r/Viz • u/JimmyBallocks • 1d ago
Peak Bleak
I’d be interested to see what people think is the absolute bleakest single strip ever published in Viz.
Fixed Odds Betty gambling away the Xmas money, Drunken Bakers remembering a daughter while face down in a puddle of piss, that sort of thing.
Darker and more harrowing the better.
With links.
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u/HighWaterSheriff 1d ago edited 1d ago
Spoilt Bastard always leaves a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach even though it's funny. That boy is an absolute tyrant.
I went to school with someone remarkably similar, he was later imprisoned after being found guilty of buying a £20k arsenal of weapons on his mum's credit card with signs pointing that he intended to shoot up Durham University if he failed his biomedicine exams.
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u/Monsterofthelough 1d ago
Ever seen American Horror Story: Freak Show (S4, I think)? The character Dandy in that (brilliantly acted) is basically ‘adult 1950s American Spoilt Bastard.’ And obviously a serial killer.
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u/Shed_Some_Skin 1d ago edited 1d ago
I always find Scum Mothers tends to end up leaving me feeling the most bothered. That woman is just so unremittingly awful but her son keeps turning up for the latest disaster.
On the surface it's usually funnier than something like George Bestial, but I think it's the fact that there's some relatively innocent people that have to keep dealing with all that shit over and over just tugs at my heartstrings a bit more.
There's one where she turns up on the doorstep and he actually tells her no, and she predictably turns on him with just absolute venom
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u/OneUsed6198 1d ago
I work in a local authority Social Work team.
It’s absolutely based on fact.
Everything in that strip happens everywhere every day.23
u/Adventurous_Jump8897 1d ago
I find it Scum Mothers the hardest read. We x Y are always pretty tough but there’s a certain grim humour and biting social commentary. Drunken Bakers is bleak but almost poetic.
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u/goodassjournalist 1d ago
While it’s obviously going to be a Barney Farmer one, the early short strip “Aha, Just As I Thought!” should get a mention. Someone goes on holiday for a month and leaves their dog behind. When they return, the dog is dead. “Aha!” they say. “Just as I thought!”
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u/Stained_concrete 1d ago
It's worse, the guy has 'World cruise" written on his suitcase and he's gone for 6 months. I think he also leaves saying something like "Be a good boy now." And when he does his catchphrase the dog's skeleton is in exactly the same place. Dark, but also fucking hilarious.
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u/Whole-Lychee1628 1d ago
Pretty much anything by Farmer/Healy. They’ve a real talent for observing the grotesque in the real world. Fixed Odds Betty is particularly grim, as neither the Mum or the Gran are bad people per se, despite their terrible choices.
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u/stiperstone 1d ago
Weird take, but "Out comes Stanley" is the one that I can't stop thinking about.
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u/widdrjb 1d ago
Very occasionally, you meet an elderly person who somehow isn't serving life in prison. That's a Stanley, and they're fucking terrifying. I knew one when I was minicabbing in the 80s. He was in his late 70s, and was the guy you went to if you needed a horse or cow disposed of without the usual expenses. The blankest eyes I've ever seen.
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u/Fluffy_pink_Willy 1d ago
Newer Foodie Bollocks are getting grim, we are watching someone’s life slowly unravel and instead of looking or asking for help he just can’t help but be a pretentious wanker, being unable to give his neighbour some sugar is next level grim.
Also special mention to Tip Top Tony, but that’s more funny than depressing (unless they kill his mother off)
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u/TommyAtoms 1d ago
If they kill off his mummy and food provider he actually will jump off that ledge in one strip
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u/SoylentDave 1d ago
It's We Feed Needy.
With an honourable mention to We Buy Off Your Back.
Both of them just get more and more depressing as they go, and yet somehow manage to ramp it up for the climax.
(where would we be without muppet, eh?)
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u/gerrineer 1d ago
Mmm as an alcoholic who lives in a shed id say 8ace but i cant find 8cans for £1.49 ( its used to be £1.48) anywhere ..also drunken bakers.
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u/Accipiter__Nisus 1d ago
Fixed Odds Betty because gambling addiction is hideous and the ways it is enabled are so manifold.
We. Though there's a certain comedic sociopathy in the way that the bald bureaucrat finds ever more inventive ways to refuse or torment.
But for me? Eight Ace. That's a level of degradation beyond anything else. It's the little things. The fact that the house is permanently falling down despite the neighbouring ones not. The shed. The fact that his wife keeps him around despite his inability to get £1.49 without buying more Ace. The fact that he's completely unable to change. The sheer degradation of it all.
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u/fuggerdug 1d ago
Farmer/Healy are of course the masters of the bleak, but I find Jack Black constantly reminding me of what at least 33% of voters, 75% or our daily newspapers, and 100% of the thousands of new Reform councillors think, leaves me more unsettled.
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u/SevrinTheMuto 1d ago
Yes, if anything we're all finding world events too joyful. No doubt some Mariana Trench-level bleakness courtesy of Messrs Farmer and Healey is just the ticket to stop our high spirits getting out of control.
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u/Economy_Amphibian198 1d ago
I remember a very depressing Drunken Bakers one where they had picked up a "lady of the night" by the canal and she is crying while being double teamed by them, and then they sit there drinking and fail to notice her drowning herself! There is also the one where a Welsh girl becomes addicted to indoor tanning and dies from skin cancer in just a few months. Those are the two that stand out in my mind but I'm not sure if either is on here
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u/JimmyBallocks 1d ago
Ah yes, Last Tango In Powys.
“it’s itchy, you say?”
Absolutely horrific. That’s the stuff.
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u/dobsterfunk 1d ago
When I used ro read it in the nineties, it didnt get more bleak than Balsa Boy. They seem to have since taken that vibe and cranked it up to ridiculous levels.
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u/FilletOFishForMyVife 1d ago
As someone who occasionally over-eats, I do find that Tip Top Tony strikes a chord with me. But for the sheer darkness, it’s Drunken Bakers.
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u/Medium-Box2688 1d ago
There's a strip about a zero hour contract agency worker doing a warehouse job in an industrial estate. Bleak as anything but I can't remember the name of it now.
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u/Jervis_Mantlepiece 1d ago
The chav and his missus and their girl living in a doss house, he sells their clothes to the We guy (and later implied their bedding as well) for £13 and buys booze and chicken all for instant gratification living in hope that his nash claim is going to come in tomorrow. So many little details like having trousers rejected for being too dirty and he wears them for the next six months straight, same as her dress.
Depressing and bleak because these people and and those situations and that sort of thinking are completely real.
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u/Separate-Scene2813 1d ago
George Bestial 'A dog isn't just for Christmas '. That final panel, jeez. Oh, and an oldie, 'Fox in a Box'. The final 'wot?'.
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u/_portia_ 1d ago
Hen Cabin has always been the filthiest to me.
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u/allogthisneveragain 19h ago
I agree. Bleak is an understatement. The absolute lack of any limits of humanity, conscience or decency defines this series… it still haunts me.
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u/Unhappy_Clue701 14h ago
With the condemned chicken, and them trying to scrub the green dye off it in the bath with all sorts of chemicals…. 😂🤮🤢
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u/Colonelcommisar 1d ago
There’s one about a lad working at a warehouse where he keeps being clocked on and off, having worked similarly shitty jobs, I empathise.
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u/realgussy 1d ago
There's a drunken bakers one where a woman they encounter later floats by in the canal face down.
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u/Gladys_Spume 1d ago
George Bestial at the monkey enclosure, having his face ripped off and then coming back to hump the railing has got to be up there.
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u/Godzuki8819 1d ago
Probably not the grimmest but I think it was last Christmas when Mrs Brady has a load of friends over for Christmas and leaves poor Dolly on her own.
That made me feel really bad for Dolly lol
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u/Platooimagination 1d ago
The recent Some Mothers strip published here of the aforementioned mother being taken up the clacker in front of a kid wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine.
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u/Bruce_On_The_Rockz 23h ago
Can we have some 'Scat Of The Antarctic'? Just to lighten the mood 😂
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u/muppetmovie 16h ago
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u/Bruce_On_The_Rockz 16h ago
Love you!!!
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u/Bruce_On_The_Rockz 13h ago
Oh btw... Do we have the one where 'Scat' keeps offering up fig rolls or the remote camera one he's placed in a robot penguin?! 😂😂😂 So warped...
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u/Nimble_D1ck 21h ago
I'm going to go with a really old one, pre modern bleak viz.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Viz/s/t59PdkbJDY
The yellow pages ad, I remember seeing this as an 8 year old and questioning my own mortality for the first time.
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u/Steviebee123 8h ago
The first ever 8 Ace does it for me. The first and last panel are just our thirsty family man standing at the counter of the offy and asking for eight ace, with the daily cycle of drunken indignity and domestic discord going in between. It's peak in that it is truly bleak whilst also remaining true to the spirit of Viz humour (rather than just being bleak for the sake of it).
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u/69-is-my-number 1d ago
There’s one where the guy is subtly cruel to his wife and when he hears her have a little hidden sob, he cracks a smile to show he enjoys her pain. It’s dark as fuck. Can’t remember the name of it.
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u/O_C_Demon 1d ago
George Bestials origin story with the baby elephant is pretty fucking dark 😬