Smut - It's all in the name

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":