Trunks, tails, ears, eyes, tusks, feet, mouths, and wrinkly grey skin

Not the Michael Nesmith film, but another Galaxy/Tristar comic - Elephant Parts is what appeared on the shelves instead of the fifth issue of Brain Damage's third year (1991), hence the odd numbering of its first issue:

Three cheers for Ben Baker for spotting Oink! co-creator Patrick Gallagher on the cover there.

"Incorporating The Damage" it says, but far from it - Elephant Parts is printed on cheaper paper with mostly black-and-white pages (or spot-colouring at best), and it does away with (almost) all the political parts that made Brain Damage that much more "interesting", and instead goes for a more "surreal" tone (so a bit like Gutted, but only slightly). As with most things that set out to be deliberately "weird" it's mostly a disaster, but there's also a few odd bits of genuine "goodness" - read on to find out, if you're up for it...

Squeezing another one out

There's always time! Going to go ahead and end the year (in "blog" terms anyway) on a thematic level. As in, something to do with comics. A Christmassy comic, like what Lew Stringer's been doing. Have some highlights from 1992's Acne Christmas Bumper Special:

42 MP's, 5 hod carriers, 3 pimps, 12 students and a tramp.

Here we go again, with a title that doesn't really stand out at all, in any way whatsoever... But I set out to cover ALL of these things, and ALL of them I shall! There's a fair few more of the atypical variety to go, but there's also several more "interesting" ones on the way too. For now, let's get Top Banana looked at, including its inspiringly literal covers...

Devastated?

Here's a lesson in why setting out to initially do things in a chronological order was a doomed task from the start... As in, I had this "piece" all ready and prepared when I found out that this particular publication is/was the "sequel" to another one. No worries, I'll just have to shift things around a bit and "do" Gutter after this one - which is called Gutted.

Get me and my fancy sample edition

The story goes that there was a comic called Gutter, itself an off-shoot of Zit - same publishers and everything (Humour Publications), and when things weren't going so well there Gutter was shut down and re-launched as Gutted, printed on cheap paper and using spot-colour throughout, and claiming "bizarre humour" as its selling point. Yep, it's rude comics having a go at surrealism, with mixed results.

Before I got hold of any issues of Gutted, I was informed that it was the equivalent of what you'd get if you could staple wank together - an understandable opinion when looking at lazily "random" bits like these:

Yes, that thing that Noel Fielding does nowadays, only on paper. I stand here today to say that despite such rubbish as this, I enjoyed reading the four issues of Gutted that I've acquired so far. I really have! 

The "proper" first issue

Conceived and written mostly by Ged Backland and Shaun Taft (previously featured here within the pages of Igor), and lasting for... Maybe seven or eight issues? Beginning in 1992 anyway, and the only source I've found so far says it lasted for "about" eight issues, so that'll do for now. Let's have a peek at what else constitutes "bizarre humour", shall we?

Twenty days left, not like anything's going to happen

So we may as well do this "year in review" thing that everyone else started doing in September. Let's see now...

On a purely cultural level, it's been a bit of a bugger. We've lost Bob Godfrey, Ray Harryhausen, Lou Reed, Richard Briers, Mel Smith, Charles Grigg, Marcia Wallace, Patti Page, James Gandolfini, Richard Griffiths, Felix Dexter - more or less everyone that anyone's ever cared about is now dead. It's not that nice, really.

What with all the death and disaster, there hasn't been much good "new" stuff around either (at least not that I've noticed). The fact that my favourite album of the year is a compilation of forgotten indie bands from the Nineties that Ben Baker put together could be considered "evidence" of this, but it's more likely I'm just not paying enough attention.

But just like last year, at least there's been that one constant to hold onto and laugh at/with. Viz is what I'm talking about, and it's never going to go away and that makes me and several other people GLAD. Here's the twenty-seven best bits of Viz from 2013, in roughly descending order. How happy we shall be!

27 - Cover of the Year - Lichtenstein Fartpants

Ooh, look at that etc. I'm thinking I should get a bigger scanner soon, it'd be easier than trying to convince Dennis Publishing to reduce the width of Viz slightly. The problems this brings to freeloading folk such as myself shall become evident as this list progresses...

Pus-filled unwelcome blemish

Right, here we go again! A trite observation about all these sub-Viz comics is that the bad ones seem to do a lot better than the good ones. Titles like Smut can carry on for almost two decades, whereas something like Adroit might disappear after two or three issues. On a similar merciful level, utter garbage like Jockstrap seem to've been wiped from the memory of all but a handful of people, so at least there's that.

Which brings us to Zit, a comic that seems to fall somewhere in between the "good" and the "awful" definitions - mostly to do with what was going on behind the scenes. Yes, we're looking at Zit today!

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!

End of the Year List Thing

Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn't I? There's been fifty weeks for "good stuff" to get made so far this year, and traditionally (or around mid-October if you want), now's the time to do a "round-up" of "what's best" in the form of several lists.

Slight problem though - I don't really pay attention. There's been six visits to the cinema this year, and that's not enough for a Top Ten. Can't really do a Top Five out of that lot either, because I really enjoyed each of those six films.

Outside of a couple of compilations of 1950's music, no albums have been listened to this year. There've been approximately two new songs that I've enjoyed, and the only new game I've bought this year is Soul Calibur V (can't really make a list with one item in it).

HOWEVER... There is ONE thing I've given my full attention to this year:

Yeah, Viz! That's the current Xmas issue there, go and buy it if you haven't already. I've been buying it semi-regularly since 1999, but 2012 has been the first year without missing an issue. With those qualifications, I feel entirely justified in doing a countdown of the "Top Nineteen Viz Strips Of 2012".

Oh, and it's NSFW, obviously.