Picking up the pieces
Picking up the pieces |
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Page 28 of 38  The Fat Slags (1999), a strip that started out as a characteristically unapologetic response to charges of sexism. Art: Chris Donald. Script: Viz team As Viz became less punky with time, so sales began to decline. In the mid-1990s, they had dropped to around 700,000 - still a very respectable figure, but sliding fast. Whether the comic will last for much longer is questionable: certainly, the creators are rich enough not to have any financial incentive for keeping it going. Even so, qualitatively speaking, Viz past its best is still infinitely funnier than any other comic on the racks: long may it offend. The Viz story does not end there, however, because inevitably by the mid-1990s, it was not on its own, and had inspired a plethora of copyists. In fact, there were so many that it is pointless to list them thoroughly. Suffice to say that the majority were published by small companies, only lasted a few issues, and were content to cash in on the 'adult humour' retail network that Viz had pioneered. In terms of quality, most were lamentably dull - titles like Blag, Poot, Smut, UT and Gutter were more gross than funny, and lacked any sense of their progenitor's originality or style. Some were more inventive. Brain Damage (political satire), Talking Turkey (a mix of underground and European strips) and Electric Soup (Scottish vulgarity) were more honourable additions to the roster. |