Rob Manuel’s 81 Jokes for the ZX81 is a comic book built around an intentionally restrictive challenge: create 81 jokes and illustrate every one using only the graphics and characters available on Sinclair’s ZX81, the early-1980s home computer. The project combines joke writing with painstaking, pixel-like artwork that recreates the machine’s distinctive visual limitations. Its appeal is aimed especially at people who remember the ZX81, but the concept also treats technological constraints as a source of creative possibility: the old computer’s narrow visual vocabulary becomes the medium for a whole collection of jokes.
The 240-page sewn hardback also goes beyond the illustrated jokes, adding Manuel’s recollections and comic digressions about computing, creativity and culture in the 1980s. The book is therefore both a retro humour collection and a personal reflection on the period and its technology. Manuel is a writer, the curator of Fesshole and a co-founder of B3ta. The book is published by Spelk Press and is listed at £20, with pre-orders scheduled to ship from 3 December 2026. Endorsements describe it as joyful, distinctive vintage humour and a tribute to the ZX81, suggesting that its particular blend of nostalgia, visual experimentation and deliberately niche comedy is central to its appeal.
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