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Wow look at all these cool people talking about LTWK http://letterstowalterkovacs.wordpress.com/ interview with Liz prince. Go read the interview its damn interesting.

2014 was a big year for award winning comic book creator Liz Prince. First in February, Top Shelf published ‘Alone Forever: The Singles Collection’ a book that brings together Liz’s popular online …

Check it out! A short while after my interview where I name Liz Prince as maybe the best cartoonist ever, Sion went and interviewed her for the same blog! Woop!

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Check out this really interesting article by Janelle Asselin that points out the inherent misogynistic dumbass attitudes in mainstream comics. The artists who is being criticized responded on twitter and just comes off like an idiot and ignorant. Get a brain, stop making boring sexist comics, and maybe create a comic which is better than teen titans.

Last week I wrote this piece for Comic Book Resources about the new Teen Titans #1 cover. The point of the piece was hey, there’s a broad demographic DC *could* be hitting with this book but the cover is certainly not made for that potential demographic. Instead, it’s more of the same-old,...

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A load of bands on The Gutter #2 Compilation are playing the Reeks Of Effort Prom in Dig. Cool poster aswell

A poster for the REEKS OF EFFORT PROM by Clark Bint.

I like this lots and it makes me feel sick.

You should all come:

https://www.facebook.com/events/346153408860601/352491258226816/?notif_t=like

More of Clark’s stuff:

https://www.facebook.com/clarkbintillustration

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Check out this amazing Gutter cake my brothers girlfriend made for my birthday.

COMICS AND CAKE. RAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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SJP 003: THE GUTTER #2

SJP 003 - For the second issue of The Gutter we have really pulled out all the stops. This issue has grown to be a big fat 32 pages and it is now online for the price of £2.

GET IT HERE: http://spacejunkiepress.bigcartel.com/product/the-gutter-2-an-anthology-of-uk-diy-comix

Or if you want to buy it from a comic shop we are stocked in Orbital Comics, Gosh Comics and Traveling Man.

If anyone other comic book shops are interested in stocking the comic give us an email on spacejunkiepress@gmail.com

Issue 2 includes:

* A butt -load of amazing 2 page black and white comic strips by the likes of Joey Four, Jack Fallows, Gemma Batten, CJ Reay, Elliot Coffin, Isabel Scott, Andy Lips, the deadly duo Dean and Saam, our own Sion Thomas, Laura Betton, Dom Jordan and Daniel Jeffery.

* An interview with Hitsville and Capital City creator John Riordan. http://www.johnriordan.co.uk/

* A wacky cover designed by the talented Mr. Philip Morgan. http://www.philmorganillustration.co.uk/

* A free downloadable Comp of p-rocking DIY bands which include: Joanna Gruesome, DOE, Playlounge, Saturday's Kids, Joey Fourr, Twisted, Plaids, Carson Wells, Dirty Vampires, Dog Legs. You can listen to it here:

http://reeksofeffort.bandcamp.com/album/the-gutter-ii

The quality of strips this time is even higher than last issues. Once again there is no thematic premise that runs through all the work, as we want all are guys and gals to explore what ever they want. This means there are stories about wizards, cats, hard partying corpses, the social upper-hand of the straight edge community and so much more.

We had the release show for it two weeks ago in Birthdays in Dalston. Thanks to everyone who showed up, which was loads of you, and all the bands who played, people who did a comic, and just anyone who was involved in the production of this comic. BIG LOVE TO EVERYONE.

Roll on The Gutter 3, which should be coming out April time.

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The Gutter brings in the old and the young

My dad reaching for a copy of The Gutter #2 in Gosh! Comics.

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THE GUTTER #2 // LAUNCH PARTY

That's right boys and girls, ghosts and ghouls in celebration of the release of the brand spanking new issue of DIY PUNK comix anthology THE GUTTER we are having a big old party. Also for all you cheapskates out there it is FREE and the first 50 people will get a FREE copy of THE GUTTER aswell!!!!!!! /////// PLAYLOUNGE //////// http://playlounge.bandcamp.com/ /////// TRUSTFUND //////// http://trustfund.bandcamp.com/releases /////// BLOOMER /////// http://bloomerlondon.bandcamp.com/

For the second issue of The Gutter we have really pulled out all the stops. This issue will include:

* A butt -load of amazing 2 page black and white comic strips by the likes of Joey Four, Jack Fallows, Gemma Batten, CJ Reay, Elliot Coffin, the deadly duo Dean and Saam, our own Sion Thomas and loads more. * An interview with Hitsville and Capital City creator John Riordian. http://www.johnriordan.co.uk/

* A wacky cover designed by Phillip Morgan ( as you can see above) * A free downloadable Comp including a ton of p-rocking DIY bands.

You will get all of this for the low low low super low price of £2. Or free if you are one of the first 50 people to show up at the launch.

The quality of strips this time is even higher than last issues. Once again there is no thematic premise that runs through all the work, as we want all are guys and gals to explore what ever they want. This means there are stories about wizards, cats, hard partying corpses, the social upper-hand of the straight edge community and so much more. Here are some special preview pages to really get you excited.

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reach by shield your eyes

Here is hats and milks third comic for SJP. It is accompanied by the song Reach by Shield Your Eye.

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RELEASE: Rose Robbins- "try something new today like grapes"

Hey! We're super excited to announce the release of our second comic- "try something new today like grapes" by the amazing Rose Robbins. 

TSNTLG is a short collection of Rose's illustration and comics from the past few years, ranging from observational sketches to cartoon strips to awesome drawings of burgers. Expect funny, bittersweet depictions of little moments that remind us of everyone from Lisa Hanawalt  to Alison Bechdel to John McNaught to Sara Varon.   Rose has worked with and contributed to publications and events like The Comix Reader, Spike Island and Bristol Ladyfest, worked to compile the fantastic Dog Comics! compilation (featuring the aforementioned McNaught + many others), ran workshops and has published her own comics such as "Hardware Island" and "Horace and Emma" with Often and Mistakes, a vast comics/illustration empire she co-runs with Grace Denton.   We'll be collaborating with Often and Mistakes for this release which will be 20 pages long, printed with black and blue riso ink on luvly yellow paper.  It'll be released on the 5th of October and we'll have pre-orders going up very soon.  For now here's some preview images!

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Dark World by Pity Sex

HATS AND MILKS' VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF PITY SEX'S COCA-COLA

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This is the first installment of Hats and Milk Comics Fantastic new biweekly comic for SJP. This first strip is entitled THIS SUMMER IS GOING TO KILL ME : PILOT. From now on every other Wednesday these talented duo are going to be creating a strip just for us guys and blowing everyone's' minds. Also below is the track that inspired the strip and should be listned to whilst reading it.

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TEASER FROM HATS AND MILK COMICS

FULL PILOT COMING SOON TO THE SJP BLOG

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MANGA BEAT #3

Urasawa Naoki

Urasawa Naoki's Monster tells the story of Dr Tenma, a gifted Japanese surgeon who refuses to prioritise the life of an important politician over that of a child's. Due to Tenma's prodigious surgical ability, the child (despite having been shot in the head) survives. The politician dies. As a result, Tenma is dismissed from his post at the hospital by his politicking superiors. This sucks, but at least Tenma did the right thing, right? What if the child, whose name is Johan, turns out to be a sociopathic and unstoppable serial killer, a 'monster'?

Monster is a story about human evil and how this evil is born. Urasawa persistenly portrays his characters as selfish, greedy, narcissistic, cruel creatures; the real 'monster' of the series is not just Johan but humanity in general. Urasawa's relatively realist style, with its admirable attention to detail in setting and characters' clothing, is super rad, and Monster has some really suspenseful moments and some pretty disturbing ones too.

Urasawa's most famous work is probably 20th Century Boys/21st Century Boys, which has been adapted into a trilogy of blockbusters, but I couldn't really get into it. I did dig Pluto,his more realistic/darker re-imagining of Tezuka Osamu's famed Astro Boy universe. Okay, so 'realistic' and 'darker' are fucking buzzwords for any re-imagining nowadays (and honestly usually just means 'moral ambiguity but not really', 'violence', 'dark/grey (aka boring) setting' and 'boobs'). But for Pluto, re-imagining means sad. Ostensibly a murder mystery, it follows the stories of a few extremely powerful robots who fought in the '39th Middle East War',  and gradually reveals itself  as a parable about the impossibility (or near-impossibility) of recovering normalcy after a catastrophic war.

This is what makes Pluto brilliant as an adaptation: Astro Boy was perhaps the quintessential post-war manga, Astro Boy being for post-WWII Japan what Superman was for Depression America, i.e. an inspirational figure to lift Japan out of a great crisis. Pluto is the reverse of this. It examines war as an event so traumatic that it exceeds the category of 'war'; its violence lingers in peacetime society, occasionally erupting in great tragedy.

What both Monster and Pluto attempt to convey is that acts of violence are not simply discrete acts performed by self-responsible actors, but acts that have a genealogy in history and in the violence that pervades societal structures. In a world where nearly every modern state was born out of a war or has a war as its keystone event, a world that continues to be plagued by mass murderers and terrorists despite an apparent and long-lasting peacetime (in fact untrue, even if I attempt to limit discussion to the so-called West, because the USA has been a nation at war since they invaded Afghanistan with their NATO allies in 2001), Urasawa's work seems to be utterly relevant, and should give us pause to think about our ever-continuing history of violence.

-- Zeus.

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Some very proud comic artists in gosh comics

Us with an anonymous comic in Gosh! We love you, Donya Todd.

Saam has no guts.

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THE LAUNCH OF SJP'S ONLINE COMIX!!!!!!! Y DWR AC Y LLAIS - THE WATER AND THE VOICE #1

Well since the beginning of Space Junkie we have been planning on starting some online comics as well to accompany our physical comics and online articles.  Today marks the beginning of this plan with the first of my weekly strips that will be posted up every Friday from now on, hopefully that is.  I am not the only one, starting next Wednesday the guys from Hats and Milk comics will be doing a bi-weekly strip for Space Junkie and we are talking about getting some other people to do regular online strips for us too.  So now you have no excuse to check out the blog as often as possible.

I am beginning my run with part 1 of a comic entitled ‘Y Dwr Ac Y LLais – The Water and The Voice’.  It is a sequel to ‘Anhunwr’ (which is Welsh for insomniac by the way), the comic I drew for THE GUTTER #1. It follows the nameless protagonist's continuing fight with insomnia and his obsession with the ghostly female spectre that haunts his dreams. This narrative will run for a few weeks. Anyway here you go and hopefully enjoy.

- Sion Thomas

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THE GUTTER IN NOBROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Gutter #1 in Nobrow.

NERDS.

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MANGA BEAT #2

Manga Beat is now going to be taken over by our in house Mr.Manga, Zeus. He will be teaching us all about cool, mental and as you will see below just plain fucking crazy manga, i can't wait.  ---------- Kago Shintaro writes and draws some of the most warped manga you will ever read. Example: The blurb for his one-shot 'Superglue' reads,

A town is infected by something so disgusting that if someone steps on it, they are too disgusted to remove their foot, leaving them there to die.

and, honestly, that doesn't even begin to describe how fucked up 'Superglue' is. Even then, 'Superglue' isn't even Kago's most disturbing work - which is maybe not that surprising for a mangaka whose work is characterised by scatology, sexual deviancy, gore and black humour, often all at the same time. To quote Kago himself: 'Shit and sex are merely the starting points, and unless you can tick those off you can’t even begin thinking about a narrative. And I do try to feature sweet young girls as the main characters.'

Kago's works also often break the fourth wall, to varying degrees of interest. Probably his greatest achievement in this regard is 'Abstraction', which asks the question: What if manga panels were in 3D rather than 2D? The result is a visual tour-de-force unlike anything I have seen in comics. It can be difficult to even mentally process each page of 'Abstraction', so that Kago planned and drew 15-odd pages of 'Abstraction' (it feels longer when you read it because of how long you will spend poring over each page) testifies to his insane genius. Read it and weep y'all.

- Zeus.