Junker was a strip by Michael Fleisher, John Ridgway and Tim Perkins about a hard-drinkin', sharp-shootin', mean-hearted old son-of-a-gun called Dennehy who was also an interstellar garbage man or 'junker'. He used to be a space cop until his wife ran out on him and he was tricked by a female criminal into committing a major dereliction of duty, which ruined his career and ensured that garbage removal was the only way he'd ever get to fly a space ship again. Dennehy's modus operandi was to find some beat-up wreck in space, threaten a merchant with a gun until he got a high enough price for it, then elbow his way through hordes of rainbow-hued whores in a seedy space-port to get to the nearest bar that sold "Terran rotgut." Oh, and he had a partner named Raz, who was a sentient lizard. Junker was published in 2000 AD progs 708 to 716 and 724 to 730.
David Bishop had to sub the story, and recalls in Thrill-Power Overload that "I thought the scripts were a spoof of cliché-ridden B-movies from the 50s, complete with space pirates. It was only after subbing the first few episodes I realised the writer was being serious!" Ridgway, the artist, "had no idea what I was supposed to be doing with it, the story just rumbled on, slowly disintegrating. I was flying blind on that story, no idea of where it was going or what was happening next with it ... I was given no description of the female character in it, who turned out to be the villain, so I drew her in a skin-tight costume. Near the end she was supposed to be hiding a jewel about her person. The only place I could think of concealing it was in the helmet she was wearing. It was just chance she happened to have that, otherwise I'm not quite sure where she might have hidden that jewel!"