Now Appearing in Viz!

If you grew up in the UK and had a suitably juvenile sense of humor you are probably familiar with the comic magazine Viz. Viz got started in 1979 as a fanzine produced by cartoonist Chis Donald from his bedroom in his parent’s house in Newcastle upon Tyne, and eventually grew to peak at 1.2 million copies sold per issue in the early 1990s, and was the third most popular magazine in the UK. It’s known for its parodies of other British comics, a number of characters in ongoing features that have branched out to animation and other media, and a lot of vulgar, blue, and black humor. It’s damn funny, too.

These days Viz is still published 10 times a year and run by the creative team of Graham Dury and Simon Thorpe, a couple of right funny blokes (see how I am picking up the UK dialect???) who have been working on the magazine since the 80’s. I met Graham and Simon at the National Cartoonists Society Ruebens a few years ago, and a few times since including my visit to the Lakes Comics Art Festival in Kendall in 2017 and earlier this year at NCSFest. They are extremely talented cartoonists and writers.

Fortunately for me what they are NOT is good judges of talent, because they recently asked me to draw a story for Viz. That feature appears in Viz #288, which is the latest issue and out now. I’ve been given permission to share it here. Page one above. Page two here:

Viz does not usually have bylines in their comics (there are a LOT of them in each issue, and many are written and some drawn by Graham and/or Simon.) Funnily enough, right after this issue came out I got an email from Ireland-based cartoonist John Farrelly, who asked if I had done this piece for Viz because if not, someone was ripping off my style. I ‘fessed up.

I’m just finishing my second piece for Viz right now, so I guess I didn’t completely appall Graham and Simon with this one. When I was at the Lakes Festival we did a panel called “MAD vs. Viz” where Sergio Aragonés and I squared off against Graham and Simon in a live draw and a less confrontational interview. If we ever do that again, I can bat for both teams!

By the way, you can subscribe to Viz even here in the US.