Excited about the idea of being published but unpaid, Darick showed some of the work to a comic book store owner, Tibor Sardy of Peninsula Comics, who thought that Space Beaver should have its own series. So he started up Ten Buck Comics and put out a 36-pages of Darick's Space Beaver. The book was well-received...
"We sold 18,000 copies, and it hit big in Canada, where the natl. animal is the Beaver, and life was good. By #11, we could barely sell 2,000 and the B&W comic market was deader than Vanilla Ice's career." |
TEN-BUCK COMICS
As far as I know, the sole title from this publisher is "Space Beaver".
The
covers are fairly attractive, but the interior art is unappealing
(covers
and interiors are by the same person -- I assume he takes more time on
the
covers) and the story is hackneyed space opera with beavers, turtles,
pigs,
and such. Hackneyed space opera with animals is no better than
hackneyed
space opera with people. Grade: D-minus.
D'oh! This appeared shortly before or after #4 was published and didn't help sales. However, according to Darick, there was some outside interest in making a Space Beaver cartoon and toy line in 1989, which is around the time Space Beaver was ending its run.
Man, Canada's national animal is the beaver. That's awesome...
...ANYWAY, Darick soon found employment
outside
of Beave and began working for Innovation, pencilling the Child's Play 2
adaptation and an issue of Maze Agency before finding his way over to DC
& Marvel, where he would work on Justice League specials and a
25-issue
run of New Warriors, while also doing a few Spider-Man specials here and
there.
A little over 10 years the Beave debuted, Darick had his own book,
Transmetropolitan.
In 2000, Planet Lar publisher Larry Young,
author of the Astronauts In Trouble, agreed to reprint the entire Space
Beaver
series in two separate volumes. Volume 2 not only reprinted issues 7-11
but
also included the 12th and "final" (we have quotes around the word "final"
as you never know, though we're not holding our breath or anything...)
chapter
of the Space Beaver cliffhanging saga. Things happen. It's awesome. Now
Darick
can put that cliffhanger out of his mind and get back to drawing
Spider-Man
specials. Hooray!