Johnny Fartpants

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Johnny Fartpants was arguably the first character in Viz magazine to achieve UK-wide notoriety, and was certainly on a lot of teenagers' T-shirts in the late 1980s. He is, on the face of it, an ordinary boy; except that he suffers from extreme, excessive flatulence which is not only offensive to the nose and ears, but destructive to those around him. His gaseous emissions have been known to destroy houses and other hard-surfaced articles, as well as injure people. He is always apologetic, and constantly reminds people that his colonic expulsions are beyond his control -- despite his insistence on "keeping to a strict pump diet," which often includes beans and "cabbage water."

A similar device was used in the cartoon strip "Little Sammy Sneeze", where the disruption is caused by the character's sudden explosive sneeze rather than flatulence, by cartoonist Winsor McCay in 1904.

The strip was largely retired after creator Simon Donald left Viz at the end of 2003; since then, Johnny has only made two appearances, in much shorter strips than he was previously appearing in. However, in the March 2007 issue he reappeared in a topical strip where he was hired to gas turkeys for Bernard Matthews following the company's outbreak of avian flu.