Artistic Viz-ion

I’ve been reading VIz for over 20 years, shortly after it debuted and when I was still in its target audience of horny, irrespressibly young adults who think they’re smarter than everyone else. I never “outgrew” the magazine partly because I never “outgrew” the British comic books and tabloid newspapers which it satirizes. Also because reliably, at least once an issue, the admittedly low-class, foulmouthed, anything-for-a-laugh Viz does a bit which, by any standard, is clever, funny on several levels and even (a word which would appall these self-styled vulgarians) witty.
The piece shown here, “Bard Language,” isn’t any of that. But it is about theater and it is typical of Viz. The mag is part MAD, part The Onion, part old National Lampoon and Spy, part nasty scrawlings on bathroom walls. Puncturing pretension is the foundation of what Viz duz. To that end, theater manifests itself in a few regular features, including The Critics (in which a married pair of writers loudly proclaim the virtues of rubbish) and Luvvy Darling (a worthless actor who’s all style and no work).
None of those features appear in Viz #207. Perhaps a page of News of the World-style manufactured comical indignation over Shakespeare is enough.