Dr. K's Waiting Room

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January celebrates two notable dates in science-fiction history: “National Science Fiction Day” on January 2 to coincide with the birth of world renowned sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov, and 12 January being when Arthur C. Clarke’s HAL 9000 was created. Accordingly, I dedicate January to celebrating sci-fi in all its forms.

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Quick Facts:
No doubt inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), Larry Hama’s Bucky O’Hare first appeared in a screenplay and expanded into a short-lived cartoon, action figures, and videogames, though never reached the heights of the TMNT.

The Review:
We first meet Captain Bucky O’Hare and the fearless crew of the Righteous Indignation in a “seedy section of the universe” and facing an impending attack by a squadron of Toad fighters. Since the freighter has no chance of outrunning the attackers using its standard engines, Bucky orders the crew to prepare for a jump to hyperspace, only to learn from Android First Class (AFC) Blinky that the warp drive is currently being repaired. Things go from bad to worse when a plasma shot from an attacking ship results in the nigh-disintegration of the ship’s chief engineer, Bruce the Berserker Baboon. While Bucky leaves first mate Jenny “temporarily” in charge to try and help, battle-hungry gunner Dead-Eye Duck unloads with the ship’s Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (MASER) cannons, relishing the chance to pick off some Toads even as the Righteous Indignation suffers heavy damage. Although Blinky’s tried his best to repair the warp drive, it’s barely functional and activating it could result in unforeseen risk. However, with the ship in bad shape and the situation desperate, Bucky takes the risk and activates the photon accelerator. The story then jumps to the other side of the galaxy, specifically San Francisco, to find young science whizz Willy DuWitt despairing about being an outcast from his peers and even his parents since his first and only love is science. Retreating to the solace of his bedroom, the boy genius tinkers with his prototype photon accelerator and is confused when his bedroom is suddenly plunged into darkness and his television broadcasts bizarre messages from space-faring Toads.

Bucky and his crew are equally puzzled when Willy steps from a door that randomly appeared on their ship, their two malfunctioning photon accelerators apparently creating a dimensional rift to allow Willy to cross space and time. With the Righteous Indignation adrift, but shielded, by a mysterious stasis field, Willy takes a look at their photon accelerator, only to find it damaged beyond repair and warping reality around it at an alarming rate. Willy suggests building a replacement by getting parts from his bedroom. Bucky orders Jenny to keep an eye on things and ensure the doorway stays open and then accompanies Willy alongside Dead-Eye Duck, only for the Toad mothership to arrive and send a Storm-Toad boarding party to ransack the Righteous Indignation. To protect her crew, Jenny deactivates the warp drive and Blinky hides while the Toads captured her. When Blinky reactivates the warp drive to alert Bucky, Willy insists on aiding in the rescue mission, quickly grabbing his stuff and racing from his bedroom – and his universe – for a space adventure. As the Toad mothership is too massive to utilise a warp drive, Dead-Eye guesses that the Toads will head for the nearest planetary system. Amazed and fascinated by this strange corner of the universe, Willy listens with interest as Blinky gives a quick rundown of the Toad Empire, who started as a fairly harmless (if materialistic and greedy) race before their scientists cobbled together a massive computer network, KOMPLEX (or “Feed Me”), to drastically increase their profits. However, KOMPLEX immediately gained sentience and declared itself their supreme dictator, ushering in a century of industrialisation of regimentation as the Toad home world was converted into a planet-sized manufacturing facility built for conquest. KOMPLEX sent the malicious Toad army out into the universe to plunder natural resources from other worlds, leading the United Animals Security Council to Sentient Protoplasm Against Colonial Enrichment (S.P.A.C.E.) to oppose them. However, their budget only allowed for three frigates to combat the threat.

After providing Willy with Bruce’s old spacesuit and officially signing him up as a crewman, the Righteous Indignation quickly uses a nearby planetoid to avoid detection from the titanic Behemoth-Class Toad ship, which has stopped to refuel using the planetoid’s magma core. Aboard the mothership, Jenny laughs off the Toad’s threats when interrogated by the bulbous Air Marshall, showcasing her inherent witch-like telepathic and telekinetic powers by detecting her shipmates and subduing the Toads with a burst of psychic energy. Since the planetoid has a native population, Bucky cannot attack the Toad Empire without written permission, so he sends Dead-Eye and Willy ahead to gather some reconnaissance and they are immediately spotted by a nearby maintenance team. With no place to hide, Dead-Eye prepares to go down fighting, only for Willy to suggest taking shelter inside the mothership. This sends the Toads into a frenzy as they can’t risk firing inside the flight deck and, thanks to an assist from Jenny, the two come crashing into the ship. This is all witnessed by Bucky, who stumbles through another dimensional doorway to meet the planetoid’s mouse-like natives, a pacifist, philosophical race with no interest in conflict who allow Bucky to observe his friends through a crystal ball. When Dead-Eye blasts Willy with a fire retardant to extinguish his suit, they manage to fool the incoming Death Kommandos into mistaking Willy for the one thing all Toads fear: a rabid Betelgeusian Berserker Baboon. The angered Air Marshall then unleashes their deadliest weapon: the Void Droid, a heavily armed, tank-like machine designed for destruction! Luckily, despite the machine’s awesome armaments and barrage of plasma shots and missiles, the feared Void Droid proves amusingly susceptible to Willy’s water pistol since, for all its defences, it’s not waterproof! Reuniting with Jenny in the workshop, Dead-Eye and Willy join her in commandeering a Toad fighter and just barely escape from the mothership before the blast doors can crush them.

The three are stunned to find Bucky conversing with one of the mice on a floating asteroid, the hippy mouse explaining that his race once thought themselves Gods before being humbled after being tricking into buying what they thought was the secret of the universe. While they have the power to stop the Toad Empire, the mice prefer to make things grow, which their nigh-omnipotent representative demonstrates by conjuring a grassy landing strip for Dead-Eye and the others. Enraged by the humiliation he’s suffered, the maniacal Air Marshall orders the mothership to disengage from the planetoid, intending to use the ship’s plasma cannon batteries to vaporise the entire planet. The mouse isn’t concerned, however, since everything on and in the planetoid is a figment of their imagination, the result of their incredible, God-like powers, and will cease to exist if they will it or if anything is taken too far from their sphere of influence. Thus, as the mothership drifts away, it implodes in spectacular fashion, though the benevolent mouse ensures that all its inhabitants were teleported safely to a place where “the food is bad and taxes are high”. Having had enough adventuring for a while, Willy bids farewell to his friends and prepares to take the dimensional doorway home, only to find his neglectful parents turned off his photon accelerator, barely caring that their son has run away from home and assuming he’ll be back at some point. With the door gone and the mouse vanished, Willy’s surprisingly upset about being stranded in the “crazy animal universe”. However, Bucky offers Willy a place onboard the Righteous Indignation and promise to help find him a way home and Willy grateful accepts the offer, joining the crew as they blast off the “croak […] some Toads!”

Final Thoughts
This was my first time reading the original run of Bucky O’Hare and it certainly was an enjoyable experience. It makes me sad that this story is largely lost media these days as reprints are scarce and expensive, and that Bucky O’Hare has largely faded into obscurity, as this was a fun, surprisingly violent story. There’s an amusing quirkiness to this story (which is peppered with the same wit and attitude I’d expect from a British-made comic), which is fully aware that it’s a ridiculous space adventure featuring anthropomorphic mammals battling warmongering space toads and simply runs with that ridiculous premise. Bucky O’Hare had a bit of an edge to him I didn’t expect, with him being extremely protective of the Righteous Indignation and, more specifically, his place as the vessel’s commander. He never gives up his command willingly, even to his trusted first mate, and only pulls the defective warp drive since he has no choice to protect the ship and her crew from harm. Surprisingly loquacious, Bucky is fearless and honourable but also sticks rigidly to the directives as laid out by S.P.A.C.E. This means he won’t attack the Toad mothership without express written permission from the planetoid’s natives and he forces Willy DuWitt to fill out a bunch of paperwork before he can assist the crew since such administration tasks are just as important as blasting Toads. The distinctly Scottish, four-armed Dead-Eye Duck is all about this latter task, happily manning the MASER cannons and seemingly relishing the thought of dying in battle taking out some Toad scum! Even Jenny gets a fair bit of characterisation as she’s not just an unsettlingly alluring rabbit; she’s also a witch from a secretive sisterhood who can erase memories and telekinetically disable machinery. The full extent of her powers is only hinted at here, with even Dead-Eye Duck being somewhat suspicious of her at one point.

Blinky is largely here for exposition and comic relief, his voice modulator giving him a unique and peculiar way of communicating, while Willy is essentially the audience surrogate. I remember disliking him in the cartoon but he’s not too annoying here, presented as an outcast whose oddball parents barely notice him and whose scientific acumen is so advanced that he can accidentally create rifts in the space/time continuum. It helps that Willy’s not presented as a “Gary Stu” or being taken hostage or acting all obnoxious; he’s intrigued by this new universe and offers some solutions but is mostly just along for the ride. The Toad Empire may be comprised of eccentric soldiers and a blowhard of an Air Marshall, but they’re an extremely formidable force here, easily outgunning the Righteous Indignation and constantly having Bucky and the others on the back foot with their superior numbers. They may be bad shots and easily scared, but their more ferocious warriors aren’t to be trifled with and their Void Droid is clearly an unstoppable death machine whose amusing weakness was an oversight that normally wouldn’t have been exploited. Of course, the allusions to the TMNT and original Star Wars movies (Various, 1977 to 1983) are clear, especially in the depiction of the Righteous Indignation’s damaged warp drive and the Toad mothership (and home world) being gigantic battle stations. Michael Golden’s art is phenomenal here, perfectly marrying these cartoonish animals with intricate, colourful technology and situations and providing a level of detail I honestly didn’t expect from these bizarre, independently published issues. It’s clear that the original comic strip is taking things quite seriously, depicting death and extreme danger for our heroes while still firmly having its tongue in its cheek like in the original TMNT comics. Overall, this was a really enjoyable experience that makes me wish these early stories were more accessible, in addition to the short-lived additional Bucky O’Hare comic books that further explored this rich and fantastical world.

My Rating:

Great Stuff

Have you ever read Bucky O’Hare’s comic book debut? What did you think of the bizarre concept and stunning art? Were you surprised by how dark it was compared to the cartoon? What are some of your favourite sci-fi-orientated comic books? Sare your Bucky O’Hare memories below and donate to my Ko-Fi if you’d like to see more Bucky content on the site.