Happy 30th birthday Viz

14 October 2009

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Sinclair McKay celebrates 30 years of Britain’s funniest, sharpest and most irreverent cartoon. David Cameron need look no further for a perfect picture of broken Britain

Some night soon on the peaceful back streets of Bloomsbury, you might want to keep an eye out for two young ladies from the north for whom the term ‘muffin top’ might have been invented. They will be extremely drunk, laughing like open drains and displaying unsuitable underwear. They will be looking for romance. They are known widely as the ‘Fat Slags’.

Sandra and Tracey are two of the Hogarthian figures that populate the pages of Viz, a distinctly adult comic. It is now celebrating an anniversary that few children’s comics ever see: 30 years of scatalogical, frequently obscene cartoons. To celebrate this birthday, the normally decorous Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury is staging a special Viz exhibition. The Fat Slags will be there, alongside a sweary parade of characters who have, over the past few decades, provided a most unflattering reflection of modern British society. Among these are: Sid the Sexist; Roger Mellie, the Man On The Telly; Mrs Brady, Old Lady; Finbarr Saunders and his Double Entendres; Millie Tant And Her Radical Conscience; Billy The Fish; Major Misunderstanding. All are drawn in a richly detailed style reminiscent of every comic you grew up with. Viz also has a raucously funny letters page, and a ceaselessly ingenious ‘Top Tips’ advice column (‘Catch moths using a mousetrap baited with a jumper’ was one recent suggestion).

But the genius of the comic throughout the years has been its unflinching and rather unforgiving approach to various forms of antisocial behaviour. From benefits fraud to unreconstructed sexism to alcoholism to tiresome green posturing, Viz characters are quite often vividly irredeemable. The comic’s founder Chris Donald once disingenously described the Fat Slags’ ceaseless promiscuity as ‘unbecoming’.

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