Viz Highlights

[Huxleys Babkins]

This months Gin Damon (Prosecco O'Clock!) is much darker and funnier than the first.

[jobotic]

The joke isn't just on the gin enthusiast is it? He's jumped into a trendy hobby with naive gusto but the shitty everyday world has no time for naive gusto. It's not very funny but it's good commentary.

[Sebastian Cobb]

This months Gin Damon (Prosecco O'Clock!) is much darker and funnier than the first.

Could you post a photo of it please?

[BeardFaceMan]

Am I being really dense and the name Gin Damon is some sort of pun? Because I cant work out what its a pun on.

[madhair60]

I really enjoyed Gin Damon

[madhair60]

The title is a dual reference to the arabic concept of a "djinn", or the romanised term "genie" which is considered a type of devil or demon, hence Damon. As well as this, it's a reference to the song Jean Genie by David Bowie - Jean (gin) Genie (demon/damon)

[pupshaw]

Despite the inspired title pun, this strip concept has been done to death in Viz for quite a few years, and usually much better, though not including the one recently with the Greggs "street food" prat who gets really fat on sausage rolls, how funny is that? Remember the Real Ale Bores? The Critics?

I'm a very very very long time Viz fan, and I think it can still be really funny even now. I just disagree about how funny that particular strip is.
He can't handle the drink and shits himself. That's it. OK

[poo]

Would love a proper retail compendium of Bakers, Hen Cabin, Whoops Aisle Apocalypse, Male Online (I've got a Magzster subscription so I've got every issue digitally going back til about 2012, so that'll do - don't mind screenshotting requests if you know the issue n that)

Yes would also love that

[kalowski]

The Gin Damon strip was fucking dreadful. One G&T gets him so pissed he shits himself? Because he's a gin bore? Do they really exist.

[MidnightShambler]

Are you sure the Gin Damon thing isn't just a nod towards the name of the sort of pretentious person that drinks only the finest gins, like the Modern Parents calling their kid Tarquin?

Same sort of thing Billy Connolly used to do with 'Finlay' and 'Crawford'.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

Really liked "Roger Scruton's Scrotum Futon" from Davey Jones this issue. Harks back to the Max's Laxative Saxaphone Taxis era 30 years ago.

[Chriddof]

The Real Ale Twats have already been mentioned, but I will add there was a strip of those characters roughly a decade ago that had exactly the same story as the Gin Damon example, only with better jokes and an actual punchline other than "he shits himself for some reason".

There's something uniquely charmless and empty about Drunken Bakers, We Buy Gold or whatever it was called, etc. Other features in Viz can use similar topics / jokes, but there's some kind of actual warmth behind them. Whereas Gin Damon and all that just feel relentlessly dour and artless, more interested in some tedious "Viz-goes-dark" thing that the editors seem to like despite their own contributions outstripping the writing in them tenfold. It just seems to be laughing at and revelling in misery, whereas "proper" Viz (as I guess I would personally refer to it) is always enjoyable and funny. And that includes something like Biffa Bacon, who if included in the Drunken Bakers Cinematic Universe would be a non-stop horrorshow with the overtly silly Three Stooges-esque comic violence replaced with stuff that feels barely a half-step above Viz's now long-gone and terrible competitors.

[NoSleep]

I've never been a fan of Drunken Bakers either. They're out of step with the rest of Viz and seem to be an attempt at "dark" humour in the wake of Blue Jam but without the latter's tendency toward daftness; so just relentlessly grey and miserable.

[Danger Man]

done to death

The 'done to death' award has to go to the working class bloke in a northern town who has a shit job but claims to have encountered loads of famous people in his line of work but who is really a sex-pest/fantasist and has just published his memoirs.

Still read it every month, though.

[jobotic]

It was funny when they tried to bake cakes but were too pissed. When they came to watching a drug addicted woman drown in a canal not so much.

I never found much warmth in Tasha Slappa either.

[gib]

The 'done to death' award has to go to the working class bloke in a northern town who has a shit job but claims to have encountered loads of famous people in his line of work but who is really a sex-pest/fantasist and has just published his memoirs.

Although it HAS been done to death it doesn't date back that many years does it. For the record i've noticed the bloke more recently doesn't come from up north but is based in Chelmsford/Colchester/Southend/Braintree

Still read it every month, though.

I doubt i've missed more than a couple of issues since the late 1980s.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Could you post a photo of it please?

[jobotic]

Although it HAS been done to death it doesn't date back that many years does it. For the record i've noticed the bloke more recently doesn't come from up north but is based in Chelmsford/Colchester/Southend/Braintree

I doubt i've missed more than a couple of issues since the late 1980s.

Wasn't he always from Tipton years ago?

[BeardFaceMan]

Yes would also love that

I've got a .cbr of about 40 Drunken Bakers strips, i thought I got it from someone on here, I can upload it somewhere if people want it.

[kalowski]

Christ, that's even worse.

[pupshaw]

Christ, that's even worse.

Seeing that has really upset me.
I have a habit of skipping past the most unpromising strips when I see a Viz, but that is the worst piece of shit ever.

[pupshaw]

It was funny when they tried to bake cakes but were too pissed. When they came to watching a drug addicted woman drown in a canal not so much.

I never found much warmth in Tasha Slappa either.

I remember Tasha Slappa as a watershed between the "trad" affectionate not-serious stuff like Biffa Bacon, and the downright mean bleak-porn which is taking over. However, I always liked Rat Boy, the sustained chaos compensated for the nastiness.

[MidnightShambler]

Wasn't he always from Tipton years ago?

I think that was Hugh (or Hugo) Guthrie, the leader of Tipton council. Always had a hare-brained scheme, like getting a Disney Land in the midlands. Interfered with a badger too, if i remember rightly!

[pupshaw]

The Real Ale Twats have already been mentioned, but I will add there was a strip of those characters roughly a decade ago that had exactly the same story as the Gin Damon example, only with better jokes and an actual punchline other than "he shits himself for some reason".

I always liked the Real Ale Twats. Repetitive motifs have always been a big part of Viz.
Their skill was capturing the essence in caricature, and they need to get that back.   

[gib]

I think that was Hugh (or Hugo) Guthrie, the leader of Tipton council. Always had a hare-brained scheme, like getting a Disney Land in the midlands. Interfered with a badger too, if i remember rightly!

Guthrie may be based on the real inter-war councillor Doughty who infamously told his council clerk to buy just two gondolas for the town park's lake, as opposed to a dozen, on the basis that they could then breed from them and thus save money.

[alan nagsworth]

That Gin Damon stuff is absolute rubbish. Ha ha imagine a guy that's really into gin what could we expand on there

nothing

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Not read Viz for some years.  If Gin Damon's representative of the comic today, it's gone downhill.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I've never been a fan of Drunken Bakers either. They're out of step with the rest of Viz and seem to be an attempt at "dark" humour in the wake of Blue Jam but without the latter's tendency toward daftness; so just relentlessly grey and miserable.

Quite liked drunken bakers. It's like a more drunken, bakery version of waiting for godot.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Cheers. I thought that was funny, that pair do know how to paint a character full of contempt.

[pupshaw]

That Gin Damon stuff is absolute rubbish. Ha ha imagine a guy that's really into gin what could we expand on there

nothing

And it's not even consistent between the two strips. Why is he a paralytic incontinent after one gin in the first strip and then in the other "go to bed with a lady"

I saw the Some slappas have had 'em or whatever it's called strip. Ghastly. Who on earth thinks that's funny?