A Different Class

Something's happening - I seem to be losing the ability to dislike things, mostly. Well, at least in regard to this kind of thing. Back in February of last year, I highlighted some Beano parodies from a comic called Pulp, a publication I summed up thusly:

...of all the Viz-style "alternative" comics I've seen, Pulp's definitely one of the worst in terms of "Getting it completely wrong". No cleverness or satire or anything here, just bad drawings and rude words.

Humble pie from the oven of shame and all that, but I must've either had a short memory or, as feared, I've lost the ability to criticise. Reading over the two issues of Pulp I have for the purposes of this article, it's suddenly one of my favourites. At least top ten. Whoops. So here we go, a re-assessment of sorts of Pulp.

Launched in 1991 by Big Mags Ltd, and edited by the same Stuart Blair, as the sister title to Ziggy, which if you remember, was a fairly outrageous title (as an understatement) that thrived on speculative libel. Suggesting Simon Bates has an incestuous relationship with his mother, stating that Roy Hattersley threw up on live TV and there was a baby's arm in the sick, that sort of thing. It was mostly those kind of articles and strange doctored photographs on most of its pages, with a few comics here and there. Pulp, on the other hand, flipped that ratio to be more of a comic-based publication, with a smattering of the articles too. So now we know what kind of thing we're in for here, shall we begin?

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...

The Specialist Adult Humour Periodical for the Lonely

Well look at this, more than one post in a month! Makes a nice change, a bit. This one's about a terrible, terrible, terrible comic called Spit! - I don't feel like smiling anymore.

Carry on, make yourself miserable...

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!

Getting Ziggy With It

A general warning before going any further - Ziggy may well be the most "offensive" out of the whole lot of the Viz clones. Within its pages is humour based around AIDS, cot death, child abuse, the IRA, racism, mental illness, genocide... Pretty much any "taboo" subject you can think of, Ziggy went there and rubbed it in your face until you were unable to think about anything else for days afterward. Vile and obscene and - in the right frame of mind - hilarious (in a childish sort of way).

But there's bound to be some fun stuff in there too, so read on, if you're up for it.