Ace Trucking Co.

Ace Trucking Co. was a long running comedy science fiction serial by writers Alan Grant and John Wagner and artist Massimo Belardinelli which ran intermittently in 2000 AD from prog 232 (October 1981) to prog 498 (1986) before returning briefly in the 1989 2000 AD Annual. Heavily influenced by the 1970s craze for CB radio (with the lead character constantly speaking in futuristic CB slang) it followed the misadventures of the ambitious but frequently inept space trucker Ace Garp and his crew, first mate G.B.H (Dead) and engineer Feek the Freak onboard the cargo vessel Speedo Ghost (the final original crewmember was Ghost, the ship's onboard computer intelligence, while they were later joined by Chiefy Pig Rat, a sentient alien rodent who Feek adopted as a kind of pet). The series was unusual in that all the characters were non humans, except for Ace's recurring nemesis Jago Kane, a trucker from Earth (which was never visited in the series), a fact which allowed Bellardinelli to give his imagination free rein when designing characters (Ian Gibson also drew one story, "Hell's Pocket" in progs 239 to 243). Over the course of 19 stories over six years, Ace and his crew faced numerous challenges, including ravenous Kleggs (a species of alien which had actually originated in the Judge Dredd series), competition from Jago Kane and the pirate Captain Evil Blood, and encounters with various alien civlizations, one of which believed them to be gods, as well as Ace encountering a parallel universe version of himself! The adventures ended, though, in a one-off story in the 1989 Annual (published in late 1988) with Ace in prison, vowing to regain control of his company from his own mutinous crew, who had taken it over following his apparent death. Whether he ever succeeded is unknown.

Stories
"The Kleggs" (progs 232-236, 1981) "Hell's Pocket" (progs 239-243, 1981) "Lugjack" (progs 244-250, 1982) "The Great Mush Rush" (progs 251-258, 1982) "The Ughbug Bloos" (prog 259, 1982) "Last Lug to Abbo Dabbo" (Progs 260-267, 1982) "Joobaloo" (progs 268-272, 1982) "Too Many Bams" (progs 273-278, 1982)