Noel Gardner, portraits by Fiona Mackechnie/ all comic strips (c) Viz
A grand British institution that both exemplifies and subverts that nation’s rickety image, this story begins with a few years of slow brand-building and wilful daftness preceding untouchable status and a millions-strong fanbase. Then come the water-treading years, that period of essentially trading on past glories even while gamely trying new things, before steadying the ship into a latterday era of reliable peculiarity. All the while slotting high-minded reference points into a package which, despite everything, remains populist in essence.
When, in 2013, David Bowie supplied the Art Gallery Of Ontario with a list of his top 100 books for the career-overview …Is exhibition, the inclusion of Viz perhaps raised more eyebrows than anything else chosen. For one thing, it’s not a book but an ‘adult’ comic, although its publishers compile it in book form annually for the Christmas market – here, for example, we see Bowie, pictured in 2002 reading the previous year’s edition. (Aside: I visited John Peel’s house, also in 2002, and was cheered to note that the Peel Acres water closet was stocked up with Viz compendiums. Granted, the veteran DJ was rarely accused of being above a little toilet humour.)
For another, its reputation makes it a strange fit amidst Nabokov, Mishima, Martin Amis, a collection of John Cage lectures and suchlike. One does not tactically feign an appreciation of Viz in an effort to get one’s end away, be they Barack Obama or Sid The Sexist.
Real heads know the deal is more complex than this, however, and that the publication – 41 years old this month, having just published its 300th issue – has qualities far beyond the dick jokes and cartoon violence which comprise the surface level of its public face. I’d go so far as to say that when firing on all cylinders, Viz is one of the very finest satirical chroniclers of post-Thatcher Britain – albeit that claim carries a caveat or two, which I’ll return to. It’s certainly done enough to ensure the analogy between it and David Bowie in the opening paragraph of this piece was only moderately stretched, and then in a charming, vicar’s-sermon sort of way. I think.
This all goes against a grain of received wisdom, because for maybe 35 of its 41 years Viz has been “not as good as it used to be”. Mark E Smith is sometimes credited as the originator of this backlash, suggesting in 1985 that sibling co-founders Chris and Simon Donald had “sold out” by signing a publishing deal with Virgin. The late Fall vocalist’s take did little to stem perma-rising sales figures in the next half-decade, however – these hit the one million mark for a couple of years in the early 90s, at which point suggestions of a creative impasse were a bit more commonplace.
Befitting a publication which started in 1979 as a cross between a punk zine and a schlocky teen comic, Viz scarcely read like anyone’s complacent moneymaking scheme, maintaining a small staff and low overheads even at its most profitable. Extraneously, the editorial team (the Donald brothers plus cartoonists Graham Dury and Simon Thor…
