I got to meet Mr. Darick Robertson at the Chicago
Comicon
(2000) by chance. He is a really funny guy. Really nice to us skinny
freaks
who come up to him at conventions and bother him with comic books from his
past. He just wouldn't stop making with the funny.
I first came across Space Beaver in 1992 in a comic book
store
one summer afternoon while looking through back issues of Spider-Man. I
saw Space Beaver #1 and could not believe that someone would
publish
a comic book about a beaver in space. So I bought it, it was $2.50 (a
little
steep considering that there were coffee stains on the cover) and read it
and could not believe my eyes: this book, no matter how corny it was,
kicked
ass! I ran over to my friend's (& later that year my boss's) store
where he had a comic book ("it's not a comic book, it's a graphic novel")
price guide and found out that I had paid book price for one of the 11
existing
Space Beaver books printed.
I had to have them all.
That summer I spent a lot of time listening to bad heavy metal and
searching
for the rest of the Space Beaver issues; I only found #5, and I
was
quite depressed about this because I live in one of the largest (not to
mention THE greatest) cities in the world, Chicago, and I searched a LOT
of comic book stores that summer. However, while visiting my sister in
Champaign the next spring, I went into Fantasy Realm and I found #s 4, 6,
& 10, and I was very pleased about this. I don't think it was until
the next year I found #2, 3, 7, & 8 in two different stores.
As for issues 9 & 11, last Fall (1998) a good friend of mine
happened
to be going to San Mateo, CA, and I thought, "HEY! That's where Peninsula
Comics is located!!!" So I ordered him to stop by and pick up #9 & 11
for me and anything else he could find there: t-shirts, quarter prints,
etc. Well, he didn't find any of the shirts or other items, but he did
find...9
& 11!!! Thanks Matt! Woo hoo!
Although I would still like to get some of those shirts...heh heh.
Why would I make a website for a beaver in space?
A question asked in the third act of Hamlet that scholars ask today,
well,
the answer...
I met Darick through an email asking why I made a website dedicated
to his first comic book. Answer...uh, I was dared to by some friends. And
honestly I thought it would be funny to present the story of Space Beaver
in a series of select images taken from the books along with a few
sarcastic
comments from myself. Also, at the time, I was out of worked, kicked out
of college, and bumming off a few friends in Champaign, IL, killing time
in between shows for my band.
Around that April or May I found that my friends John and Jon were
using
linux to operate their own domains n stuff. It was pretty neat. So there
was the answer to "where can I store these images?" And when I said,
"hey,
wouldn't it be great to make a Space Beaver website?" Jon demanded it. He
absolutely loved the fox guards and the quirky, almost embarrasing
soap-style
soliloquies (sp?) offered by nearly character. So off to the computer lab
I went to scan images, and soon I had one whole page dedicated to Space
Beaver.
And then Darick emailed me, thanking me for my somewhat odd dedication
to his early years of comics. He also let me know he was drawing comics
for
a living. Awesome! So despite the gloomy outlook of SB #11, at least there
was a happy ending for someone...
And that pretty much sums it up.
Obsession with Space Beaver: I have to apologize for my somewhat psychotic
dedication to a book that the comic world, even in the heyday of b&w
funny animal books that weren't funny and even in the golden prime of
comics
before the big bust, pretty much ignored. Someone can see this and think,
"oh, another funny animal b&w that flooded the comics market in the
late
80's. I'll buy each issue for a quarter."
I had just gotten introduced to comic books, checking out cheap
back-issues
of my hero Spider-Man. Comics can be very intimidating to someone who
wants
to follow a story but doesn't want to start at #364 and has to deal with
the spin-offs and crossovers of an overwhelming universe. In those back
issues,
I found a coffee-stained Space Beaver #1. I had seen hundreds of covers
for
comics, yet aside from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I had never seen
(or read) anything other than Marvel or DC...and at the time I was only
reading
Amazing Spider-Man and Darkhawk.
Weird that later I would always wonder what happened to Darick after Space
Beaver fizzled out with the b&w comic bust. I stopped reading ASM
because
of Maximum Carnage and kept reading Darkhawk. I was dead-set against
buying
into the whole multiple title crossover thing, and decided it would be
best
to just follow one underdog...in the mainstream... and not buy any issue
that crossed over. When Darkhawk started hanging out with The New Warriors
@ Darkhawk 26, I passed on it and even almost stopped buying comics
completely,
picking it up a few issues later and ignorning any notion of purchasing
The
New Warriors. Had I even checked out New Warriors at this time, I would
have
noticed that Darick was pencilling the series' best run.
I continued my hunt for Space Beaver (no jokes please) and in the time ran
across other independently published b&w comics. In my searches I
found
more obscure and fun (but nowhere near as cool) b&w books. And I was
soon buying more than just Darkhawk, but I wasn't reading Marvel & DC
stuff; being the simpleton I was, I thought there was only Marvel &
DC!
It's like when you hear the stuff on the radio, and think that that's the
only music out there. The notion of people putting out books themselves
had
never occured to my 16 year old idiot brain. Even when my friends' band
made
their own recording in a studio, all I could think was, "wait, you can do
that?"
So I graduated high school, buying stuff like Bone, Cerebus, the Tick, and
back issues of more obscure stuff. I was also reading Batman but shhhh. I
stopped reading comics for a year when I was a bit poverty stricken and
living
off some friends while waiting for my band to do things. During that time
though I managed to get my butt to a computer lab and make the Space
Beaver
site. I picked up comics again about 6 months after that living nightmare
when I finally had a place I could afford rent, a crappy job making
pizzas,
and best yet a job working at a comic book store, which reintroduced me to
the vast world of a sadly-dying comics industry.
So Space Beaver introduced me to self-publishing. Sure, the art is
fantastic,
but the mere fact that some 17 year old kid who also had to work crappy
jobs
to get by could find the time to put together a comic book and get it into
stores was not only impressive but also inspiring. It definitely kept me
interested in comics, but better yet if I never saw SB#1 I seriously
would've
always thought that only people with established publishing companies can
print comics, magazines, whatever, and that the reading public would
always
remain the reading public save for the few who somehow make it through
some
sort of established process of publishing.
I have my own little magazine in Chicago. My friends and I put some money
together, found a printing company, learned a few layout programs, and
started
having a hell of a lot of fun. Any idiot can do this, and some do, because
(like the myriad local bands and even independent labels that make demos
and find a cd duplication company to make a few cds cheap) there's a lot
of really bad crap out there. I'm guilty of a few things. But we do our
best
and now we have paid advertisers and subscribers and places that love to
carry the magazine and even clubs that have let us host a few events. It's
hilarious to hand off a copy of it to someone I've been introduced to
("this
is Paul, he has a magazine"); they are my age or even much, much older,
and
they look at it, look and me, and ask, "Wait, how'd you do this?"
So, um, thanks Darick and Space Beaver.
-paul