Zit was an adult British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 comic that was published by Humour Publications UK, beginning with a free sample issue in January 1991, and with issue 1

Issue 1

Issue 1 is an expression which refers to the first edition of a publication such as a magazine, comic, or e-zine, and is also used to denote the initial direction or output of creativity.Issue 1s are often sought for the following reasons:...

 in February 1991.

It was one of many such comics similar to Viz

Viz (comic)

Viz is a popular British comic magazine which has been running since 1979.The comic's style parodies British comics of the post-war period, notably The Beano and The Dandy, but with incongruous language, crude toilet humour, black comedy, surreal humour and either sexual or violent storylines...

, and was also of lower production quality than its inspiration. As well as comic strips, it also included photo strips, joke articles, celebrity

Celebrity

A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...

 references, and adverts for phone lines and mail order products, many of a pornographic or sexual nature.

The owner of Humour Publications, Russell Church, attempted to stir up an aggressive rivalry between his publication and the far more successful Viz, but, as Viz editor Chris Donald

Chris Donald

Chris Donald is the founder of, and one of the principal contributors to, the British comic magazine Viz...

 stated in his autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

, "Church's magazine was so bad he couldn't give the thing away". In 1993 Church sued another Viz clone, the Huddersfield

Huddersfield

Huddersfield is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated halfway between Leeds and Manchester. It lies north of London, and south of Bradford, the nearest city....

-based Spit!

Spit! (comic)

Spit! was the name of a British adult comic that was published during the 1990s.It was one of many such comics similar to Viz, and was also considerably cruder and of lower production quality than its inspiration, many strips ending with sexual humour...

, for "passing itself off" as Zit. He pursued the case all the way to the High Court

High Court of Justice

The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...

, where the judge ruled that nobody "with reasonable apprehension or eyesight" could confuse the two comics. Church was ordered to pay Spit!s legal bills, which came to around £32,000. Soon after this setback, Church was sued by the British TV presenter Anne Diamond

Anne Diamond

Anne Margaret Diamond is an English radio and television presenter and journalist. She hosted Good Morning Britain for TV-am and the similarly titled Good Morning... with Anne and Nick for BBC1, both with Nick Owen as her co-presenter...

, following a tasteless reference in Zit to her child's tragic cot death. This effectively sank Humour Publications, and Zit continued with a different publisher's backing before vanishing from the shelves in 2002.

In other media

A video called Zit The Video was produced in 1993, featuring many of its characters in five minute segments.

An audio cassette tape entitled "An Earful of Zit" was also released in 1993 and was marketed and distributed by PolyGram Record Operations Ltd. It was described on the cover as "fifty minutes of audio madness". It was written by Ged Backland, Leon Horton, Dave Iddon, Paul Dyson and Anthony Smith. It was Produced for Polygram by Leo Cubbin and Ged Backland and recorded at Rainbow Studios in Brighton.