The long running Toxic magazine has reached the milestone of 400 issues today!Launched by Egmont in September 2002 and originally edited by Matt Yeo, Toxic set out to be a new style magazine for boys, featuring news of the latest genre films, TV shows, game cheats, puzzles, jokes, and also brand new comic strips containing "gross humour" that always goes down well with schoolboys. Like a modern-day Oink! but with more features and activity pages.
From the outset the magazine featured the comic strip adventures of Team Toxic; Doc Shock, Kid Zombie, Krunk, Kid Zombie, and Bog! Initially visualised by the artist John Rushby I was assigned as the scriptwiter on the strip from issue one. Its popularity soon upgraded it from mini strips to two full pages and I became the artist (as well as continuing as the writer) with issue 15. Over my 16 years on the strip I created a multitude of super-villains to clash with the Team including Frankendrac, Sick Squid, The Sand-Witch, Buttface, Antimatter Hari and many more.
During the magazine's early years, more comic strip content was added including work by Jamie Smart, John F. Short and Laura Howell. Although very popular with its target audience of 7 to 11 year old boys, Toxic was mostly ignored by the adults of online comics fandom who assumed it was just a feature-based magazine with "plastic tat" (toy gifts).
Nevertheless, 23 years later, Toxic became one of the most successful magazines of the 21st Century and is still thriving, now being read by a new generation of kids! Sadly, the strip content was diminished several years ago and now only features reprints of Team Toxic (which I don't get paid for) and sometimes imported strips such as Team Titans Go.
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How the mag appears in shops in its packaging.
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The magazine itself.
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Toxic No.400 is sub-titled a "Special Edition" although there's no mention inside of it reaching its landmark 400th issue. (Sometimes publishers think that revealing the age of a mag will make kids think it's "old".) However, for an eye watering £7.99 you get the regular 36 page magazine plus a bound in 8 page Gaming Guide, several plastic gifts including a "blaster" (or gun as comics used to call them), all inside card packaging that has a cut out mask of The Rock on the back. (Do kids want to run around pretending to be Dwayne Johnson? Perhaps so!)
The Team Toxic story in this issue is a reprint I did several years ago called Snot Funny and features the Team against the super-villain Mr.Nostril! While I feel sad that I don't get paid for the reprints I knew what I signed up for, and I'm pleased that my work is reaching a new generation of readers.
Toxic No.400 is avaiable now from WH Smiths, Asda, Tesco and various other supermarkets and newsagents. £7.99
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