List of Viz Comic Strips - A - E

E

• Acker Bilk – (See Jimmy Hill).
• Afternoon tea with Mr Kiplin a strip about Mr Kiplin (a parody of cake manufacturer Mr Kipling) inviting someone over for tea but because he eats so much cake, he eventually vomits for the whole night.
• Aldridge Pryor – a pathological liar whose lies are ludicrous, such as The Nolan Sisters living in his fridge. Pryor is instantly recognizable for his retro dress sense, usually a tartan jacket with a sheepskin collar and a pair of uncomfortable-looking platform shoes.
• Alexander Graham Bell-End – a crazy inventor who continually rubs his penis on things and then tricks his assistant into touching them with his hands or mouth, at which point Alexander laughs uproariously whilst exclaiming "I TOTALLY rubbed my bell end on that!"
• Anna Reksik – a model who repeatedly vomits in order to keep her thin shape. She has attracted controversy because some people have seen her as ridiculing eating disorders, cocaine addiction and media pressure on women to be thin.
• Arse Farm – A strip about a farmer who cultivates human buttocks on his land.
• Badly Drawn Man – a poorly drawn character.
• Badly Overdrawn Boy – a parody of the pop singer Badly Drawn Boy, who is seen busking outside his local bank because he's broke.
• Balsa Boy – a take on Pinocchio, in which a lonely old pensioner makes a 'son' from balsa wood. The strip ends with the old man's being sent to a mental institution after burning down the house while trying to dry off Balsa Boy in front of the fire, but by the last frame he is busy working on making another "boy" out of scones.
• Barney Brimstone's Biscuit Tin Circus
• Barry the Cat - a one-off parody of The Beano's acrobatic crimefighter Billy the Cat. Unlike his Beano equivalent, Barry is incompetent, hopelessly uncoordinated, and is immediately recognised despite his "cat-suit" disguise. The final panel shows him in hospital, suffering from multiple injuries, being told that he has acted "very foolishly".
• Bart Conrad – a store detective who takes his job far too seriously.
• Baxter Basics – an extremely amoral and sexually deviant Conservative (and later Labour) MP who first appeared at around the same time as John Major's Back to Basics campaign, and a transparent statement on the hypocrisy of politicians.
• Bertie Blunt (His Parrot's A Cunt) – a boy who owns an extremely violent, foul mouthed parrot that insults everyone and encourages him to commit suicide. When the parrot kills Bertie's grandmother, who leaves them all her money, Bertie fights back by spending his inheritance on a microwave oven which he then uses to cook the parrot alive. Chris Donald, creator of Viz, has said that in the early days of the magazine he would not permit the "c word" to be used, until an outside artist (Sean Agnew) sent him this strip which he found to be so good he decided to use it anyway.
• Biffa Bacon – (initially The Bacons); a boy and his Geordie family, all of whom are violent psychopaths. This was very much a parody of The Dandy's Bully Beef and Chips cartoon strip, inspired by an incident on a train witnessed by Chris Donald. Two boys began squabbling, and instead of restraining his son, the heavily-tattooed father of one boy whispered "Go on, son, I'm right behind you."
• Big Vern – a man who believes he's an East End gangster and is convinced the most ordinary everyday activity (a trip to the supermarket, say) is in fact a major criminal "job". Virtually every episode ends with his taking his own life or someone else's for the most trivial of reasons—no bastard copper's gonna take me alive!" "Get dahn, Ernie, he's going for his piece!" usually with a graphic depiction of him shooting himself in the head with a sawn-off shotgun. Vern's second name is Dakin, a reference to the notably violent 1971 British crime thriller Villain, whose anti-hero (played by Richard Burton) is named Vic Dakin.
• Billy Bottom – a literal toilet humour strip, based around a man and his attempts to defecate whilst various factors and circumstances conspire to prevent him from doing so. The first strip carried a spoof certificate of the type given to films by the BBFC, classifying the strip as 'puerile'.
• Billy Britain – a right-wing ultra-nationalist resembling Enoch Powell who appeared in two very early strips. Chris Donald considers him an early prototype of Major Misunderstanding. He also made a one-off reappearance in the September 2002 issue satirising the issue of asylum seekers, where after he spends the strip making several futile attempts to round up illegal immigrants the local authorities turn his home into a detention centre for refugees.
• Billy the Fish – half man, half fish, he is a star footballer despite being drawn with no legs (he does apparently own a pair of football boots, but it is not clear why). He is a satire on, or homage to, the popular football comics of the 1960s and 1970s—Roy of the Rovers and also satirises current football incidents. Starred in a spinoff cartoon, voiced by Harry Enfield. According to Viz cartoonist Graham Drury, "half the readers thought was shit, and the other half thought it was really shit."
• Billy No-Mates – a miserable, antisocial teenage boy who spends most of his time alone in his dark room playing video games. If anyone disturbs him he becomes extremely irritated. He also has an obsession with masturbating, collecting large amounts of pornographic magazines and calling sex hotlines.
• Billy Quiz – a man who constantly acts like a gameshow host in everyday situations.
• Black Bag – "The faithful border bin liner". A black bin liner which lives the exciting life of a sheepdog; a parody of The Dandy's Black Bob and the anthropomorphism of animals.
• Bodley Basin – "He's On The Square". The adventures of a "strict Freemason". This one-off strip ended with the apparent murder of the cartoonist.
• The Bottom Inspectors – based on the ticket inspectors of the Newcastle Metro system (Chris Donald in a Picture of Tyneside, BBC 4, June 2005). The Bottom Inspectors were also influenced by a single editorial comment made by John Brown, the original publisher of Viz Comic: "The only editorial comment I ever made," explains Brown, "was in the early days, when I told Chris that I thought one issue was particularly 'bottomy'. He didn't say much at the time, but The Bottom Inspectors appeared for the first time in the next issue." The Guardian The OBI is in that sense a light-hearted sardonic embodiment of editorial interference with independent creativity.
• Boy Scouse – gang of delinquent schoolboys from Liverpool who earn Boy Scout badges for mugging pensioners, spraying graffiti and other such antisocial activities. MP Louise Ellman complained that it set a bad example and petitioned to have it banned.
• Brown Bottle – a reporter who becomes a superhero when he is drunk on Newcastle Brown Ale. The character is based on Davey Graham, a musician friend of Chris Donald's, who made a similar transformation under the influence.
• Biscuits Alive! – some biscuits that mysteriously come to life to help their boy owner out of some trivial problem.
• Busted – who, until they disbanded in 2005, occasionally appeared in strips (as well as spoof interviews and other features in the magazine) portraying them as pyromaniacs/arsonists who would set anything on fire "for a laugh". James Bourne would always be referred to by the wrong name, making fun of his status as the "least famous" of the group.
• Buster Gonad and his Unfeasibly Large Testicles – a boy who somehow manages to always solve people's problems with his ridiculously large testicles.
• Ben and the SpaceWalrus a one of strip centered on a fat kid named Ben who finds a SpaceWalrus and eats his Dog Bunny
• Captain Morgan and his Hammond Organ – a pirate who sails round the Caribbean inviting people to sing along with him as he plays a Hammond organ. His character was cut when legal action was threatened over the copyright of some of the songs; according to creator Chris Donald in his book, he did not think that making the character sing royalty-free hymns or nursery rhymes would have quite the same comedic effect.
• Captain Oats – a one-off strip lampooning the real Antarctic explorer Captain Lawrence Oates. An explorer obsessed with pornography and masturbation, he is depicted skiing across the icy wastes, dragging a wardrobe upon which is hidden his stash of pornographic magazines. However, his efforts to masturbate are continually frustrated by the presence of his companions.
• Colin the Amiable crocodile strips centered on a small crocodile named Colin. In one strip he was shot by a birdwatcher because he said "hello" to the man. The character also appeared later on front covers of other issues, such as with a skinhead who tells people to buy the comic or he shoots the croc.
• Christ on a Bender – a strip which depicts Jesus as a family man who keeps trying to escape the house to get "crucified" with his friends but is thwarted at every turn by his wife forcing him to stay home with her and look after their children.
• Christ on a Bike – a strip which depicts Jesus's life riding a magical bicycle. Pontus Pilate has him crucified due to jealousy since Pilate only has a girl's bike.
• The Critics – pretentious and shallow high-culture critics who lampoon the perceived elitism of the "chattering classes".
• Cockney Wanker – a swaggering, bigoted Londoner who speaks in rhyming slang. The character is loosely based on actor Mike Reid and broadcaster Danny Baker.
• Cop Her Knickers – an elderly woman's dealings with the gang of policemen who are constantly, and inexplicably, trying to steal her underwear.
• Copper Kettle - quoted as 'The PC who loves his PG' (PG meaning tea brand PG Tips), the strip follows the life of the policeman and his futile attempts to obtain some tea—his favourite beverage—while on his beat.
• Crap Jokes – a diverse range of verbal and visual puns or one-liners, usually deliberately corny or old-fashioned. The best known of the Crap Jokes are seemingly endless "Doctor, Doctor" gags, with the reader's sympathy drawn to the endlessly hapless straightman Doctor.
• Danny's District Council – a one-off story parodying General Jumbo of The Beano, in which a young boy commands his own electronic radio-controlled district council. The tiny robotic council workers are all lazy, corrupt and incompetent and eventually switch their allegiance to the villains. The comic occasionally features other parodies of General Jumbo, including "Jimbo Jumbo's Robo Jobos" and "Oliver's Army".
• Darren Dice - a young man who is obsessed with gambling. Sadly, he often chooses to gamble with the wrong crowd. The character is allegedly based on, and bears a remarkable resemblance to, retired Scottish footballer Darren Jackson. Jackson spent a couple of seasons at Newcastle United in the late 1980s and became a familiar face in bookmakers' shops in the city.
• D.C. Thompson The Humourless Scottish Git – created in retaliation after D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd threatened legal action over a variety of Viz spoofs based on characters from The Beano and The Dandy, including Biffa Bacon, Black Bag, "Roger the Lodger", "Wanker Watson", "Arsehole Kate" and many more. The title character was portrayed as a miserly Scotsman who goes about looking for breaches of copyright he can report, such as threatening to sue a woman who calls her son Dennis a "menace" in his earshot, and demanding that a pet shop owner removes an advertisement for "Three Bears for the Price of One" from the shop window. Not to be outdone, The Dandy responded by resurrecting an old strip The Jocks and the Geordies—representing the Scottish-based DC Thomson and Newcastle upon Tyne-based Viz. In the strip, the rival gangs of schoolboys are asked to produce a comic. The Jocks comic is the best, of course, but the underhand Geordies decide to copy them. Viz responded in kind by parodying Korky the Cat as "Korky the Twat" in the next issue.
• Desert Island Desk – a dialogue-free strip about an office desk which has been marooned on a desert island; title refers to Desert Island Discs and the Topper comic story Desert Island Dick.
• Desert Island Teacher – a teacher stranded on a windswept rock. He has decided that "once a teacher, always a teacher", and inflicts monotonous lectures on the seagulls and molluscs.
• Desperately Unfunny Dan – parody of barrel-chested Desperate Dan who tries too hard to amuse people with his superhuman feats of strength.
• Dickie Beasley' – a schoolboy who wants to be an ad executive. His attempts to advertise or improve something menial (e.g. a church jumble sale) fails because he puts too much thought and planning into it (treating as something more complex).
• Doctor Poo – a spoof of Doctor Who depicting the title character unable to find a toilet in the whole of space-time.
• Doctor Sex – "He has the power of all sex."
• Driving Mr Beckham – a spoof of Beezer and (later) Beano comic strip "The Numskulls" in which we see the inner thought processes - or lack thereof - of David Beckham.
• Drunken Bakers – two alcoholic bakers, who, because of their affliction, hardly ever manage to bake anything.
• Eight Ace – an alcoholic who drinks "Ace" beer (eight cans for £1.49) and struggles to stay on the right side of his wife and many children as a consequence. Many of the strips involve Ace being entrusted with or somehow managing to acquire exactly £1.49 which he inevitably uses to buy "Eight Ace". His real name has been mentioned as 'Octavius Federidge Tinsworthy Ace', the 'Federidge' in his name being derived from the now-defunct Federation Brewery which brewed 'Ace' lager.
• Elton John's... – a series of strips have the pop star portrayed as a petty scamster despite his enormous wealth, including Baccy Run, Dole Fiddle, Hooky Videos, Electrical Goods Scam, Bandit Beater, Lottery Syndicate Diddle (consisting of himself, Bono, Phil Collins and Paul McCartney), Roofing Racket, Marked Note Con, Window Cleaning Scam and Compen Con. At the end of each strip he is normally shown to have been beaten at his own game by other celebrities, mostly his "enemies", i.e. David Bowie, The Bee Gees, Rod Stewart or "the surviving members of Queen".
• Eminemis The Menace – starred in a one-off strip, a cross between Eminem and Dennis the Menace.
• Eric Daft – (His IQ is less than 2) – An early Terry Fuckwitt prototype.