The Lord of Harpole's Seasonal Message". 27 November 2006. Archived from the original on 11 December 2021 . Retrieved 28 March 2010– via YouTube. 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. Fnarr! Fnarr!". New Statesman. 22 November 2004. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007 . Retrieved 15 April 2010. Some tips are for ludicrous motives, such as "how to convince neighbours that your house has dry rot", while others are for ostensibly sensible motives but with ridiculous and impractical suggestions for their application:

Geordie magazine editors. Continue paying your mortgage and buying expensive train sets ... by simply licensing the Top Tips concept to a multinational burger corporation. 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] Rude Kids: The Unfeasible Story of "Viz" (Chris Donald, 2004) (aka: The Inside Story of Viz: Rude Kids) ISBN 0-00-719096-4 For example, a young woman is convinced that the spirit of her dead husband has possessed the family dog, and after some soul-searching, begins a sexual relationship with the dog. A running joke in these stories is that they often feature a car accident in which one of the characters is run down. In every case, the same man is driving the car, and always responds with the same line: "Sorry mate, I didn't see him/her!" The locations for the photo-stories are recognisable as the suburbs of Newcastle upon Tyne where the Viz team are based.Viz Comic Does Frank Miller's 300 For 300th Issue". Bleeding Cool. 13 October 2020 . Retrieved 15 October 2020.

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 b "Crude and rude proves a winning formula as Viz makes auction record". Antiques Trade Gazette . Retrieved 2 January 2019. In November 1987, a free mini-issue of Viz was given away with issue 23 of computer magazine Your Sinclair. This was done in response to Your Sinclair's competitor, CRASH, giving away a mini-copy of Oink! comic with their issue 42. [21] [22] Photo-strips [ edit ] a b "Cyclist, Viz, and Fortean Times acquired by Metropolis Group". Metropolis International (Press release). 20 December 2021. During the Gulf War of 1991, SEPECAT Jaguar GR1A bombers of the Royal Air Force featured such Viz characters as Johnny Fartpants, the Fat Slags and Buster Gonad as nose art. [27] Controversy [ edit ]Its success in the early 1990s led to the appearance of numerous rivals copying the format Viz pioneered; none of them managed to attain its popularity. Circulation peaked at 1.2million in the early 1990s, making it the third-most popular magazine in the UK, [2] but ABC-audited sales have since dropped, to an average of 48,588 per issue in 2018. [3] The 300th issue was published in October 2020. [4] History [ edit ] Logo 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". Genuine competitions have been run by Viz, with proper prizes. One of the earliest was a competition to win 'a ton of money' a pointed satire of tabloid newspapers promising huge cash prizes to boost circulation, the prize was in fact a tonne of one- and two-pence pieces, equivalent to a few hundred pounds sterling. Recently [ when?], they were giving away a plasma screen television provided by the producers of Freddy vs. Jason. Viz poked fun at the movie, describing it as " shite" in the competition description, and described the runners-up prizes of DVDs of the film as "frankly worthless", which led to the producers refusing to hand over the prize, for insulting their film. As the magazine's popularity grew, the bedroom became too small and production moved to a nearby Jesmond office. Donald also hired another freelance artist, Simon Thorp, whose work had impressed him. For over a decade, these four would be the nucleus of Viz. 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)