They seem to have originally tried to make themselves in the mold of National Lampoon, but someone that actually read the magazine in the 90s could probably comment more on this. I was busy having kids and raising a family, so I didn't get much of a chance to read such content.
Along those lines: if you get a chance, check out "Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead" on Netflix. I was too young and missed the best parts of National Lampoon, watching the later 80s movies mostly and never reading the magazine, but images like "I Survived the Attack of the Krazed Kent Kamikaze Kids" are sheer brilliance.
A closer historical analogue to what Vice has tried to do is probably Rolling Stone. Today Rolling Stone is utterly dispensable, so it can be hard to imagine; but in the '70s it was what Vice so desperately wants to be today, a sort of journal-of-record for youth culture. If you wanted to know where the edge was, Rolling Stone had writers like Lester Bangs and Hunter S. Thompson who could show you.
Along those lines: if you get a chance, check out "Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead" on Netflix. I was too young and missed the best parts of National Lampoon, watching the later 80s movies mostly and never reading the magazine, but images like "I Survived the Attack of the Krazed Kent Kamikaze Kids" are sheer brilliance.