Space Beaver: Volume One
Darick Robertson
AiT/PlaNETlar
$12.95 / STAR12420
Take note, kids, here's where SAVANT's hip indie street creds come
to a smoldering halt. Remember how we've always trumpeted the fact
that reviewers only review books they buy and don't get promo copies?
When attacked for being shallow or vengeful, we could always point
to our ethos that, well, we only review what we buy, so our opinions
are based on the really real truth. Thankfully, that day has come
to an end and I can proudly declare myself a shill for anyone out
there willing to send in free stuff. Larry
Young, patriarch of us cyber-Joads, has taken the first mighty
step and sent me an assload of free stuff. Including Space Beaver,
a volume collecting Darick Robertson's first comic-book efforts, published
way back in 1986.
First off, this was done by someone in high school.
In the 80's. If those two phrases apart or in combination don't fill
you with some sense of trepidation, you're obviously a bit bent. Keep
this in mind while you read it, because it's a book that calls for
a lot of overlooking and forgiveness on the part of the reader. Were
it a perfect world, you could return yourself to that glossy adolescence
you pine for and read this in your bedroom and love the fuck out of
it, reveling in the adventures of pure-hearted animals in sunglasses
dripping with blood and hunting down their enemies with rayguns and
combat knives. As it stands, however, we're in the cynical year ought-one
and very few of us can escape our crippling upbringings.
As the title and concept might reveal, this book
is seemingly a product of those strange years in comicdom when animals
became sentient beings and took to fighting crime. There were turtles,
hamsters, pachyderms; all of them vying for a shot at national consciousness
by taking cute and fuzzy and ramming it full of hard-boiled stances
and the dry cool wit of action movie stars. So, while I might love
this book and all it has to offer, I'm not gonna lie to you and tell
you that it's engrossing or captivating or a milestone. There's a
lot of wincing involved here, and most of it might come from the fact
that you can remember a time when you took stuff like this seriously
and avidly looked forward to the next issue of the thrilling adventures
of a...um....Space Beaver and his turtle sidekick as they fight a
giant pig named Lord Pork.
Sure, it's ridiculous. Robertson apologizes for it, Warren Ellis in
his introduction doesn't actually admit to liking it, much less reading
it, but any of you out there who still own back issues of the 80's
era X-Men or Avengers (or even present day issues) would
have a hard time defending that stuff in the harsh light of our MST3K
millennium. It's a product of its time and of youth, which gives Space
Beaver a lot of charm and guile. Hard though it may be
to stifle that urge to snicker and groan, give it a shot, swallow
your hard-fought world-weariness and just sit the fuck back and wallow
in our collective past. Space Beaver is nothing if not serious
about what it's doing, even when it's being funny, and although it
might be packed full of cliched taglines and snarling threats that
seem more appropriate in soft-core porno films, it succeeds in the
main goal of all this: entertainment.
I can give you the quick synopsis, if you like. A Beaver travels through
space and fights evil drug dealers and general reprobates with the
help of his middle-aged Turtle companion and a wise-acre mouse. There's
battles lost, wars won, mercenaries with consciences, love turned
bad and a giant cackling evil adversary. It's like every science fiction
and action film from the late 70's and 80's all compressed into the
head of a kid with an undeniable ability to put a pencil to work.
Space Beaver is a study in evolution. Stop laughing. This is
Robertson's first long-run effort in comics and what stands out most
of all is how, in the span of just 6 issues, there's a giant sense
of transformation going on. Robertson's a good artist, there's no
disputing that, but those first few issues have a lot of sputtering
and crudeness to them, at least a lot more than you'd expect from
the guy who gives us the graphic marvel of Transmetropolitan
every month. By issue three, you can see his lines getting stronger,
his layout getting looser and more free-form and his ideas, however
half-baked they might seem now, gaining strength, or at least confidence.
By the latter 3 issues, I was having a blast, fully enjoying myself,
despite the fact that I wouldn't dare read this thing in public, or
even amongst people I haven't known for a few years.
Me, I'm a cynical little fucker. One of those glass-is-half-full-of-pointlessness
kinda people. I can't help it at this point, I was brought up looking
for weakness and faults in others and to mock stupid TV and scoff
at trailers for idiot films. This is me. No one's more shocked than
me that Darick Robertson popped up from 15 years in the past and made
me realize that for all the terrible awful things we suffered through
in the 80's, there were bastions of integrity and fun, for no other
reason than he believed he could do it. Go ahead, call me a sellout
bastard, mock my values system. But really, no one was more apprehensive
and critical of this book than I. When I got it, I began reading it
and immediately felt like giving up before the first shoot out was
over with. But by the time I was through, I was marveling at just
how much fun I was having with these outdated tales of Stallonian
animals fighting injustice and their own emotions. So if you give
a damn about that happy and innocent child breathing mud somewhere
in the back of your lizard brain, don't go running for your long boxes
full of halfwit allegories about racism or the awkwardness of being
teenage, get some Beaver, put on your Paula Abdul CD's and marvel
in slack-jawed wonder at how stupid we were and how far we've come.
You'll thank me. Or hate me. Either way, I got free stuff.
