Zit (comic)

Zit was an adult British comic that was published by Humour Publications UK, beginning with a free sample issue in January 1991, and with issue 1 in February 1991.

It was one of many such comics similar to Viz, and was also of lower production quality than its inspiration. As well as comic strips, it also included photo strips, joke articles, celebrity references, and adverts for phone lines and mail order products, many of a pornographic or sexual nature.

History

The owner of Humour Publications, Russell Church, attempted to stir up an aggressive rivalry between his publication and the far more successful Viz, but, as Viz editor Chris Donald stated in his autobiography, "Church's magazine was so bad he couldn't give the thing away". In 1993 Church sued another Viz clone, the Huddersfield-based Spit!, for "passing itself off" as Zit. He pursued the case all the way to the High Court, where the judge ruled that nobody "with reasonable apprehension or eyesight" could confuse the two comics. Church was ordered to pay Spit!'s legal bills, which came to around £32,000. Soon after this setback, Church was sued by the British TV presenter Anne Diamond, following a tasteless reference in Zit to her child's tragic cot death. This effectively sank Humour Publications, and Zit continued with a different publisher's backing before vanishing from the shelves in 2002.

Notable strips

More notable characters included: "Lambrusco - the Alcoholic Sheep", "Dirty Stan the Blue Movie Man", "The man who collects eyeballs", and "Middle aged Melvin".

Contributors

Allin Kempthorne wrote and drew several features including the semi-regular strip Starface. He has since gone on to become a television and film actor and writer.

Leon Horton created and wrote many characters, including Hector Rectum, Dave Beef and The Ales of Beer Tits Potter.

In other media

A video called Zit The Video was produced in 1993, featuring many of its characters in five-minute segments.

An audio cassette tape entitled "An Earful of Zit" was also released in 1993 and was marketed and distributed by PolyGram Record Operations Ltd. It was described on the cover as "fifty minutes of audio madness". It was written by Ged Backland, Leon Horton, Dave Iddon, Paul Dyson and Anthony Smith. It was Produced for Polygram by Leo Cubbin and Ged Backland and recorded at Rainbow Studios in Brighton. Another contributor with Young Tarby was Ged Purvis who went on to become an actor in short films and also is to direct and appear in his own short movie called Day I met God sometime in 2012.