#1

The USS Pragmatic, Earth's first and least reliable faster than light vessel, accidentally warps out of the solar system on its maiden flight. The hapless crew of trainees was chosen for its expendability and was unequipped to deal with the emergency. Captain Orson Grok (who won his position on a TV game show), along with his token alien science officer Lip, work feverishly to regain control of the ship, and fail miserably.

This issue is a collection of the 4-pagers that originally appeared in the Comic Informer, held together by the thinnest glue of new pages attempting to assert some sort of continuity. The first issue to feature the sideways logo, drawing ire from every distributor and vendor on the planet. They told me I was mad; but not much later Frank Miller does it for Ronin and he's a genius. I'm not bitter or anything.

#2

The Pragmatic's computer turns out to be quite mad, and changes its name to the rather unsettling "GOD". Right about this time the crew discovers the derelict Earth ship Ridley Scott, and as you might expect, unwillingly bring back an alien life form. It does what any self-respecting alien monster would do: abducts the girl and terrorizes the crew, despite the fact that it's a three-foot tall teddy bear.

Right at the end of Spaced #1, we introduced Barbara Ample by allowing her to try to kill Orson. She was in love with the computer, God. Also appearing for the first time was SIC, a bitter and angry little robot which we invented for the specific purpose of repeatedly killing it violently; my reaction to the profusion of cute star-warsy bots in bad scifi. At this particular time I was heavily influenced by Frank Miller and Dave Sim who were both into dramatic lighting, dramatic lettering and dramatic cliffhangers. Hence all the shadows and closeups and the introduction of the homicidal security officer Snikt.

#3

Snikt and Orson pursue the bear, Lip and Barbara to yet another spaceship. Turns out the bear is a bad filmmaker, and he subjects our heroes to screen tests for his magnum opus, The Naked Abe.

Plenty more over dramatic lighting in this one, and enough zip-a-tone to stun an ox. I was still experimenting with different approaches to penciling and inking. I believe this was inked from fairly rough pencil layouts, which may explain why there is so much solid black.

The bear began as a throwaway parody of Alien for The Comic Informer, but became a major plot thread in the Spaced saga, returning in the last three issues to complete The Naked Abe. In fact, the never-created 14th issue would have been The Naked Abe. More on that later.