Bucky O'Hare - Comic Book

Comic Book

• Bucky O'Hare, a green hare, captains a mammal spaceship named The Righteous Indignation. His crew was introduced in the comic and consisted of:
• Jenny – first mate and pilot, a cat from the planet Aldebaran (not to be confused with the star in the real life universe of the same name) with mysterious magical and psionic powers common to the females of her species. They include telepathy, astral projection, energy blasts, and healing. Because of the sacred precepts of Alderbaran, she keeps these powers secret from the other members of the crew, with the exception of Willy, to whom she serves as a kind of surrogate mother.
• Blinky – an advanced AFC ("Android" First Class). Has only one eye. Uses the phrase "Calamity and Woe!" to identify problem situations for Bucky and his crew-mates.
• Deadeye Duck – gunner, a four-armed former space pirate duck from Kanopis III. He is missing an eye, and is impatient and violent, preferring to let his four laser pistols do the talking for him. Speaks with a Scottish accent in the comics.
• Willy DuWitt – engineer, a pre-teen human from San Francisco who enters the Aniverse via a portal between the ship's photon accelerator and his own accelerator at home. He replaced Bruce, the former engineer, who was killed (or in the franchise's terms, had "attained oneness with the Aniverse"). Later, Willy became stranded in the Aniverse when his parents turned off the photon accelerator back in his room.

Bucky and his crew are members of the S.P.A.C.E organization, which stands for Sentient Protoplasm Against Colonial Encroachment.

The members of the Toad Empire introduced in the comic are as follows:

• KOMPLEX – the undisputed ruler of the Toad Empire. This computer program was designed to run the consumerist toad culture but instead took it over and militarized it. Its name, in toad language, is an anagram for 'Feed me'.
• Toad Air Marshall – one of KOMPLEX's foremost commanders, with a uniform adorned with medals and a face covered in warts.
• Toad Borg – one of KOMPLEX's elite troops, part toad, part robot.
• Storm Toads – the mindless toad soldiers who serve as the primary attack force for the Empire.

In the comic, Bucky and crew escape a toad attack but must rescue Jenny when she is captured by the toads. In the end, a strange, omnipotent mouse banishes the toads attacking Bucky to "a safe place where the food is bad and taxes are high". Willy's parents, not knowing what the photon accelerator does, deactivate it, trapping him in the Aniverse.

The U.S. comic only ran this one plotline; however, to coincide with the TV series in the early '90s, a U.K. comic reprinted the issues, then produced a further fifteen issues written by Peter Stone, and illustrated by Andre Coates and Joel Adams.

In 2007, Vanguard reprinted the original Bucky O'Hare comic and two of the UK issues in a digest size collection, similar to a manga. The book is called Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Menace and is printed in black and white. The deluxe edition was also released. Some copies of the "deluxe" edition, however, were in fact the standard edition with a slipcover, not the signed, numbered color version that was advertised.