Space Beaver

Space Beaver represents the first published comic book effort by artist Darick Robertson with the help of Gene Sprague and Tibor Sardy.

Already interested in art, he had begun sketching some anthropomorphic characters in comic book pages on typing paper with a pen to pass time during summer school.

Before that actually got published, he showed his work to the owner of San Mateo's Peninsula Comics, Tibor Sardy, who was impressed.

Sardy, hoping to cash in on the current talking animal black and white comic trend that had launched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and many copy-cats, began publishing Robertson's work in October 1986 in a black-and-white format as Space Beaver under the label Ten-Buck Comics.

The bio on Robertson's official site states, "Space Beaver, (as laughable as it was from the title alone), enabled Darick to learn the ropes of the comic book business".

[1] Space Beaver features in Transmetropolitan as a cameo in the background of several scenes as a television show, and as a stuffed toy.

The story takes place on and around the planet Anutherurth and concerns Space Beaver, a rich kid who, after his best friend Mikey is killed by drug dealers, becomes a vigilante and begins assassinating gangs of drug dealers along with his friends Tog and Rodent.

During a raid gone bad, Beaver's girlfriend Jackie ends up falling off a cliff and disappears, fueling his rage further.

After an ambush set up by Stinger fails to kill Beaver and only wounds his comrades, an angry Pork takes out his frustration on Jackie.

When Stinger voices his disapproval of this, Pork attempts to teach him a lesson by sending a horde of drug-altered test subjects after him.

During the raid, Commander Foxx turns coat and murders Pork, and Beaver and Stinger are able to escape with Jackie.