Tommy "Banana" Johnson

Tommy "Banana" Johnson is a character in the adult comic "Viz", who initially appeared in its first issue.

Overview

Tommy is a boy who, for some reason, has a four foot long banana. Other than being rather large, this banana has no special qualities. In the strip, during a walk in the local park, he first encounters a painter who is worried that approaching rainclouds will wash the paint off the fence he's been working on. Tommy suggests using his banana as a hair-dryer, but this only serves to annoy the painter. He then runs into a man who's lost his dog (who actually isn't that far away), and suggests that he uses the banana as a telescope. This gets the same reaction that he got off the painter. At the end of the strip, a police officer eventually finds a use for his banana by shoving it all the way up Tommy's bottom.

Influence

The strip is a clear prototype of the many popular strips that were to follow it in the comic; lampooning the often silly nature of UK children's comics, with added vulgarity and swearing. It proved so popular, it has also been re-used throughout the comic's history, including:

*Tommy "Banana" Johnson Extended Remix – the original strip multiply photocopied on top of itself to produce a stammering, almost unreadable effect, satirising the sampling craze in music at the time

*Tommy "Banana" Johnson - On Ice! – the strip redrawn but with everyone wearing ice-skating gear, and set on an ice rink

*At the time when the special edition of was released (which was basically the original film with digital enhancements), Viz decided to parody this with doing a digitally enhanced version of Tommy "Banana" Johnson in which the drawn banana was replaced with a scanned image of a banana.

*The April 2008 issue featured a reworked version with contestants from "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!", called "I'm a celebrity Banana Johnson Get me out of here, they've each got a big banana". All carry an enormous banana, and complete various tasks from the show (such as eating maggots) throughout the strip. Jade Goody eventually walks out in disgust, but the remaining celebrities end up having the banana shoved up their bottoms.

The strip was also redrawn in lavish format, again with exactly the same series of events, for VIZ's silver anniversary.