Meet the author

Javi De Castro.

Writer & illustrator · Spain · b. 1990

Javi de Castro: a Spanish comic artist whose first children's book, The Spectacular Space Loop, is a flip-over, read-it-upside-down space adventure, a giggly, near-wordless first comic for the very youngest readers.

Javi de Castro is a Spanish comic artist and illustrator, born in León in 1990, who began by self-publishing fanzines and webcomics before making his name in graphic novels. In our corpus he is represented by The Spectacular Space Loop, his first children's comic, published by Flying Eye Books. When Cosmo's brand-new jetpack explodes and flings him into deep space, a wild ride begins, hungry aliens, a mysterious magician, sewer mutants and one friendly, faintly egg-like creature who might just become a pal. The book has a spectacular trick: you read it one way to the end, then flip the whole thing over and read it back upside down, discovering a second layer as you go. Bursting with bold colour, big sound effects and barely any words, it is a joyful, giggly, endlessly rereadable introduction to comics, all adventure, courage and loopy imagination.