He knew his ideas were derivative, hewing too closely to existing strips. He needed something fresh.

Long a fan of Star Trek, Star Wars, the Marvel catalog and monster movies, he was at home in fantasy worlds. But Earthly wisdom held that space-based comics didn’t fly, and Rickard was loath to try sci-funny until rejection pushed him to give it a whirl.

“I figured if I was gonna fail, I might as well fail doing something I want to do,” he says.

That’s when Brewster came to visit. Rickard was in his early 40s.

Drawing late at night while his family slept, he invited the hapless captain into his head to play. Soon, Brewster showed up with other characters, including Brewster’s very competent wife, Pamela Mae Snap; Dr. Mel Practice, the station’s crazed chief scientist, whose inventions include the Procrastination Ray; and Dirk Raider, a former member of Brewster’s Goodguy Knights who had crossed over to the sinister Microsith corporation.

Rickard drew his characters in a realistic style reminiscent of soapy comic strips Steve Canyon, Mary Worth and Rex Morgan M.D.

His concept — that Brewster and his goofy sidekicks protected the Earth from evil— was funny on its face, and it provided a lot of room for storylines.

In early 2003, Rickard sent samples of Brewster to three syndicates. Two replied with nays. The third did not respond. Rickard assumed that meant “no.” He let go of his dream.

A couple of months later, the third syndicate replied. They wanted to see more.

Rickard sharpened his strip according to the editors’ suggestions, and Brewster joined the fleet of Tribune comics in July 2004.

NASA’s Rayman saw the strip in the Los Angeles Times soon after it launched.

Brewster’s mix of scientific literacy and everyday nincompoopery impressed him and his real-world rocket scientist colleagues.

“Many of Tim’s comics — in fact, most of them — don’t have anything specifically to do with space,” Rayman says. “Like any creative artist, he uses the context he has created to cover many different subjects.”

Still, Rayman admits, he’s thrilled whenever Brewster mentions a mission that Rayman is actually working on, as happened in 2007, when the strip referred to DAWN, a probe that investigated the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Rayman contacted Rickard to suggest, in jest, that he should ask Brewster and crew for advice. Rickard was game. He incorporated Rayman and a legit question into a strip. Several characters offered lame words of wisdom.

Rickard and Rayman have been collaborating ever since. Rayman fact-checks some of the weekday strips, and they share responsibility for Rocket Science Sunday, an occasional educational version of Brewster.

“He’s extremely open to my comments and feedback,” says Rayman. “There’s no ego to hold back the quality.”

Or the buffoonery.

In Brewster’s world, Earthlings can escape gravity but not their foibles.

“The strip never feels like it’s talking down to anybody because the characters are so flawed and stupid and lazy,” Rickard says. “The reader is always in on the joke.”

Ideas come from all directions: news, science, popular culture.

Sometimes, Rickard’s own life seeps into the frames. After he had his first colonoscopy, so did the character named OldBot.

Once, an enemy storm trooper asked his daughter for help with his phone — a copy and paste of Rickard asking his own daughters for technical assistance.

Also, Brewster made a list when Pam asked him to complete more than one task.

“That was literally a conversation with my wife and me,” Rickard says.

In 2010, he and his syndicators traveled to Hollywood to pitch an animated movie based on Brewster, who appeared in 150 markets at the time.

Nothing came of the meetings, but the comic kept cruising.

Last year, The GreenHill Center for NC Art included more than a dozen Brewster pieces in a show of science fiction works by artists statewide.

Rickard relished the sight of Brewster on the walls of the tony gallery.

“He seemed totally out of place,” he says, chuckling.

Where might Brewster materialize next?

Rickard shrugs. He’d like to do another best-of book. A 2007 paperback collection subtitled Closer Encounters of the Worst Kind is out of print but fetches healthy resale prices.

As for the daily offerings, Rickard repeats his industry’s biggest non-secret: newspapers and other traditional customers are dwindling. The News & Record dropped the strip after they laid off Rickard.

One day in the not-so-distant future, Rickard says, Brewster might cease to dwell on paper, his original home, and live only online. Already, the strip appears at gocomics.com, an internet-only repository of cartoons past and present.

In a way, a total shift to cyberspace would make cosmic — and comic — sense.

Rickard says Brewster and his creator are ready to adapt.

“It’s always been a forward-looking type of strip, so the fact that that would be the inevitable home for him would seem appropriate,” Rickard says.

He deletes one of the aliens in the flying saucer.

The one-liner, “You left your coffee on the roof again?” disappears, too.

Only the driver of the saucer remains.

Rickard re-draws the alien’s head. Now he looks up at the cup through the clear roof of the craft.

A thought bubble appears.

“Oh, no. Not again.”

Rickard sits back and puts his stylus down.

That works.