#viz uk

[giggleboxstudios]

♥︎ ғ ᴀ ɴ ᴅ ᴏ ᴍ s ♥︎

Whatever Happened to Robot Jones

Schoolhouse Rock

The Impossibles

Ralph Bakshi's The Mighty Heroes

Franco-Belgian comics

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Roland and Ratfink

MAD Magazine

Drawn Together

Victor & Hugo: Bunglers in Crime

Alias the Jester

Albert the Fifth Musketeer

VIZ UK

(Must be 20+ to DM. I am not comfortable speaking to minors.)

[alfredstvthoughts]

Billy the Fish (25 November 1991)

NOTE: Billy the Fish was originally broadcast episodically on Channel 4 in 1990. This review is based on the 1991 VHS release, which as far as I can tell is an omnibus of all material previously shown episodically, with minor edits.

One thing I've noticed about the majority of animated football episodes I've seen is just how unusual they are, very rarely is it a case of a perfectly normal game being played, often bizarre or supernatural elements are at play. My Fair Goalie, the Phineas and Ferb football episode I reviewed yesterday is but one example, with it's unusual Football X-7 game. Even today, the trend for weirdness continues, with newly released Disney+ series Dragon Striker combining football and magic extensively.

But for me, weird football animation doesn't get much weirder than Billy the Fish, based on a long-running comic strip in UK adult magazine Viz that has run since the 1980s (this was one of a number of animated adaptations of Viz comic strips released at the height of the magazine's popularity in the early 1990s). This adaptation directly adapts several of the early strips, bringing them to life in animated form.

Billy Thompson is a half-man, half-fish goalkeeper playing for Fulchester United, but it's fair to say that's only the beginning of the weirdness here. There isn't really much of a plot, more a rapid-fire series of short incidents involving Billy and Fulchester United which often end on absurd cliffhangers that are resolved in the most ridiculous ways possible.

No resolution is too far-fetched here for any of the cliffhangers. Some are just plain arbitrary, such as the spaceship that abducts the Fulchester team and takes them to Mars, but ends up dropping the team off at their upcoming match anyway without any explanation. Even the old 'it was all a dream' cop-out is used here, being deployed after it seems Billy is executed by a firing squad during a European game. But one of my favorite cliffhangers for sheer weirdness involves a match being interrupted by billionaire Maxwell Baxter, only for it to emerge his presence is only a cardboard cut-out with a hidden tape recorder.

Billy the Fish also parodies the cliches of football fiction such as impossible comebacks. With Fulchester losing by 12 goals in one game, elderly striker Rex Findlay appears as a substitute in the dying minutes and quickly scores all the goals needed to win the game. He and Billy are but two of the unusual players of the Fulchester team, with others including invisible striker Johnny X and real-life pop star Shakin' Stevens (however the real Stevens does not voice him, all voices here are provided by comedian Harry Enfield, whose wide range of voices for the different characters help make this even more entertaining).

Fulchester United also come under threat from various enemies, most notoriously Gus Parker, the manager of their arch-rivals Grimthorpe City who comes up with a number of hilarious schemes to destroy Billy and Fulchester along the way, even to the extent of getting himself hired as the new Fulchester manager and then trading the players with those of amateur side Peddleworth Albion, with the intent that Fulchester collapse and then he returns to Grimthorpe to win the league.

Though entertaining, this does have it's flaws. The animation is pretty low quality, with several pieces of footage obviously recycled and a lack of movement very obvious during many of the football scenes (defenders just seem to stand around doing nothing, though this may work as befitting the parody of football fiction storytelling). Also, the repeated cycle of action, cliffhangers and bizarre resolutions can become repetitive before the end of it's half-hour runtime. Also, one element of this that has not aged well is the presence of Brown Fox, a crude Native American stereotype who is also referred to several times with a potentially offensive term, this is arguably the special's weakest element.

But in terms of pure weirdness, Billy the Fish is up there with the weirdest and as such, I have to admire how brazenly bizarre it is. An unusual piece of football storytelling, but one that is often funny, a real curio to see during this World Cup.

[giggleboxstudios]

𓊈 𖤐 𝐑𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐮𝐠 𖤐 𓊉

[stupinkart-blog]

British comic industry Spotlight: Viz

Development of the Industry - Comics Graphic Novels Viz is a british magazine published ten times a year since 1979, it is intended as an intentionally low-brow and vulgar parody of UK post-war childrens comics and annuals such as those like The Beano and Dandy but often lampoons politics and the media with a sharp, biting sense of satire.

I chose Viz for this spotlight as it holds a strange sense of nostalgia with me, with my dad being a somewhat of fan of the publication and often referencing characters, especially those with local dialect such as Biffa Bacon (A character intended at a parody of the local “geordie” dialect of Newcastle, with my family living in near by rival/sister city Sunderland), but obviously I didn’t quite understand the adult nature or humor of the comic at that age despite its visual appeal with me and my early fondness of cartoons.

But despite this I was introduced to british abstract and obsurd humour as a child, often catching episodes of shows such as The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and Harry Enfield and Chums on TV when I was quite young; developing an early understanding of that sort of comedy, so by the time I was of age to understand the themes of Viz I could appreciate the humour. Despite not approving of some of it’s vulgarity and intentionally offensive themes at times I’ve developed a fondness for the publication everytime I spot it in a small corner shop (you’ll find it quite often up here in the North East!).

As a creative and particularly a cartoonist and comic creator I feel that Viz makes a great example of a successful British comic that borders of the abstract and cartoon boundaries with adult themes that I try to push myself and that such a strange and niche publication could find a loyal audience audience long before the age of the internet.

http://viz.co.uk/