Brown Bottle - Notable Strips

Notable Strips

For a complete list, see List of Viz comic strips

Many Viz characters have featured in long-running strips, becoming well known in their own right, including spin-off cartoons. Characters often have rhyming or humorous taglines, such as Roger Mellie, the Man on the Telly; Nobby's Piles; Johnny Fartpants; Buster Gonad; Sid the Sexist; Sweary Mary or Finbarr Saunders and his Double Entendres. Others are based on stereotypes of British culture, mostly via working class characters, such as Cockney Wanker and The Fat Slags. In addition to this, the comic also contains plenty of 'in jokes' referring to people and places in and around Newcastle upon Tyne.

Many strips appear only once. These very often have extremely surreal or bizarre storylines, and often feature celebrities. For example: "Paul Daniels's Jet-Ski Journey to the Centre of Elvis", and "Arse Farm – Young Pete and Jenny Nostradamus were spending the holidays with their Uncle Jed, who farmed arses deep in the heart of the Sussex countryside...". The latter type often follows the style of Enid Blyton and other popular children's adventure stories of the 1950s. Several strips were single-panel, one-off puns, such as "Daft Bugger", which featured two bored, uninterested men engaged in the act of buggery; the buggerer then states that he has forgotten his car keys (thus making him "daft").

The one-off strips often have ludicrously alliterative and/or rhyming titles, for example: "Reverend Milo's Lino Rhino", "Max's Laxative Saxophone Taxi', and "Scottie Trotter's Tottie Alottment". Some strips are built entirely around absurd puns, such as "Noah's Arse" and "Feet and Two Reg".

Most of the stories take place in the fictitious town of Fulchester. Fulchester was originally the setting of the British TV programme Crown Court before the name was adopted by the Viz team. Billy the Fish plays for Fulchester United F.C. There is innuendo in the name: the Internet domain fuck.co.uk was at one time held by fans of Viz who claimed to be promoting the Fulchester Underwater Canoeing Klubb. A significant number of strips, most of which centre on child characters, are set in the fictional Barnton.

One of the most pun-based strips was "George Bestial", which centred on famous footballer George Best committing bestiality. The strip was discontinued after the death of Best, but has since reappeared.

Viz also lampoons political ideas - both left-wing ideals, in strips such as "The Modern Parents" (and to an extent in Student Grant), and right-wing ones such as "Baxter Basics", "Major Misunderstanding", "Victorian Dad" and numerous strips involving tabloid columnists Garry Bushell ("Garry Bushell the Bear") and Richard Littlejohn ("Richard Littlecock" and "Robin Hood and Richard Littlejohn"), portraying them as obsessed with homosexuality, political correctness and non-existent left-wing conspiracies to the exclusion of all else. Holocaust-denier David Irving featured as Dick Dastardly in the Wacky Races spoof, "Wacky Racists".

In keeping with the comic's irreverent and deliberately non-conformist style, The Duke of Edinburgh was once portrayed as a culturally insensitive, dim-witted xenophobe in a one-off strip "HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and his Jocular Larks" which centred on the Duke making outrageously ill-informed comments to a young Chinese victim of a residential housing block collapse.

Occasionally, celebrities get the 'honour' of strips all to themselves. Billy Connolly has had more than one devoted to him trying to ingratiate himself with the Queen; Harold Shipman and Fred West got their own strip as rival neighbours trying to kill the old woman next door and trying to foil each other's plans (Harold and Fred - they make ladies dead!), and Bob Hope had a strip of him trying to think up amusing last words to utter on his deathbed (but ended up with just a load of swearing). The singer Elton John has also appeared frequently in recent issues as a double-dealing Del Boy-type character attempting to pull off small-time criminal scams such as tobacco smuggling, benefit fraud and cheating on fruit machines. Most recently, he was seen posing as a window cleaner and conning customers to pay him, before being mistaken for a Peeping Tom and given a thorough hiding. The strips always end with Elton being beaten at his own game by one or more of his musical contemporaries from the 1970s and 80s. Other celebs to have been featured in their own strips include Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand, Esther Rantzen, Stephen Fry, Noel Edmonds, Jimmy Savile (as the headmaster of "Pop School", as "Sir Jimmy Savile, the Owl" and in "Jimmy Savile's Haunted Head"), Johnny Vaughan, Adam Ant, Jimmy Hill, Noddy Holder, Boy George, Freddie Garrity, Steve McFadden, Morrissey (constantly finding daffodils stuck into the seat of his trousers, parodying his appearances on Top of the Pops), Busted, Eminem, Big Daddy and plenty more.

In 2002, British comedian Johnny Vegas sold the exclusive rights to his wedding photographs to Viz for £1, in a flippant dig at celebrity couples who sold the rights to their wedding photos to glossy magazines such as OK! for anything up to (and over) £1million.