Biff is a British cartoon strip, created by Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd, which debuted in 1982 and has appeared in the newspaper The Guardian from 1985 onwards (Biff Weekend ran there weekly for 20 years). The comic originated in a series of single-panel postcards before evolving into multi-panel comic strips. It has also been published in the magazine Viz and since 2001 in the magazine of the Rough Guides.
Contents
The cartoons are notable for their absurd, ironic, satirical and metafictional edge.
History
Chris Garratt and Mick Kidd met at grammar school in the 1950s and have collaborated on Biff since the mid-1970s. Chris Garratt creates the artwork (a mixture of collage, found images, tracings and original drawings) and Mick Kidd is responsible for the text. Kidd lives in London and Garratt in the Scilly Isles. They have created their strips and other artwork over the last 30 years by means of phone, post, email and occasional meetings.
In 2007 Chris Garratt introduced a retrospective of Biff work in these terms:
They are still working and contribute to BBC History magazines with ‘A Biff History of Exploration’ and ‘A Biff History of The Media’, People Management with ‘Human Resources’, Latest Art with ‘Biff Art’ and Rough News with ‘The 6 Ages of Travel’.