badspacecomics

Reddit Mars

Published: April 2nd 2022, 8:51:29 am

Here’s an unused drawing from my comic Free Mars. (I also wanted to call it Reddit Mars. But I wasn’t sure if I was the only one who found that funny!)

Anyway, quite happy with the way it turned out, but it didn’t feel dynamic enough when paired with the text, so you’re the only ones who get to see it.  

I’ve been drawing pictures of astronauts on Mars since I was a kid. (The oil painting above is one I did when was 17. Don't ask me what's going on here, I got no idea. It was a real long time ago, ok?)

So making this comic was a lot of fun, but really weird. I had to debase my astronauts, I had to inverse the way I had been drawing them for years and turn them into utter, vacuous idiots. 

I can’t lie. I loved it. 

But also feel kind of dirty. 

What have I become? What would 17yo me think? 😬

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NOTES:

Additional thoughts about this comic, in case anyone is interested:

This comic grew out of Mars One. Remember that? A publicity stunt, asking people to volunteer to go and live on Mars. At the time, I thought it would make a great reality TV show-style comic series, each week checking in as this crew of untrained idiots ignored scientific discoveries and accidentally killed themselves off one by one. Hilarious!

But I never got around to it. 

And then a month ago, my city was flooded with violent alt right protestors, who camped outside parliament, demanding an end to masks and vaccinations and calling for the prime minister to be hung. They had gone deep down the social media rabbit hole, and become so detached from reality that they no longer believed what their own eyes were telling them. 

As they fell sick with Covid, they blamed their illness on government radiation weapons and literally started wearing tinfoil hats. 

Tinfoil hats. 

And my Mars One idea was suddenly front and centre again, but completely re-framed: re-framed by social media, by billionaires, and by misinformation. 

Yeah, welcome to the twenties. Who would’ve guessed the end of the world would have turned out to be a comedy?