PUNK #1 IS ONLINE!

AND FREE TO VIEW!

The entire contents of PUNK #1 can be viewed online @ punkmagazine.com, but I suggest that if you want to read the contents, you should use a computer (or other digital device) with a fairly large screen, since the pages were big, but internet on a phone is very small.

During the filming of the recent Hulu documentary about High Times founder Tom Forcade, I met up with RJ Cote, who worked on the High Times Website with me back in the day. He agreed to help me update and upgrade the punkmagazine.com Website (something I have been trying to do for over ten years). It’s taking a lot of time, and the Website is still “Under Construction,” but it’s looking much better now. It’s a huge relief for me, almost like a “Second Life!”

Although the Tompkins Square Park was a rain-soaked disaster, you got to like the cover art by “Dirty Danny” Hellman! Look at those textures! And his coloring! Great stuff. It was a good issue, all things considered.

So far, RJ has done a lot of back-end work to fix a bunch of technical problems (that I can’t understand) but now we’ve been able to get to the fun part: Adding new content! We just uploaded PUNK #23, which chronicled the rainy Tompkins Square event, introduced cartoonists Imari Azzi and Mike Wartella to PUNK, and featured a great story about The Misfits by Bruce Carleton.

Johnny Moondog, who’s also the guitar player in Labretta Suede and The Motel Six, illustrated the cover for PUNK #24. Yeah, The Fugs weren’t punk rock, but they were a huge influence on the East Village scene that created the CBGB punk rock scene in the 1970s. So check it out!

We previously uploaded PDFs of the last two issues (PUNK #24: The FUGS and PUNK #25: The Ki Smith Gallery Catalog). I have to say I am proud of PUNK #24, as it chronicled the other counterculture movements that took place in the East Village back in the day: Bohemians, Beatniks, Yippies and punk rock were all launched at Manhattan’s East Village (before the rents got too high and forced all the fun people out). There’s also a great centerfold poster: A map featuring East Village landmarks by Cliff Mott, another great cartoonist who has joined the PUNK staff.

Working with Ki Smith was a lot of work, and a lot of fun. Getting Shepard Fairey to do cover art for an issue of PUNK was something I really wanted to do after I was involved with a group “Punk Art” show at his art gallery in Los Angeles. Once I saw he was a true fan of the music? Yeah: “Gabba Gabba, One of Us.”

If you haven’t seen the Ki Smith Catalog yet, I hope you check it out soon. It’s crazy how this (relatively) small art exhibition attracted thousands of visitors from November 2025 to January 2026, but we had great content! People really enjoyed the show. Now you can see a lot of it online.

Nest? I’m hoping to get hard-to-find recent issues (PUNK #22: The Iggy Pop Tribute, PUNK #21: The CBGB. Issue, PUNK #20: Sid & Nancy, and PUNK #19: The Bullys) up and running. When it comes to 1970s back issues? PUNK #3 is on the short list of back issues we can add. PUNK #6 (“The Legend of Nick Detroit” photo comic starring Richard Hell with appearances by Helen Wheels, Debbie Harry, Lenny Kaye, Anya Phillips and many others) and PUNK #15 (“Mutant Monster Beach Party”) should go online by the end of the year as well.

We plan to set up a print-on-demand option so people can print out copies of back issues. This way, people won’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for back issues (unless they want an original copy). So yeah, RJ is a very important team member and we will all enjoy the results of his work very soon.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to see a video of Mutant Monster Beach Party, it’s been online for a long time:

Thanks for your support! Keep reading, sharing, commenting and liking. This newsletter is just under 1,000 total subscribers and sometimes gets even more views! And although I have a gift shop @ punkmagazine.com. there’s a much bigger selection @ wornfree.com:

Wornfree.com sells a lot of great t-shirts, so check ‘em out when you can.

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In other news, we were planning to set up a table at the upcoming Punk Island event: Giving away and selling stuff, and hopefully seeing some good punk rock bands. The problem? Well, it looks like we are facing the same problem I had with the September 2023 event at Tompkins Square Park: It’s supposed to rain all day on Saturday.

It’s a rain or shine event, so, like the ill-fated September 2023 event at Tompkins Square Park, we decided to pull the plug. We’re looking forward to the next Warped Tour event in Long Beach, California on July 25-26. I might stop off at the San Diego ComiCon the day before.

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There are so many more events planned, this “50 Years of PUNK is huge! September through December 2026 look like they will be very busy. For instance, an online auction Website, JOOPITER. is hosting a huge “50 Years” event, like Crazy Eddie used to say: “These prices are insane!” There’s a lot of great stuff (including a complete run of PUNK back issues, currently seeing for an absurdly low $1,500). These look like high-grade issues, so someone out there probably will want to bid on it. There are a lot of other interesting collectibles on the Website, and since it ends very soon? Like tonight? Well, maybe they will extend the auctions?