Posted in: Recent Updates, Run Around | Tagged: Comics, viz

Wednesday Sex, Violence, Gays, Racial Epithets And Birthdays

Published Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:06:10 -0500

Last updated Thu, 10 Feb 2022 17:14:38 -0600

Viz Comic is celebating its thirtieth anniversary this week.

The best selling English speaking comic in the world (just about) is a British not-for-children newstand anthology of comic strips that parody the tropes of British comics of old, reflecting modern and generally sexual, sensibilities.

From Sid The Sexist to The Fat Slags to Kappa Slappa to Modern Parents to Cockney Wanker to Buster Gonad And His Unfeasible Large Testicles to the current alcoholic success story of Eight Ace (see below), Viz sends up modern lifestyles with precision. And knob gags. And is regularly compared to Chaucer.

An exhibition of work is being held at The Cartoon Museum in London next week. Go on, let's have a page of Eight Ace…

Of course it's not just the British comics that can be puerile. Yesterday's hidden message post about a Spawn #195 double page splash found another hidden message that didn't indicate any DeviantArt cut-and-pasting, but rather the influence of Ethan Van Sciver, famed for hiding a certain word in pages of New X-Men. Here's that visual again…

…and with a little tracing…

Is that too much of a stretch? Maybe it just indicates how deviant the artists who read Bleeding Cool are. And amidst all this pee-poo-belly-bum-drawers talk, let's hear something from John Byrne, the voice of liberal tolerance. No really.

There need to be Gays in comics because there are Gays in real life. No other reason. Same reason, in fact, that there are Blacks in comics. Asians in comics. Women and children in comics! The population of the fictional world should represent the real world.

A lot more to enjoy in the Byrne Forum thread on gays in comics, Jim Shooter in comics, that issue of Hulk and use of the N-word in comics and in life. Including that most memorable scene in Uncanny X-Men by Claremont and Romita Jr;

They don't make comics like that any more. I remember the hoops Quantum & Woody had to go through with Priest using the word "noogie" as a racial epithet in a story that really needed the original.

Tomorrow, things about kittens. Promise.

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