The Inside Story of Viz: Rude Kids. Chris Donald

for every comic sold. I scribbled down the bones of the offer and sat up for most of that night trying to work out whether or not it would be viable. At the time Viz was selling over 5000 copies. If all went well perhaps we could sell 40,000 eventually, 1000 for every Virgin store. Then just for a laugh I did another calculation based on the NME’s sales figure of around 100,000. That was the dream scenario.

      I told John to make the contract out in mine and Simon’s names jointly, and when it arrived in the post we both took it to a solicitor to get his comments. Richard Hart-Jackson had been recommended to me because he specialized in publishing. Music publishing as it happened, not comics, but it seemed close enough. In the event his advice proved invaluable. One crucial suggestion he made was that royalties should be paid on every comic that Virgin printed, not every comic they sold. This ‘mechanical’ royalty was much easier to account for, and of course it meant that we’d get more money. But the single most important piece of advice he gave me was this: ‘If you sign this contract you and the publisher are entering a three-legged race,’ he said. ‘You cannot afford to fall out.’ Negotiations with Virgin dragged on for a little while. One problem was the frequency. They wanted Viz to be monthly, and I didn’t think I could achieve that. Certainly not to begin with. We eventually agreed on bi-monthly, once every two months, with the aim of increasing this to monthly as soon as possible. Before signing the contract I asked John if we could come down and take a look around the Virgin Books offices.

      Virgin’s squat, bunker-like single-storey building at Portobello Dock, alongside the Paddington branch of the Grand Union Canal, was in complete contrast to IPC’s sky-scraping headquarters overlooking the Thames. It felt as if we were going to meet a lock-keeper, not a publisher, as Simon and I negotiated the tricky path to the front door. John was in a meeting so we waited patiently outside his office. When the door opened John briefly introduced us to his previous visitor, Tony Parsons, who was just leaving. Then John showed us around and introduced us to Bev, his secretary, and Mike, his young production manager. We looked around the studio where all Virgin’s books were produced and I couldn’t help noticing how tidy it was. There didn’t seem to be a scrap of litter anywhere. It was as if these people never did any work.

      We signed the contract in July 1985 and it was agreed that the first Virgin comic, issue 13, would be published in August. To meet the deadlines I knew I’d have to be a full-time magazine editor from now on, so I had the pleasant task of going round all my graphic design customers and telling them to stick their last-minute, penny-pinching jobs up their arses. During negotiations with Virgin I’d published one last comic myself, to plug the gap between issue 12 in November 1984 and 13 in August 1985. This was issue 12a, another compilation featuring edited highlights of issues 5 and 6. In order to save time I gave the job to a commercial printer, Wards of Gateshead. Sadly the Free Press had printed their last comic.

      Virgin’s attempts to find a new printer suffered an early setback. One large company in Birmingham flatly refused to handle it, describing the contents as immoral. If and when they did find a printer Virgin were planning to distribute the comic through the Virgin Records chain, and to the news trade via an independent distributor called Charles Harness. Getting a magazine published by Virgin into Virgin Records shops wasn’t going to be too difficult, but getting a new title onto the news stands would be more of a challenge. Charlie Harness was just the man for the job, having played a pivotal role in the success of Private Eye. Harness had been working as a newspaper delivery van driver in the early 1960s when he’d volunteered to deliver bundles of the early Private Eye to shops around London. Now Charlie was about to repeat the trick with Viz. Not wishing to alienate the smaller shops and pubs that I’d been supplying over the years I asked John if I could continue distributing Viz in Newcastle, and he agreed.

       Eric Daft

      Working arrangements in my bedroom underwent a few changes. Simon had recently decided to follow in my footsteps, and my mum’s, by applying to join the Enterprise Allowance Scheme as a toy-maker. Toy sales appeared to be a little sluggish so I suggested he run the distribution business in Newcastle while I continued to edit and design the magazine. Simon was ideally qualified to handle the distribution, because he had a car. I knew I could rely on Simon for perhaps two or three cartoons per issue but I was going to need a lot more contributors to fill thirty-two pages every eight weeks. Graham Dury looked a good prospect, and I enlisted the help of Mick Kidd who promised me one page of Biff cartoons per issue. Then I rather hopefully returned to the classified section of Private Eye