Spaced #1 & #2 Jim Pinkoski 1975 Rare Underground Comics & Comix Princess Leia For Sale

Spaced #1 & #2

Script & Art by Jim Pinkoski

1974 Comics And Comix Company

1st & only Printings! Only 10,000 printed. Many have been destroyed by the artist!

Very HARD TO FIND Underground Comix!

Great Shape! Some wear. One corner creased on cover of #1. See pics.

Bagged & Boarded!

Securely Boxed & Shipped with USPS Media Mail.

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From / Comics and Comix

A couple years after dropping out of college, an aspiring artist named Jim Pinkoski began working at Comics and Comix, a Berkeley comic-book retailer and distributor run by Bud Plant, Bob Beerbohm and John Barrett. Surrounded by comic-book creators and publishers, Pinkoski demonstrated his exceptional illustration skills with contributions to Spaced Out and Lair of Madness in 1972. The following year, Comics and Comix hosted the first-ever underground comix convention in Berkeley and acquired 4,000 Golden Age comic books that helped finance future company business, including the publication of Pinkoski\'s solo comic-book series, Spaced.

Spaced was one of the first publishing ventures Comics and Comix pursued in 1974, along with Jack Katz\'s The First Kingdom. Pinkoski began working on the series when he was only 23 years old, but he was already a gifted illustrator with a solid command of anatomy and a flair for unusual layouts and compositions.

The series ran for three issues and all featured sci-fi/fantasy stories with occasional spiritual overtones, sort of in the mold of Heavy Metal, which wouldn\'t debut in the states until after Spaced had completed its eye-catching little run. Every issue featured some hard-core scenes of sex and nudity, which Pinkoski would come to regret.

Well, he more than regretted them, he burned them in a funeral pyre. Pinkoski had been raised Presbyterian, but his family wasn\'t very observant during his childhood. But in the San Francisco area, after more than 15 years living it up as a hippie artist and wicked sinner, Pinkoski became a reborn Christian at the end of 1984. His turnabout was so complete that he burned all copies of underground comics in his possession, including his own, and renounced everything he had done as an underground creator.

In the three decades since, Pinkoski has used his professional energies to proselytize the salvation offered by Jesus, putting out more than a dozen books and magazines and writing many articles (some can be seen on his website). Pinkoski is a Seventh-day Adventist, a devoted disciple of Ron Wyatt, and believes in the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ. I\'m not quick to disparage religious individuals (churches are another matter), but by more than one account Pinkoski has established himself near the lunatic fringe of Christianity. Even his own church has dismissed many of the beliefs that Pinkoski doggedly espouses.

Which makes it all the more amusing to view Pinkoski\'s detailed drawings of naked girls, spread eagle sorceresses, and throbbing cocks slipping in and out of dripping c**ts. Pinkoski won\'t even acknowledge the existence of these comics today, but we all know what you did last summer, Jim.

Spaced #1

Only Printing - Bats Version / 1974 / 36 pages / Comics and Comix

Spaced #1 is Jim Pinkoski\'s first solo comic, which he earned with a couple of solid efforts in other undergrounds and his friendship with the publisher, which happened to be his employer. He produced a nicely illustrated sci-fi/fantasy book that suffers from disjointedness and some clumsy storytelling. Pinkoski numbers each of the four stories and includes both a prologue and an epilogue, but the epilogue is not directly related to any of the stories.

The prologue does lead into the first story, \"Sitting Pretty,\" which turns out to be about two guys and a gal on a space ship. One of the guys is so obsessed with \"getting the girl\" he decides to murder the other guy so he doesn\'t have any competition for the female astronaut. The joke is supposed to be on the murderer when Pinkoski reveals that the female is actually a lesbian! Ha ha, Mr. Murderer, she\'s into girls, so you killed that dude for no reason! I\'m sure that after the killer learns that the sexy, beautiful woman trapped on a space ship with him is gay, he\'ll just give up on his obsession with fucking her. Or maybe not...we won\'t ever know, because the story ends abruptly after we learn she\'s not into guys.

The second story is about a sorceress who brings a mummified body back to life (or at least part of him back to life) by sucking him off. Then some other guy dies, it\'s not really clear who, and the mummy waits around for a pyramid to be built so he can be laid to rest...without his dick.

The third story is about a creature named Kellinx who was apparently electroshocked or something and banished to an uninhabited planet for crimes against another race of beings. When Kellinx is visited by a space ship with some astronauts, he decides the people are a source of food and attacks one of them, resulting in his own death. I don\'t read much more into the story than Pinkoski declaring that no matter what, we all die in the end.

The fourth story is very different from the first three, as it\'s a parody of Green Lantern and a swashbuckling sidekick, though the sidekick looks nothing like any supporting character of Green Lantern\'s that I\'m aware of. Anyway, it\'s a reasonably amusing story in which Green Lantern is mugged in an alleyway and has his magic ring stolen. The two-page epilogue that follows is unrelated to any of the previous stories and seems to compare living life \"like Hell\" or \"like Heaven,\" which apparently aren\'t very different at all when all we have is ourselves.

Spaced #1 has some interesting stories, even if some of the endings make you ask yourself \"is that all there is?\" Pinkoski certainly shows he\'s an accomplished illustrator and capable of building simple stories, but I\'m not sure whether I\'m supposed to read more into them than I first perceive. Perhaps we should just go along and enjoy the ride, which isn\'t hard to do with the eye-catching graphic imagery.

HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:

There are two versions of the first and only printing of this comic book. The versions are basically identical, except one has bats flying in the background sky and the other does not. Both versions were part of a 10,000 copy print run by Comics and Comix. The book has not been reprinted.

The astronaut who is murdered in the first story (\"Sitting Pretty\") is named Johnn Barrett, in honor of one of Jim Pinkoski\'s bosses at Comics and Comix, John Barrett.

The back cover has a hidden message around the \"Sex Fantasies\" phrase, which is just barely visible in the layout and in the linked image in the right column. The message was printed in magenta ink beneath the solid black ink and therefore appears slightly darker (like a \"rich black\") than the surrounding black.

Many years after Spaced #1 was published, science fiction comic book and movie fans noticed that the woman on the front cover of Spaced #1, who is also featured in one of the interior stories, has a hair style remarkably similar to Princess Leia in Star Wars, which came out in 1977. When Spaced #1 came out in 1974, George Lucas was in the midst of multiple rewrites of the Star Wars script, during which he researched the science fiction genre by watching films and reading books and comics. It\'s already acknowledged that Lucas borrowed liberally from these resources for the movie; it\'s not really a stretch to imagine that a few copies of Spaced ended up on some storyboard artist\'s drafting table or in a hairdresser\'s salon.

It\'s also known that early concept sketches of Princess Leia showed her with long, flowing locks of hair, not the \"cinnamon bun\" hairstyle that she ended up with in the film. Lucas himself does not credit Spaced for Princess Leia\'s unique coiffure, instead telling Time magazine, \"I was working very hard to create something different that wasn\'t fashion, so I went with a kind of Southwestern Pancho Villa woman revolutionary look, which is what that is. The buns are basically from turn-of-the-century Mexico.\" Okay, sure George, we can understand how you wouldn\'t want anyone looking up what Princess Leia was actually doing in Spaced #1.

COMIC CREATOR:

Jim Pinkoski - 1-36

Spaced #2

Only Printing / 1975 / 36 pages / Comics and Comix

Jim Pinkoski\'s second effort at a solo comic comes off measurably better than his first, which is really saying something when it comes to his already-solid illustration.

Spaced #2 opens with \"The Dragon\'s Tooth,\" which is presented in an 11-page chapter at the beginning of the book and a five-page chapter at the end. The opening chapter begins with three pages of naked bodies, lustful poses and verbal foreplay between Kneon, a well-hung barbarian warrior (mirthfully pictured on the front cover), and Cylvainia, a voluptuous and extremely horny sorceress. After they finally get down to it for a couple pages, Kneon hits the road to fulfill a favor requested by Cylvainia: bring me a dragon\'s tooth.

After a two-day journey, Kneon battles and destroys dozens of pint-size reptilian \"she-creatures\" before getting to the dragon\'s lair. He slays the dragon but suffers a near-mortal blow himself as the first chapter concludes. The story wraps up at the end of the book with Cylvainia getting her dragon\'s tooth and Kneon learning a few life (and end-of-life) lessons on his death bed. The second chapter is a bit abrupt and the ending rather bizarre and heavy on the melodramatic narration, but it has a spooky atmosphere that fits the mood.

In between chapters of \"The Dragon\'s Tooth\" are a series of dream sequences called \"Lil Nemo Starring in Slight Omen in Slumber Land\" and a short vampire tale called \"Vamp.\"

The \"Lil Nemo\" strips are parodies of Windsor McCay\'s landmark \"Little Nemo in Slumberland\" newspaper strip from the early 20th century. McCay\'s innovative full-page comics depicted a little boy named Nemo having amazing dreams that always ended when he woke up in his bed in the final panel. Pinkoski\'s \"Lil Nemo\" stories faithfully replicates McCay\'s characters and elements of the strip, but adapts them into dream sequences about childhood sexual development.

Pinkoski surrounds his Nemo with naked, ugly villains who fear Nemo\'s innocence, gigantic vaginas and landscapes of female breasts, and a Satan-type character who lectures Nemo about his frustrating future as a heterosexual male teenager. Of course, this is tricky territory to navigate, but Pinkoski doesn\'t dodge bullets just to stay safe. He never shows Nemo in the nude, but he does depict plenty of surreal adult erogenous zones and portrays a girl in the nude as an example of a sex object that Nemo will eventually masturbate about.

Though daring in its subject matter and imagery, it\'s fair to say that Pinkoski executed these stories without crossing the most gratuitous lines in the sand. The only other comic book that tackles the subject of child sexual development is Jim Himes\' Sex and Affection, but Himes had an entirely different (more wholesome and educational, but still utterly honest) approach to the subject. What\'s really remarkable is knowing that Pinkoski was ever capable of this type of storytelling given his current beliefs as a Seventh Day Adventist.

The short vampire tale \"Vamp\" is a fairly innocuous story about a female vampire who enters a stranger\'s home to suck his blood...and then suck his dick. The five pages of illustrations are stylish indeed, but the rhyming narrative is rather fawning.

Spaced #2 is an adventurous display of bold illustrations and dynamic compositions. Pinkoski\'s use of various screentones, cross-hatching and stippling builds compelling images that are a joy to ponder. That he employs these skills to portray the audacious sexual images he does leaves erotic art fans wishing he had never found God...or at least that he had found God in the same way Rick Griffin did.

HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:

Comics and Comix printed approximately 10,000 copies of this comic book. It has not been reprinted.

COMIC CREATORS:

Jim Pinkoski - 1-34, 36

J.R.L - 35 (poem)