Controversy
The comic was reprimanded by the United Nations after featuring a strip called "The Thieving Gypsy Bastards" During the resulting court case, UK newspaper The Sun ran a story revealing that the principal Roma man who initiated the action against them was in fact also being tried for (and was later found guilty of) handling stolen property. In the same issue Viz ran a short strip called "The Nice, Honest Gypsies", featuring a kindly Gypsy woman selling pegs door-to-door and helpfully returning forgotten change.
The strip "Wanker Watson", a parody of the children's comic character Winker Watson, led to litigation by D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd, the owners of the Winker character. In retaliation, Viz featured a new character called 'D.C. Thompson The Humourless Scottish Git'. D.C. Thomson then sought revenge by publishing a new cartoon "The Jocks and The Geordies", a revival of an old strip from The Dandy, in which the Geordies (clearly representing Viz) competed with the Jocks (clearly representing Thomson) in a competition to design funny cartoon characters. The Geordies' miserable efforts bore sharp similarity to actual Viz characters, such as 'The Boy with Big Pants' - a reference to Felix and his Amazing Underpants. (Chris Donald's book Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz, notes the good-humoured nature of the latter stages of this episode).
Sports clothing manufacturer Kappa insisted that the comic drop the name of one of its characters, "Kappa Slappa", as it had no permission to use the brand name. Kappa also believed that the character in question insulted its customer base. "Slapper" was an obnoxious, uneducated, highly unattractive and sexually promiscuous 14-year-old single mother living on a Tyneside council estate, always donning her Kappa shellsuit. After several runs of the strip, Viz agreed to change her name to "Tasha Slappa".
In his book Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz, Chris Donald mentions that he was interviewed by police after giving the go-ahead to publish a Top Tip which could have been interpreted as an incitement to carry out a bomb plot. Donald claims that he then accidentally included the offending statement in that year's Viz annual, and had to have it covered with a sticker by the publishers.
Trinny and Susannah threatened to sue the comic after being portrayed as school bullies in a cartoon strip (Fat and Skinny: Suzanna and Trinny). An official Viz spokesman said “We are too busy laughing to comment”.
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