comic, there's plenty in here that boils down to "English people are tits". We have Nige & Hugh, a couple of English lads having an "adventure" in Scotland (but really it's just another shit joke masquerading as a comic):

Then there's the heroic Scotsmen, William Wallace:

And Rob Roy, in a two-page "epic" in which nothing happens:

And... That's it. I really can't think of anything positive to say about this one, sorry about that. The MOST I can say about it is it's possibly the epitome of the kind of rubbish that's hinted at by Lee Turnock:

"The sad truth is, a lot of the Viz knock-offs weren't even the work of dedicated cartoonists, or people who were in it for the love of drawing and the sharing of laughter... They were the work of profiteers, or even in some cases the work of ex-squaddies, bricklayers and tyre-fitters, people who had no empathy with the world of comics and cartoonists and just wanted to squeeze a few quid out of the latest trend."

Yep, sounds about right. The fact that Jockstrap was created less than forty miles down the road from the home of the Beano and the Dandy just adds to the insult. This one's going in the bottom of the box now, never to be looked at again.

↧

Nasty little skank

June 7, 2013, 3:58 am

≫ Next: Low cost school trip, Ramraid Oxfam, "Christ that sun's hot", Yes that's right sir

≪ Previous: Something appalling

Now here's an interesting one - a race-based comic. Not as in who-can-run-fastest but as in the "race" term that separates folk by their country of origin. This one here's made by and for British folk of Jamaican descent, and it's... not that bad really. It's called Skank, by the way, and it's from 1994-ish.

It's still bad, but nowhere near the levels of badness seen in Smutor Jockstrap. The covers don't do Skank many favours, mind - seeing these in a shop (or indeed, on my bedroom floor), you'd be forgiven for thinking they were a "different" kind of publication:

So, read on for humour based around drugs, violence, sex, homophobia, xenophobia, racial supremacy, rape, wife-beating and orally-satisfying cars, if that's your thing...

STRUCTURALLY, Skank's around two-thirds comic strips, and a third spoof newspaper/advert-type things, such as this jumble of double-entendres:

And this thing that had me chuckling a fair bit, because fake "before-and-after" pictures are always funny:

Onto the comic strips now, and for a change, they're mostly of a high quality, at least artistically (even if the stories don't make much sense). "Chief Rude Bwoy" Bob Joseph writes most of the strips, with a big heap of guest artists. They're mostly uncredited, at least not fully, which is a shame, because LOOK AT THIS:

Bulging body-parts are a running visual theme throughout Skank, making most of it great to look at even if you don't find the strips all that funny. See the eyeballs at the end of Betty Rider by (possibly) Derrick Lewis:

And then there's the swollen member of Gee Miah's BMW - guess what that stand for?

Some funny vomiting pictures in Malcolm Vex, also by Derrick Lewis:

Or how about the bizarre Love Thy Neighbour - Jamaica Vs. Smallie, a bit like Ivor Lott & Tony Broke only it's all about physical stature in this one:

Elsewhere we have Black to Basics, which concerns former-PM John Major's Brixton upbringing:

The issue-spanning, over-the-top serial The Fugitive is a good one, by Gary Portman (maybe?) - he's on the run for something he didn't do, or something like that. Anyway, strange things happen, as can be seen in this two-page epic from the third issue:

Mad Inventor by Davy Francis is formulaic but funny - each strip has your scientist man there inventing something ridiculous that turns out to be a runaway success, but then obvious flaws turn up and ruin his investors. Cue catchphrase:

We also have the cleverly-titled Rachel Prejudice by Tyrone Lou, featuring the BNP Chemists:

And the standard "rhyming-name" character, this one being Lucy Loop, She's Got to Have Her Scoop! - a news reporter who usually resorts to mass murder in order to secure the best stories for herself:

Skank even has its own version of the Fat Slags, this being the adventures of Mary Mampy and her mates, credited to "Bucky":

Then there's the classic trope of "stupid-white-people-who-wish-they-were-black", here exemplified by Wannabee Black by Tyrone Lou:

And White Galfriend by Gary Portman, who leaves her boyfriend in bandages by the end of each strip:

Obviously it's not all fun and games. For a start there's the slightly depressing Fagga Muffins:

And there's also the inexplicable Vargina Dry - Church Gyali which has implied rape as its punchline:

Elsewhere we can find strips that show Mr. Motivator hanging himself, OJ Simpson explaining how his wife and her boyfriend ended up covered in stab wounds, a prepubescent scamp attempting to seduce and older woman then getting beaten up for it, a voodoo priest tricking a woman into giving birth to a goat, and the adventures of an albino black man who resolves to covering his face with boot polish. For all its controversy, the folk at Skank seemed to have grown up a bit by the fifth issue, with the lighthearted tale of Single Mother, amongst the "unsung heroes of our age":

And even the usually ultra-violent Scotland Yardie ("Most man's worst nightmare - a Yardie wid a badge") goes all out to give a wife-beater the lesson he deserves:

So, why the sudden change? Perhaps this statement appearing within that very same fifth issue explains things:

Yep, Skank got sued! Unfortunately I don't have the fourth issue with the Linford Christie "incident", but I'll stick it up here as soon as I find it. From reading this, and from the product description of The Worst of Skank, I'm guessing that the fifth issue was the last issue of Skank, with Bob Joseph and the rest of them simply not having the cash to survive the type of lawsuits that Private Eye has managed to pull itself out of over and over again.

Still, it was alright while it lasted.

↧

Low cost school trip, Ramraid Oxfam, "Christ that sun's hot", Yes that's right sir

July 15, 2013, 3:40 am

≫ Next: Pus-filled unwelcome blemish

≪ Previous: Nasty little skank

I'll admit - it's been too bloody hot to be sitting in scanning comics and then writing about them. And somehow I've got a more active social life than I did this time last year, so that's why there's been nothing here for the past five weeks. I am (slowly) working on a "thing" about Zit, one of the more successful (as in, long-running) Viz clones, but I couldn't let this week pass un-noted, oh no. It's been 368 days since I started this blog thing, and in that time it's gotten thirty-four more "followers" than I was expecting, and around 28,000 more "views" than I was expecting, so thanks a lot to everyone, even if you've just stumbled across here whilst looking for something else.

If we all went to the same pubs, I'd happily get a round in, happily!

Meanwhile, just to tide things over (a weird bit of news last week led a handful of people into believing I had died), here's the Beano from the week I was born, in its entirity. Once the rain makes a return, I'll get back to "archiving" all those smutty comics.

Well hey look at that - not a single advert in the whole thing!

↧

Pus-filled unwelcome blemish

August 1, 2013, 3:09 pm

≫ Next: The Beano Boys

≪ Previous: Low cost school trip, Ramraid Oxfam, "Christ that sun's hot", Yes that's right sir

Right, here we go again! A trite observation about all these sub-Viz comics is that the bad ones seem to do a lot better than the good ones. Titles like Smut can carry on for almost two decades, whereas something like Adroit might disappear after two or three issues. On a similar merciful level, utter garbage like Jockstrap seem to've been wiped from the memory of all but a handful of people, so at least there's that.

Which brings us to Zit, a comic that seems to fall somewhere in between the "good" and the "awful" definitions - mostly to do with what was going on behind the scenes. Yes, we're looking at Zit today!

A product of 1991 published by Humour Publications - owned by a mister Russell Church who, judging by what I've read about him, could almost be seen as a comic character himself. More on that later, but for now let's have a look at what was inside Zit - the content ranges from "actually quite good", to "bloody rubbish", "so ridiculously rude it's funny", "how did they get away with that?" and even "absolute hatstand", so we'll get the crap stuff out of the way first.

Terry the Twat is the amusingly-named Dennis the Menace parody, and he's a right one, he is:

Another "naughty child"-type character is Mary Lamb and her Acts of Wanton Cruelty, who takes delight in torturing/mutilating/murdering anyone she sees fit:

Gavin St. James, the Docklands Don Juan is something I just plain don't "get" - maybe this was a recognisable stereotype at some point, but seeing as I wasn't even ten in 1991, and don't live in London, it just escapes me. All talk, oblivious to all? Who knows. He was in almost every bloody issue though, so here he is:

From the same artist (going by the name of Burke 'n' Hare, probably a pseudonym) is this (sadly all-too-accurate) courtroom drama:

Here's a name that was in a LOT of these comics - Anthony Smith. He's prolific, yes, but it's REALLY difficult to tell any of his characters apart from one another. Compare The Milltown Boys...

...with Acid Head Arnie:

Likewise, compare those two to Barry and his Magic Bag and Ghostly Gilbert, both from Poot! - He's obviously got a winning formula there, particularly with Acid Head Arnie, who would go on to appear on T-shirts and so on. He IS the most amusing of Smith's "characters" though, if only for the attempts by the police officers to "blend in".

Another somehow prolific entity of the "scene" is Graham Hey, who did LOADS of characters for several crap comics, none of which are amusing and all of which are identical. Here's Reggie Carlton (He's Got a Bobby Charlton), indiscernible from any of his other characters (be they The Twats Next Door, Dad and Son or Teenage Mum):

Oh go on then, for the sake of comparison here's Deep Sea Derek:

Oh, that bit underneath with the toilet wall? That's another regular feature of Zit - people sent in their "jokes" and they were stuck on the wall of fame there.

Carrying on with the familiar tropes, we have Angus McBastard, the stereotypical drunken, violent Scotsman:

The stereotypical rampant homosexual Raging Kneivel:

The badly behaved animal, simply titled Dog:

The psychotic murderer Psycho Derek:

The "crap superhero" Glassman:

And the Eastern dictator piss-take Madass Hussain (it was 1991, everyone was at it):

Also in the "sign of the times" category we have Salman Rushdie, the Master of Disguise:

Here's another old stereotype, that of the Harry Enfield Scouser - at least this one acknowledges the ridiculous nature of it all:

That's about enough of the bad stuff - here's the "funny if you're in the right frame of mind" Lamb Brusco, the Alcoholic Bad Attitude Sheep:

And with that, we'll move onto some of the more "interesting" parts of Zit, starting with the ever-present Nigel Maughan who did billions of strips for trillions of comics. Zit highlights include Bastard Binmen:

Henry Malone, He's Always Alone:

Granny Sooker's Talking Verruca:

And Those Pricks in Cycle Shorts:

Timothy Christopher - Country Vet is an odd one - he's actually good at his job, and doesn't end up killing his patients (like you'd expect with a vet character in a comic of this sort). It's fun enough, but I don't know who drew it - does anyone?

Equally odd is Champion the Chunder Horse - obviously it's a horse that vomits a lot, but at least it looks interesting... Almost in an S. Clay Wilson sort of way. Only it's by Will Kevans:

Also of an "interesting" persuasion is this stack of Oscar Wilde quotes framing a strip titled Oscar Milde - Theatrical Twat. Written by that previously-mentioned Graham Hey, so he's not all bad:

And forming something that's halfway between John Fardell's Modern Parents and Wilbur Dawbarn's Mr Meecher the Uncool Teacher is Maxwell Beecher, the Trendy Teacher by Reg Whitehead:

Oh look, Kev Sutherland's got stuff in Zit as well!

One thing that Zit seems to have in abundance is NEARLY straight rip-offs of other popular comic characters, with the odd additional characteristic thrown in (sometimes). Hence we have Billy Bunt (He's Just a Fat... Fool):

Poparse the Sailor Man:

Rob Filth's Roy of the Red Lion:

And how these next two escaped the notice of DC Thomson's legal team I'll never know:

My personal favourite "thing" from Zit would be Mick Austin's Tales from the Riverbank - here's three of them, the last of which may give you nightmares:

Unlike most of the other comics that were jumping on the Viz bandwagon, Zit had a fairly wide range of extracurricular products available. Besides the already-mentioned T-shirts (almost every character got one!), there's at least three "collected" books:

A third one, titled The Big Floppy One (contrasting with Viz's Big Hard One) is currently in the post.

As well as a tape:

And even a video! This has recently been found on eBay, if I ever get around to getting one of those VHS transfer cables you can expect the contents of the Zit video to be finding its way to YouTube eventually:

And that's... almost it for Zit.

But not quite! Some fairly interesting "behind-the-scenes" stuff went on at Zit, mostly in relation to its owner/creator, Russell Church. Apparently, Russell thought there was some sort of rivalry between his own comic and Viz, which Chris Donald (aka. Mr. Viz) has cleared up in his autobiography thusly:

"Church's magazine was so bad he couldn't give the thing away."

Ouch.

Perhaps looking to pick a fight he thought he could win, Russell's next target was Spit!, a really terrible comic that'll be covered on this blog soon enough. He took Spit! to the High Court, accusing it of trying to pass itself off as Zit. Fair enough by my reckoning, a LOT of Graham Hey's stuff is also in Spit!, as is that trendy teacher character. Anyway, the judge couldn't see the similarities - so he made Russell pay Spit!'s legal fees. And then Zit went and made a joke about Ann Diamond's cot death incident, prompting further legal payouts. Russell and his company, Humour Publications, were sank, and you'd think that would be the end of things...

Until another publisher, The Mag Factory, decided to carry on with Zit - and apart from the title the "new" Zit was like a completely different comic:

Inside it's more like Smut than Viz, with a lot of the more surreal aspects replaced with shite like this:

Or this:

Whoever drew that one there seems to've drawn around 75% of the latter-day Zit - the comics are FILLED with his weird little fat-headed people, and they go on and on and on forever:

One of the "survivors" of Humour Publications was The Man Who Collects Eyeballs, a regular character in Gutted (a somewhat feeble comic from the makers of Zit that, of course, will be covered here at some point in the future). Here's one of his Zit appearances:

This final incarnation of Zit eventually ceased to exist sometime around 2002, but there's still two more interesting bits to it. Firstly, Viz readers will recognise the work of Cat Sullivan - here's something from before he joined the Fulchester crew:

And Lee Healey of Drunken Bakers fame also made somewhat regular contributions to Zit - by way of example here's One Man and his Maggots:

And finally, also from Mr. Healey, are two things which eventually became "regular fixtures" of Viz.

So, Zit then. I think it's alright. Better than a lot of other examples of this sort of thing, but also a lot worse than many others too. Not much of a conclusion after such a long article, but there we go. Make what you will of that.

↧

The Beano Boys

August 8, 2013, 3:42 am

≫ Next: This Is Not Who We Were

≪ Previous: Pus-filled unwelcome blemish

Just something quick here - I was going to save it until February but odds are I'd've forgotten about it, or even lost it by then, so it's here now instead. From a 1987 issue of Escape ("The Modern Guide to Comics and More") is this obituary piece on Mr. Ken Reid, with tributes from Leo Baxendale, Pat Mills, Savage Pencil, Davy Francis, Kevin O'Neill, Robert Nixon, Alan Moore and Lew Stringer.

From the same two page spread, there's also a mini interview with Leo Baxendale, talking about taking DC Thomson to court, and a few of his other (at the time) current projects.

Just in case anyone's interested, like.

↧

This Is Not Who We Were

September 19, 2013, 1:33 pm

≫ Next: Erk!

≪ Previous: The Beano Boys

If there's anyone still "out there" in Internetland, my apologies. It's been a long, weird Summer. They could make a film out of it, maybe. It wouldn't be a very good film, but it'd involve extreme emotional opposites - dizzying heights of happiness, nauseous lows of depression, love and heartbreak, lies and deceit, scary gangsters, threats of every kind imaginable, death, courtroom dramas, some good music, a lot of booze...

But that's not what we're here to discuss. This is a "fun" and "happy" place where fun and happy things are looked at. Normal service will resume shortly, but for now (just to "tide things over"), here's some cultural sensitivity courtesy of DC Thomson, circa 1993. Enjoy in an "Oh we're so much more enlightened twenty years later" sort of way.

↧

Erk!

October 16, 2013, 4:35 am

≫ Next: The Specialist Adult Humour Periodical for the Lonely

≪ Previous: This Is Not Who We Were

Oops, and suddenly it's October. I was planning one more "rude" comic, then a clever segue sort of thing into some seasonal "spooky" stuff... If I get my arse into gear, it COULD still happen, but something presented itself this morning (or yesterday?) that couldn't be left languishing on the hard drive. It's this thing here:

An unpublished comic from Fleetway! Not the kind of thing any sensible comic-enjoyer should ignore, certainly not. According to a Mr. McScotty of the Comics UK forums, this was a mock-up of sorts, tried out on the kids of several Glasgow primary schools, around 1991-ish. It never went any further than that, but ask and you shall receive...

Over to Lew Stringer:

Oh No!! was the brainchild of cartoonists Dave King and Ian Ellery (hence the alias 'Ellery King') who had met with Fleetway to discuss packaging a new humour comic for them. Fleetway okayed the idea and Dave and Ian put together a 32 page dummy issue with contributions from many other creators including myself.

Fleetway printed a very small run of the comic (perhaps about 200, I forget) and did some market research at schools. The reactions were very positive indeed. Oh No!! was totally different to any children's comic of the time. It had no house style, no adherence to formula, and was closer in style to Oink! but without the rude bits or pig theme. The fact that it did have its own identity is one thing that the kids liked. (For example, when asked to put the comic on top of other comics they thought were similar, the kids created a new space for it.)

Everything was looking good. Dave and Ian even booked a hotel for us to have a pre-launch get together with all the other creators. Fleetway were keen to do this new comic. The mood at the pre-launch was very optimistic.

And then things went pear-shaped. A change of management (I think this is when Egmont took over, - not 100% sure) suddenly put the project on hold. And it never happened. Not attributing any blame. It just wasn't the sort of comic the new owners wanted to do. They wanted licensed properties, not creator-owned new characters.

It came so close though...

If copies are in circulation they must be the ones given to the school for market research or contributor's copies. It was never distributed to shops or to anyone outside of Fleetway & the research team.

And now, just under a year after I first enquired about this oddity, along comes someone by the name of Alfie. He kindly scanned in his entire dummy copy for the folk of the forums to take a gander at, and now he's only gone and sent me some super-high-quality scans of it all. And here it is!

We start with the introductory page, and some letters (fictional, obviously) - it's a bit odd about its intended audience, as you'll see:

And then it's onto the comics! First up is the fantastic-looking S.C.U.M. Squad, by Andy Lanning and John Carnell.

Fans of Bucky O'Hare might notice something a bit familiar about that submarine there...

Lew Stringer's Dick Yampy is up next, your typical "idiot" character:

Followed by the first of more-than-one high quality Tom Paterson things... Little Zzod - He's slightly odd!

The distinctly futuristic/alternate universe feel of Oh No!! continues with Dinner Ladies In Space, by Julie Hollings:

Dave King's very own Dr. Facsimile is next, with this cautionary tale:

Anyone remember that short-lived magazine about British comics called Crikey!? And to anyone that does, remember that thing at the end of most issues? Well it's here too:

Followed by more space-age Paterson-penned fun!

Bringing things back to the "real world" now, sort of, with Ian Ellery's Kansas Kevin:

Something of the non-comic variety now, that being this quiz thing asking whether you're a werewolf, an atomic scientist or a rock. It amuses me.

The biggest surprise (for me, at least) was finding a Phil Baber piece in there! Typically bizarre, he's the king:

A few more bits by Ian Ellery now (or Ellery King, if we're going by his pseudonym) - more in the vein of Oink! or Acne but less rude/pig-based:

Dancefloor Dez is a bit of an oddity compared to the rest of what we have here, with references to bouncers, aftershave, clubs and all the other stuff that primary school kids shouldn't really know about, much less care about. It's by Mike Nicholson and Seb Buccheri:

Back in the realms of "That's more like it!" is this King and Ellery collaboration thing, the hyper-colourful Daughter of Duckzilla Meets the Astrozombies - I love it!

Here's Glenn B. Flemming's Hatch thing again:

And another alien-themed thing from Tom Paterson! This one's Mega-Belly, the fattest boy in the universe:

A few Oink!-style mini-strips now, courtesy of the editors. Monsters in particular I really like, and I "wouldn't mind" seeing a few more of that:

Something a bit unexpected towards the end now - Mr. Movie and Dr. Video talking about new films and videos. In particular, The Rocketeer, some Doctor Who things and the Beetlejuice cartoons.

A nice enough idea, but there can't be that many little'uns who'd be interested in a wall of text like that when they're reading a comic.

Last up, on the back cover, is Lew Stringer again with Lance Boyle, Secret Agent:

So... How to conclude things? It's a tragic shame this never made it out, is all I can say. In terms of "alternative" kids' comics, it's easily equal to the more successful ones like Oink! and Acne (maybe superior in the latter's case), and of a much higher quality than the non-starters such as Fizog, Triffik!, It's Wicked!, The Big Greenie and The Bog Paper. Ah well.

Oh, if anyone wants any BIGGER scans of these pages, click here.

And thanks again to Alfie!

↧

The Specialist Adult Humour Periodical for the Lonely

October 22, 2013, 1:50 pm

≫ Next: And then later, when it gets dark, we go home.

≪ Previous: Erk!

Well look at this, more than one post in a month! Makes a nice change, a bit. This one's about a terrible, terrible, terrible comic called Spit! - I don't feel like smiling anymore.

Carry on, make yourself miserable...

"Comic Historians" will be interested to know that this is the comic that helped to bury the (slightly) superior Zit - Russell Church, the owner of Zit, took Spit! to court on plagiarism charges, and got laughed out of the room with a massive time-wasting fine, but as we'll see here, maybe there was a slight bit of truth to his argument.

For example, many of the characters that appeared in Zit also appeared in Spit! - suppose that's the trouble with a relying on freelancers in an overpopulated market, perhaps? Here's Maxwell Beecher, who we've already met before:

As well as Rob Filth's Roy of the Red Lion:

And Graham Hey's large cast of unimaginative characters... The Twats Next Door:

Dad and Son:

And Teenage Mum:

Graham Hey also "did" a few other "characters" here, just for Spit! - well, they're not in any issues of Zit that I have, at least. None of them are much fun. We have wife-murdering gambling-addict Fred Furlong:

Child-bothering clergyman Reverend Potter:

And pathetic Sid The Sexist rip-off Norman's Conquest:

And while we're on the subject of terrible imitations that completely miss the point, here's Spit!'s take on Viz's Jack Black - Andy Fraser's Danny Glutton, the Fat-Arsed Schoolboy Detective:

Carrying on with the desperately-wanting-to-be-Viz theme, they also did these things:

In case you can't tell, that's supposed to be funny. Seasoned Viz readers will be familiar with such "tatvertisements" as No. 22 Shit Street or The Life of Christ in Cats, but this one? Well, it's a picture of kittens on a plate, and then it talks about the kittens on a plate... There's something missing here, that being "humour", which is sadly a bit of a running theme with Spit!, as can be further demonstrated by the likes of Michael Hingley's Lambert and Butler:

That charming punchline there? It's used often! See also Ugly Dudley:

Ugly Dudley's "thing" is the mutilation of students, as you can see here:

As well as in the four thousand other adventures he has. Drawn by Reg Whitehead, possibly the most prolific of contributors to Spit! - here's another of his regulars, the Queen of Clubs:

That bit that's obscured for legal reasons has my curiosity piqued slightly...

Also from Mr. Whitehead we have...

Alan Clutchdown, Driving Instructor (with ANOTHER sodomy-related punchline):

Young Brad, the Vicar's Lad:

Wingnut Wilson with a punchline that's actually fairly amusing a bit!

Charles' Atlas, which has potential but somehow falters... Not quite sure why or how:

Difficult Youth:

Robbie's Robot Dad - that panel where he says "Tin cunt" is worth a chuckle at least:

Barney's Rubble, which I actually DID laugh at, for that "riot" that he helps to start:

Gypsy Kings - Viz got into a spot of bother when they did a strip based around Gypsies (it's all there on Wikipedia if you're interested). When Spit! took a pop at them, it seems nobody really noticed, let alone cared:

And here's a further example of the slap-dash nature of relying on freelancers for content - Belamy Lugosi, Gothic Botanist appeared in issue 16:

And then again, with the exact same strip only with a bit of spot-colouring, in issue 45:

Good old Mr. Omnipresent himself, Nigel Maughan, is also a victim of multiple printings here - I've seen this same Barny Boot-Sale in Zit and possibly even in Smut as well:

Let's see some more of Mr. Maughan's contributions, because I like him...

Here's Bertie's Balloons:

And the mini-masterpiece, Junior Ram Raiders - each episode ends with the lead young offender mutilated in increasingly messy ways, to the point that his parents are getting sick of the whole thing:

Let's see, what else has Spit! got that's worth noting... There's the Spit! chatlines, which I can only assume are the worst things ever conceived:

And these things also - taking old adventure strips and changing the words in an attempt to make them funny. They go on for up to sixteen pages, so here's just one page from one of them - you get the idea:

And here's some more bits from the "early days" of Spit! - the contractually-obliged Jeremy Beadle lampoon, courtesy of Andy Fraser:

Jim Nasium, Andy Fraser's ode to schoolboy buggery:

Whitley Baywatch, drawn by Lew Stringer and written by Graham Hey (so at least this one looks different to the rest of Hey's stuff):

Something from current Beano and Viz man Paul Palmer:

And some more things from Michael Hingley:

From issue 27 until its overdue demise, Spit! underwent a slight makeover, with a full-colour glossy cover and some new artists:

Most "prominent" amongst them being Anthony Smith, again. He still did his usual identi-kit characters:

Whilst also deviating somewhat into a slightly different "style", which works well for the (comparatively) "hilarious" Pete's Pranks - a blatant rip-off/affectionate parody of Joker from Knockout and Whizzer & Chips. I like it:

Not so fun is Sad Twat, a bespectacled Roger the Dodger in a story in which nothing happens:

And Schizophrenic Stan - it's not often I put on my PC helmet, but this one I don't like, negative reinforcements of misguided stereotypes and all that:

Also new to the fold is... Someone Kelly? Seems like an angry fellow, you can imagine him gritting his teeth whilst drawing stuff like this:

And then there's this... thing. By a guy called "Gash", I'm SURE I've seen his work elsewhere... It's Sefton Ward, Paranormal Detective. The stories make no sense, but they look like nothing else:

And... That's Spit! then. Mostly terrible, but it got slightly better as it went on. The last-dated issue in my possession is from late 1996, meaning it lasted at least two years - moderately successful in terms of rude comics that aren't Viz then, and certainly deserving of its place in history for burying Zit.

Before we go, and seeing as it's October (when seemingly every blog has to have a "spooky" theme), here's the cover to Spit!'s Hallowe'en issue:

And a board game sort of thing from inside it, done by that Whitehead guy again:

Ah bollocks, I've spent my whole day off doing this thing.

Have a look at the comments below for some conflicting, informative opinions on what it was like working on Spit!, whilst also marvelling at the wonders of the modern age (write about comics then the folk who made the comic will come along and tell you about it!).

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And then later, when it gets dark, we go home.

October 27, 2013, 12:43 pm

≫ Next: A comic not of sight or of sound but of mind

≪ Previous: The Specialist Adult Humour Periodical for the Lonely

I know I like to dream a lot

And think of other worlds that are not

I hate that I need air to breathe

I'd like to leave this body

And be free

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A comic not of sight or of sound but of mind

October 27, 2013, 4:21 pm

≫ Next: Monster! Monster!

≪ Previous: And then later, when it gets dark, we go home.

Seeing as it's October and all that, here's something slightly "spooky" yet still in fitting with the "main" theme of the "project" that's "been" going on "here" for the "past few" months. Sort of. It's an oddity, that's for sure - something that from the cover looks like a parody of The Twilight Zone, but is actually several outdated parodies of cult TV shows and a handful of Zit reprints.

It's... The Twilight Clone, from 1991, and helmed by Spit! contributor, Mr. Michael Hingley. I can't find ANY information on this one, anywhere, and found it by chance in a box full of 2000AD back issues in a second-hand "collector's emporium" in Manchester, sometime last year. Something tells me that The Twilight Clone had big ambitions, and maybe something came of it, who knows? If that "something" ever DID happen, it didn't survive up to the Internet age, so here it is.

There's good intentions afoot here - Hingley's obviously a big fan of Rod Serling and his legacy, as evidenced by the biopic he did for the back cover:

And the introductory page promises fun things:

Only to be immediately followed by this piece of duff from Bruce Gilligan - this one's approaching Jockstrap levels of badness:

I've got my suspicions that Gilligan IS one of the uncredited contributors to Jockstrap, but only slightly... There's a slight semblance of a story here, and this is from seven years before Jockstrap, but you never know.

Anyway, one Zit reprint after this we get a few pages of TV parodies, which you may or may not find amusing, depending on how much you're "into" certain TV shows:

There's also this going-nowhere thing from Graham Hey (a name amongst Viz clones that's almost as ubiquitous as Anthony Smith or Nigel Maughan):

At least it's in fitting with the "theme" of The Twilight Clone, a "theme" that also takes in "hilarious" photo captions:

And more TV parodies:

There's the obligatory swipe at Viz there in that last panel there...

The Twilight Clone would get a few points for effort if it didn't all fall apart in the middle, when this happens:

Call it something to make up for a lack of material, but it doesn't bode well for any future issues when the "fun packed pages" include such wonders as Theodore Platt, He Lives in a Flat:

Hingley's own Honest Jol, He's On the Dole:

More of Graham Hey's Zit material, and more of that Gilligan's stuff:

There's even a Hey/Gilligan collaboration!

Sorry you had to see that.

Anyway, I mentioned the "ambitious" nature of The Twilight Clone earlier on, and that's none more apparent than in this advert at the back of the thing, offering membership to the Twilight Clone Membership Club:

Badges, posters, bookmarks and everything! Did anyone ever join? Did The Twilight Clone ever make it to a second, third or even fourth issue? There was certainly a smidgen of potential here for something reasonably fun, I'll give it that much.

For now though, let's just pretend it appeared from another dimension, confused/depressed people a bit then went home again. That'll do.

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Monster! Monster!

October 29, 2013, 9:53 am

≫ Next: Bowel-shifting

≪ Previous: A comic not of sight or of sound but of mind

Don't suppose anyone remembers around this time last year? When I did a "feature" on the Children's Britannica Book of Ghosts? Well, I did, and now here's its counterpart/sequel - and it's all about monsters!

The REAL monster here is my inability to properly scan a hardback book held together with Sellotape, so expect slap-dash levels of image quality throughout.

Also, looking back, I'm not exactly "good" at captions, so we'll let the book do most of the talking this time around...

See what I mean about the scanning?

Ah, the Lambton Worm! That's the kind of image that sticks with you your whole life. I've had this book for over twenty years, so imagine my surprise/enjoyment when I saw Ken Russell's The Lair of the White Worm, which is VERY loosely based on the tale...

On a similar note - two years ago I went to that London and saw the Crystal Palace dinosaurs "in the flesh", so to speak. It was a fairly thrilling moment after looking at that picture so obsessively as a nipper. Even managed to take more or less that exact same photo! Should you ever find yourself in that part of the world, it's worth seeing.

A nice page for junior cryptozoologists there...

This page would be slightly depressing if this book was made nowadays instead of in the Seventies - we'd just have a picture of someone sitting in front of a computer (nostalgic blah blah blah).

These two are my favourite pages "nowadays".

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