Things for December

Christmas... The time of year when you just want five sodding minutes of peace and bloody quiet to yourself, and traditionally there's no better or easier way of putting that message across than burying yourself in a big fat book. I did a similar post to this a few years ago, but here we are in an odd moment of motivation, and so it is - the "best" books a comic-liker could hope to find themselves reading over the festive period and beyond.

Apologies for this terrible picture - my camera's died, so this is the best my phone can offer.

The majority of these books can be found for a few pennies on Amazon Marketplace, but some of them you might have to look a bit further for... They're all definitely worth it though (if you like this sort of thing).

One piece short of Legoland

Greetings... anyone?

Two years ago (two!), I scanned in/posted the issue of the Beano from the week I was born - refresh yourselves if you like. This year, as in, last weekend, it was one of those "milestone" birthdays that's really just a number, but it's a bloody scary sounding number nonetheless. And I realise most of the folk who read/comment on this particular corner of the Internet have already gone through that particular year, but... Ah, no point will be made here. Here's the Viz that was on the shelves on the day I was born (from their bi-monthly days)...

Read the rest if you like? Then there's some "words" at the end of it all. The Viz bit's just there to "reel you in", a bit.

Behind the Green Curtains

One of my favourite things about doing all these articles on the "rude comics" (besides re-reading them all and finding ones I've never heard of before) is when the people who actually made them pop up in the comments section, and share a bit about what it was like being a part of the whole thing. For example, take a look at what Rob Filth (or Rob Yuppies as he was then known) has to say about Ziggy and Spit, and while you're at the Spit bit, take in what Lee Turnock and Lew Stringer have to say about the whole thing as well.

Recently, Nigel Maughan popped up in the comments section too - click on his name in the side bit there, and you'll probably be taken to nearly every "rude comic" article I've done so far, as he worked on pretty much all of them (with a few exceptions - only Poot! and Lazy Frog come to mind immediately). Seriously, have a look at his CV, it goes on and on and on... Here's something of his in case it hasn't clicked yet who I'm on about:

That's one of the first things I ever saw by him, by the way - in an issue of Acne, a long, long time ago.

At the risk of sounding like a disgusting sycophant, I'm going to say now that I was a bit excited when Nigel got in touch - he's my fourth-favourite living cartoonist, y'see. We got to talking, and what follows is my attempt at a thrown-together "interview" about the "scene" in general. I've never done anything like this before, so you'll just have to bear with it. Plenty of illustrations/comics throughout though, so don't worry.

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...

Putting the tinsel up.

Hmmm... Nineteen days to go, I got my first card today. Been selling trees to people for two weeks now, A Spaceman Came Travelling has been on the radio at least twice a day this week, and I feel like watching Scrooged. Suppose something "festive" should be done here?

Okay, the Christmas issue of Viz is out now. Everyone should go and buy it. We Blight Christmas will warm your heart like nothing else, and you get a free 2014 calendar. This is what you're looking for:

Well hey look, it's the return of Norbert Colon as well!

Here's something of a "Christmas Cracker" from December of 2002, and from the pages of the NME no less. Everyone goes through that "NME phase" at some point in their life - my phase, fortuitously, included this nice little two-pager by Viz man Alex Collier, written by NME staffer Mark Beaumont. It stars the Cooper Temple Clause, a band I'll still have time for today (this is them, in case you don't know them), and they're visiting various other musical folk dressed up as Father Christmas. If you weren't into the whole "new music" thing in 2002, it's doubtful that any of the jokes here will make any sense, but here you go anyway:

Charity gubbins

Just taking a short breather from the Viz knock-offs, just for a moment. That Smut thing was depressing, and I've spent most of today reading Ziggy, which has got me verging on the suicidal (you'll see what I mean when I eventually get around to covering that one).

The "breather" is for a reason other than reminding myself that good comics exist - for on this approaching Friday, it's Red Nose Day. Raising money for all sorts of good causes (and ignoring the salaries taken by BBC folk), it's mostly a "fun"-based charity. This year has the Beano getting involved, and to be frank, it looks horrendous. Jessie bleeding J, One Direction, Olly bloody Murs, Harry Hill and David Tennant all done in Nigel Parkinson's caricature style.

Yech! Is this REALLY how far imagination can take the Beano these days? Just sticking the obnoxious faces of Saturday evening's television into the otherwise wonderful worlds of Dennis, Minnie and the rest of them? Why not celebrating the medium itself and doing something special with regards to UK comics as a whole? Well, probably because hardly anybody cares about comics anymore, but still.

Let's go back 22 years instead, and take a look at something that seems like it's had a LOT of effort put into it - the Comic Relief Comic.

Comic Relief has several different faces to it - there's the BBC show, in which folk from all over television-town come together and make tits of themselves. There's Sport Relief, where sports personalities do similar. And now there's the Beano, but instead of bringing together a load of comics folk, they just got the X-Factor crowd instead.

In 1991, people DID buy and enjoy comics a lot more than they do now, and of course that means there was more of them around - hence we have this wonderful publication, bringing together DC Thomson's Beano and Dandy crew, along with Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, Dan Dare, Captain Britain, Superman, Batman, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Hunt Emerson, the Young Ones, Dr. Strange, Iron Man, the cast of Fawlty Towers, Edmund Blackadder, the Sleeze Brothers, and hundreds more. All framed around a central, somewhat bizarre Christmas Carol-esque story about red noses conspiring to turn the world population's faces into doorknobs or something.

Want to read the whole thing? Go ahead then, just click on the "Read more" button...

Simon Donald looking spotty

Here's something else from that Cartoon Aid thing - the contribution of Simon Donald, aka. Mr. Viz. It's fairly amusing!

And here's the lucky lad who got to meet Mr. Donald - wonder if he had any idea of the sort of malarky Simon was usually drawing?

That's him there, in the middle, clearly terrified of the camera. Not the handsome fellow we know him as these days:

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.

Xmas Gift Guide, sort of.

Get some comics read on the 25th of this month! It's "traditional", as in, it's not Christmas without an annual to read. There's a few on offer this year, and they're cheap enough if you know where to look. For example, this year's Viz annual can be found for £6.99 (instead of £10.99) in that discount book chain known as The Works, whilst all the others (Beano, Dandy, Oor Wullie, The Broons and so on) can be had at three for £10 in Asda.

BUT... Why spend that much money when you can get over a thousand pages of classic comics for just over £5? Or £16.22 if we're including postage too. Observe:

Dennis & Gnasher & Friends Cartoon Capers

This cheap-looking and clumsily-titled wedge of a book was sneaked out into the shops without any advertizing (to my knowledge) back in 2000 - I'd never heard of it until finding it in a charity shop last year for 50p. Remember Classics From The Comics? This is essentially that, only it's 382 pages long! 

Hundreds of high-quality chuckles from a huge variety of characters. There's stuff from the Beano (including Dennis the Menace in both Law and Sutherland flavours), the Dandy, Topper, Beezer, Nutty, Sparky, Buzz and Cracker. Should last you through to at least the day before New Year's Eve. Yours for just a penny (plus postage).

The Big Comic Book 1988

For those that prefer Shiner to Smasher, there's The Big Comic Book 1988 (so big it wouldn't fit under the scanner!). Another one that's full of reprints, this time from Whizzer & Chips, Buster and Whoopee! Ken Reid's Faceache is in here, as is Reg Parlett's Ivor Lott & Tony Broke (possibly history's most consistently funny comic characters), and it's a big fat 254-page hardback - a nice contrast to the floppy phonebook-style of the above DC Thomson tome.

Again, you can have it for a penny.

The Dog's Bollocks

Viz at its supposed "peak", I'm only highlighting this one as it's the first one I ever got, and has consequently kept me amused for the longest. As well as your usual crowd of Biffa Bacon, Roger Mellie, Billy the Fish and so on, there's a few "forgotten" characters in here such as Tubby Tucker ("The Big Fat... Person"), Norbert Colon ("He's meaner than a Scottish person"), Buster Gonad and his Unfeasibly Large Testicles, Boswell Boyce ("He Throws His Voice"), Mike Smitt ("He's a patronising git"), Jelly Head, Mrs. Neat, and the extravagantly-titled Miss Demeanour and her Concertina ("The Mischievous Token Female Cartoon Character Who's Got A Concertina").

126 pages, all good, and what unimaginative people are talking about when they say it isn't as funny as it used to be. All that for a penny, again.

The Giant Holiday Fun Comic Album

Last of all, there's this curiosity. We've had chuckles from the houses of DC Thomson, Fleetway and the rude kids, and now there's this one from... everyone else? It's a bumper variety pack pulled from the pages of Wham!, Smash!, Pow!, Wow, Knockout, Monster Fun, Shiver and Shake, Eagle and so much more - you'll even find Laurel & Hardy and Billy Bunter in this one. There's FIVE full adventures with The Cloak, roughly half of Ken Reid's Queen of the Seas pages, Steadfast McStaunch from Denis Gifford, a full Albert Hall the Office Boy adventure... Really, the amount of variety on offer here is nauseating. The print's a bit faded on a few pages (maybe just with my copy?), but this WAS a budget release to begin with - published in 1989, see.

A bit pricier than the rest at £4.99, but definitely worth it.

And how about that? Those four books combined, at £16.22 including postage, works out cheaper than three annuals from Asda plus the Viz book at £16.99 - and you don't even have to leave the house for these ones!

More Beano things

Typical, isn't it? I spend weeks looking through all my stuff for amusing alternative takes on the Beano, spend an evening posting them all up here, then two days later a couple more turn up. Not to worry though, because here they are. And they're both (sort of) the fault of Kev F. Sutherland.

Back in the early 1990s, Mr. Sutherland ran a comic called UT. One of the "regular things" about the comic (and one which may ultimately've led to its demise) was the back cover being an upside-down parody of another comic or magazine, such as Hello!, Shoot or, in this case, The Beano. And a fairly convincing knock-up it is, too:

That particular cover leads into a typically surreal (and VERY un-Beano-ish) episode of Funny Bunnies by Phil Baber. Just for the fun of it all, here it is:

The next item is also from a Kev Sutherland product (and POSSIBLY drawn by him too). It's from the first issue of Zig and Zag's Zogazine, a comic based on that puppet duo (obviously), with each issue following a loose theme. For the first issue, that theme was comics, and one of the features is this nice spread, titled Zig and Zag's Wacky World of Comics. Not only does it feature a Beano spoof, it also satirizes The Dandy, The Topper, 2000AD, Action Comics, The Fantastic Four, Eagle, The Amazing Spider-Man and even Viz!

Click on it to read it "properly", of course. 

Oh, and now that I've done this, logic dictates I'll find more takes on the  Beano within the week.

Some Different Takes on The Beano

A comic that's been around for as long as The Beano, and one that's become so much a part of popular culture that most people should be able to name a few characters just by looking at them, is obviously ripe for parody, pastiche or homage. And it's been done a LOT.

One example being this Steve Bell thing from 1984:

Fun? Yep. A miserable yet affectionate look at what may happen to the Bash Street Kids (and Minnie the Minx) thirty years after however old they're supposed to be in the pages of the Beano.

Below are FOUR more different "versions" of everyone's favourite comic (be aware, there's a few rude words)...