#10

Imprisoned, Lip explains to Barbara the inherent complications of interspecies romance, while Orson makes a feeble attempt to rescue his friends from Slime's jail. Standing in his way are his incompetence and SIC, rebuilt to Schwarzneggian dimensions and out for vengeance. They manage to escape anyway, with a general idea where the Pragmatic is...

Lets get this out of the way: this is the worst cover ever to appear on a comic, and sadly at the beginning of Eclipse's handling of the book. My fault, no one else's; late nights, too much coffee, didn't proof it. Inside, the product is swell, though you might not get past the bile-colored cover. Lip reveals some pretty painful truths about himself yet it's funny and rather touching. Of course, we put Snikt in the cell for comedy relief just in case things got too mopey. The epilogue of this issue sets the stage for the grand finale and the close of what I now refer to as Spaced: Book One, because it sounds all important and dramatic-like. This issue was under printed and is genuinely rare.

#11

The bear's back, and he's going to finish The Naked Abe if it destroys the Known Universe. A victim of market research, the film has been changed from a biopic of Abraham Lincoln to a testosterone-charged, thrill-a-minute, music-video-ish exercise in pointless violence. Lip straps on a gun and Barbara straps on 8-inch heels to make the most expensive bomb in history, while Orson sneaks off to find the Pragmatic.

I'm in my real element here, parody of what passes for popular entertainment. As Gary Groth would point out, my humor was extremely driven by absorbed pop culture, and to prove him right I present a virtual checklist of Everything I Never Want To See In A Movie Again. It was about this time, the secret may be revealed, that I struck a handshake deal with Dave Sim to do a Spaced collection, which never materialized. The agreement, however, moved us to try to bring the series to a sort of mini-climax with issue #13, so that all the issues could be collected into a volume that at least appeared to have an intentional beginning and end.

#12

Orson finds the Pragmatic--unfortunately Slime has gotten there first and gained control of the ship. The none-too-bright crew was tricked into leaving and were locked out; Orson has to break in and save the day, something he has no particular skills for. There is of course a self-destruct command for the Pragmatic and lacking real imagination, Orson goes for the obvious. Like every movie ever made for the sci-fi channel, we have huge service access ducts, self destruct sequences, explosions, robots and a dinosaur.

Actually we decided here to cut Orson a break. Conceived as a well-meaning incompetent, I grew more sympathetic to Orson throughout the series and wanted to give him a chance to shine. In this and the next issue he actually gets kind of heroic. This issue also marks the return of decent cover art after 3 consecutive misfires. Back in those stone age days I did color by drawing each color separation in greyscale, screening it with contact screens and compositing the film myself. No computer or laser printer, lots of surprises. We did have automobiles back then, though.