#13

Last minute shooting of The Naked Abe involves sending the planet hurtling into the sun with cast and crew intact. This of course results in tensions on set and a dramatic mid air rescue, as the bear goes over budget and out of his skull. Back on the Pragmatic, Orson must reassert command and try to save his shipmates. Major revelations and plot thread closures as Spaced: Book One comes to an end. Seems all this stuff happened because a soft drink company wanted to increase its market share...

The last issue of the series, though far grander plans had been drawn. At that time, the collapse of the independent B&W market due to speculation on TMNT-ish ripoffs had cut Spaced's sales to a third, and John and I were not having an easy time collaborating, working wildly separate shifts at our real jobs. I made the call to end the series and proceed with LIONHEART for Fantagraphics, ending my self-publishing experience.

Plastron
Cafe

#4, #5

The Pragmatic is no closer to finding earth, and that's swell with Lip, who holds a very dark secret. As happens too often in deep space, a derelict earth vessel comes into the picture. The inhabitant turns out to be someone from Lip's home planet Inebria, who tells tales of tentacled monsters and an Earth/Inebria war, both of which are 100% accurate, though we only get to see the tentacled monster part.

There were some loose ends that we didn't get to tie up in Spaced #13, and I took the opportunity to get the facts suggested in this, the most well-drawn spaced of all. Chiefly, the fact that Earth and Inebria had been drawn into a war, and the Pragmatic had something to do with it. I still won't tell exactly what, but if you read Spaced #13 and these stories you can probably figure it out.

Cerebus
#65,66

Wandering on the alien planet, Orson, Lip, Snikt and Barbara enter a clearly marked Wish Zone where their every wish is granted. Not surprisingly, this leads to some strange moments and unusual anatomical deformities, as well as spontaneous nudity.

Dave and Deni gave Spaced sales a big boost by publishing this promo piece, intended as self-contained adventure. The scene where Snikt's head is reduced to the size of a tomato atop his barrel chest turned up years later in Beetlejuice, but I think we all stole it from Tex Avery.

Spaced #0

A pre-Spaced tale of the crew in a training simulation before they actually screw up the Pragmatic. The soft drink conspiracy behind the fate of the Pragmatic and the Intergalactic war made it's first appearance here, so don't try and tell me I was making it all up as I went along...

A hand-xeroxed, folded, stapled mini comic sold only at conventions. Featured the novel gimmick of introducing a slow-acting poison into the readers bloodstream, forcing them to return to the dealers table for the antidote the following day.

The evil head of the soft drink company is, by pure coincidence, a dead ringer for the satanic lunatic head of the art "school" I "attended" in Pittsburgh...his head is really shaped like that. It makes me think of Groucho Marx being sucked into a black hole.