SPACE MONKEY Anthology

The Paper Jam Comic Collective are back with another anthology!

The untitled kids-themed anthology mentioned back in September now has a name (Space Monkey, or to give its proper title Space Monkey, featuring: Squids, Bicycles, Cowboys, Skeletons, Bogeys, Dinosaurs, UFOs, Galleons, Loners, Emos, Aliens, Accidents, Bulls, Electricians, Pizza Pirates, Missing Heads, Secret Codes, Astronauts, Cheese, Massive Plants, Toilets, Tortoises and Bob...And That) and a form, being that it looks like what you see up above. The cover image is by Dan Gilmore and the whole thing was painstakingly put together and shaped into loveliness by Paul Thompson.

It works both as a fantastic kids comic (with all the laughs and excitement of our usual work but with none of the rude words) and further proof that Newcastle is a hotbed of comics talent. It is truly the nicest-looking anthology we've put out to date.

Space Monkey is available now from Travelling Man Newcastle and shortly via the site for the modest price of £3. We're in the midst of trying to get an online shop set up, but in the meantime if you want a copy and you don't live nearby drop us an e-mail and we will sort it out.

Check back here for details of an official launch...

Durham Book Festival

The Paper Jam Comics Collective were representin' at Durham Book Festival at the weekend, and there's a write up at Oscillating Brow's blog if you really must know what we got up to.

A massive Cheers me Dears to Leonie O'Moore who arranged our appearances at both Whitley Bay and Durham. Leonie's exhibiting some work at the Lit and Phil in Newcastle from the 2nd November until the 23rd December. You should go along because she's mint. So there.

Whitley Bay WordPlay Festival

Paul Thompson and Oscillating Brow attended the Whitley Bay WordPlay festival on Saturday, which was characterised as a battle for hearts and minds. We won of course, but during the quiet periods, we faffed about with pens and paper. As is our way.

KIDS Anthology

Hello Everyone,

We are putting together our new anthology very soon. The idea is as loose as ever - Kid Friendly. There aren't very strict rules in terms of theme, but for content we need to make sure there are no swear words, no scenes of a violent or explicit nature (to the degree that isn't suitable for kids, - i.e. a spaceman shooting an alien's head off might be okay, but the spaceman proceeding to have full naked sex with the Star Princess afterwards might be a step too far). By the same token, try not to patronise or dumb anything down either, think about what you loved as a kid and bear the themes/content of that stuff in mind when you're creating.

The deadline for submissions will be Thursday 24th September and the finished product will be A4 size (A3 sheets folded in half). It will have a full-colour cover and black and white interiors. Each contributor has two pages to play with, so if you're writing and drawing your own story it can be either one or two pages long, or if you're working with somebody else it can be one to four pages long and so on. We have some space for colour submissions, but not much, so if this is something that would interest you drop me a line ASAP (tmne_smallpress@yahoo.co.uk) and we'll figure something out from there. Please don't create something in full colour until you've dropped me a line as we might not be able to use it!

As for submitting work, you can bring your original artwork (A3 or A4 only) in to the shop or to one of the meetings as long as it's in a folder or plastic sleeve or anything else that will prevent it from getting damaged in somebody's bag. Alternatively you can scan it in and send it as a 300dpi JPEG to the above e-mail address. Be sure to leave a blank border around your pages so that nothing gets cut off during printing and make sure your text is legible, not least of all because children will be reading it, but also because it will shrink if you're working on A3 and it might disappear during printing if your lines are really fine.

The last Comics Evening before the deadline is this coming Thursday 10th September from 6:30pm onwards at Travelling Man Newcastle, and we'll be using the opportunity to share our ideas with the group before the big day, so bring any and all scraps of paper or abstract notions you might have!

See you there.
-Jack